Shollie is a Thailand-based t-shirt store that specialize in souvenir t-shirts for various countries, not including Thailand. At least not yet. They opened shop on the 20th of September 2015. That’s just 2 weeks ago.
Shollie is the World Souvenir T-shirt store, from US$ 25.99 for Tshirts for France, Canada, Germany, Brazil, England, Russia, U.S.A.
Shollie T-Shirt Review
One medium white t-shirt arrived in the post from Thailand in a simple white mailer. Inside the mailer were two sticker sheets and one cellophane wrapped t-shirt. Shollie is making souvenir t-shirts but not the type of low-quality tees that you can pick up for $5-10 that lose shape and fade after a few washes. Even before I took it out of the cellophane I could tell that it was nice quality. It’s 100% medium to heavy cotton. There is a red band on the inside neck and corresponding red thread on the outside at the back. This helps give it a premium appearance.
The design has three elements, as you can see. The centerpiece is England printed in old letter styling and below off-center is a dog’s face which represents the British bulldog of course. The third element, while it looks good design-wise, is a little confusing. It is England written in the Japanese phonetic alphabet (katakana) but printed in a European calligraphy style.
Another confusing thing is the green sewn-on NatAnimo label at the bottom of the shirt. And then there is the text “Save Wildlife”, printed on the back of the shirt below the neck.
We donate 1% of product sale to World Wildlife Fund.
On the inside neck, there is a printed tag with the Shollie text logo, the gender, the size and Made in Thailand in a light gray.
It’s a nice enough shirt but being Irish, it would be a little strange for me to wear it. Luckily I have an English friend who might wear it although he might find it a little strange to wear something so patriotic too. Living in Japan, at least everyone would be able to read the Japanese text, though.
Branding and Extras
As I mentioned above, the shirt came with two stickers sheets. There are four large stickers on each. One with the Shollie logo another with a NatAnimo logo, elephant and Save Wildlife text. I wonder what other people do with these stickers. Let me know in the comments!
The mailer had one of each sticker on it.
The t-shirt itself has the Shollie logo on the inside and the confusing NatAnimo logo on the bottom. I think that for those who bothered to look, they would think that NatAnimo was the t-shirt brand.
Website
The Website is a modern Shopify responsive website. It looks good and is easy to navigate. They display their products right on the home page, as they should. While the FAQ is decent, their About page and blog need work.
They have 6 designs to choose from and they offer them on both men’s and ladies styles. At the moment Brazil, Canada, England, Russia, Germany, and France are represented. The plan is to expand further.
Pricing
They charge US$32.99 including Free Worldwide Shipping. (Now 20% off for opening sale). I think I read somewhere that it’s better for sales figures to show prices without shipping and charge less rather than including the price of shipping in the product. If someone buys five shirts they are pretty much paying shipping for 5 separate items when shipping five t-shirts at once must cost less than shipping five separately.
Anyway, the pricing is not so bad for the quality of the shirt and they detail they have put in but compared to typical souvenir shirts they are not cheap.
Wrap-Up
The t-shirt itself is nice quality and despite the confusing aspects (Japanese text and NatAnimo label) it has a nice design. Shollie has a nice website that is easy to understand and prices that are not so bad. All positives. But something is nagging at me. When I buy a souvenir t-shirt I usually buy it from that place. That’s basically what makes it a souvenir. I don’t see myself buying a souvenir t-shirt from the web. That said, I know there is a market for them because I used to sell that kind of thing on CafePress/Zazzle.
Despite having a nice website and good product, I think Shollie is going to struggle. I think that the might do well in bricks and mortar store in an international airport where people buy last minute gifts but online, the competition is fierce and they really need to set themselves apart.
I find the sleeves a bit long, but it seems well otherwise
cool shirt, but seems a bit pricey and I was also confused by the ‘NatAmino’ label, but otherwise I dig it
Nice Post. Keep sharing