Posted by By rangga on November 12th, 2007

Ten Bills Interview: We are Now Selling a $10 Experience

Ten Bills is one tee companies that I’ve been stalking since first time I found it, not only because of its regular “promotion” newsletter but also due to unique concept it has: selling T-shirts designed by featured for $10 only (if not $5, during sale) and has been doing this for consistently for almost two years, since 2006.

I’m curious how they do it and thanks to Emil from Ten Bills, I can crack a little bit about this Bloomfield, NJ-based company.

(Rangga) Firstly, who is/are the guy(s) behind Ten Bills?
(Emil) TenBills.com is run by a handful of friends based in NJ. Chris, Alan, Emil, John, Neil, Charles, Ed, Gabe are some of our names.
*ugh, I wish he give links to their website/homepage so we can have a clue about these dudes

(Rangga) How did you come up the idea: $10 for every T-shirt? Can Ten Bills survive this below-industry-average price?
(Emil) $10 a t-shirt is just one aspect of our entire concept. Because we personally needed to be able to get fresh t-shirts to wear basically everyday, we figured there would be others like us. So we set out to provide dope t-shirts. Dope t-shirts, no brand name, independent artists with fresh concepts – all day everyday.

As for the “industry standard”…and whether we can survive, we can shed some light on this. First, even though our prices are lower than most other t-shirts, we are not the cheapest. Nor are we trying to be. The $10 price is basically the fair price we agreed that we’d love to be able to buy t-shirts for before Ten Bills came to be. Since we set that benchmark of fairness, we have found it to be exactly that: a fair price. With that said, we make a fair profit on every t-shirt and that allows us to expand our line and business. It also helps that we sell directly to our customers. Our shirts are available exclusively at TenBills.com.

*Evolution of Flight by Ken Quemuel and Paint By Numbers by Juxism

(Rangga) With only $10 per tee, how do you ensure that you’ll not sacrifice your T-shirt and printing quality?
(Emil) As we were saying before, $10 is a fair price all around. There is no need to cut corners or sacrifice anything other than sacrificing an imbalance of benefits between us and our customer. Basically we are sacrificing excessive profits if anything. In addition to that, TenBills.com is constantly striving to out-do whatever expectations our customers will have in mind. Between our first t-shirt to the t-shirts we are shipping out today, we have improved the entire experience exponentially. We are no longer selling a $10 t-shirt. We are now selling a $10 experience. But we will keep going. Customers today will always be in store for new surprises just as they have always been all along. We love our Ten Billers and we love outdoing ourselves.

(Rangga) That’s really interesting. Now let’s talk about the artists you collaborate with, where did you meet them? How are they selected?
(Emil) Our artists are the staple to the movement. Some of them we met in high school. Some we met in college. Some we met through our artists and others we met through friends. There is always some untapped talent aching to be exposed and we love being their medium. Hopefully we can expand and continue providing opportunities to those who are constantly perfected their skills.

In the beginning, we really worked with artists that were willing to work with us. We were new and had no name in the game so it was hard to recruit with no credentials. Now we are flooded with requests and are constantly trying to expand our pool of artists. Many of our artists were introduced to us by artists we already work with and we try to work with those artists first. We will soon try to experiment with other creative recruitment methods as well.

*Everyone Wants a Peace by C Manuel Galvez and Fun For All Ages by Tishon Woolcock

(Rangga) Ten Bills sells wide range of artsy tees collection, how do you decide what kind of artworks will get printed on Ten bills tee?
(Emil) This question is probably the key. Our t-shirts always have been and always will be our t-shirts. When we print a t-shirt, we print only what we would wear. What we consider to be fresh. If it’s fresh, it’s Ten Bills.

(Rangga) Good answer, Emil. And my last, what’s Ten Bills plan in the future?
(Emil) Haha. This question is great too. Ten Bills has many plans in our future and we are constantly being tested by time. We have a new Series we are getting ready to drop in a month and a handful of Singles that will be dropped in the meantime. We are also planning to expand into a few new fields as well that will be real exciting as well. We are also going to go on a retreat in the New Year which we are all looking forward to. Destination is still undecided though.

(Rangga) Thanks for all your answers, Emil :)
(Emil) Thanks

*Don’t forget to check Ten Bills’ newest tees: Paint By Numbers and CMYKrazy (both by artist Juxism). Promo offer also available, free shipping for domestic orders when your total order exceeds $75. Happy Ten Billing!

Others