Sorry for the delay in getting any significant news post into this space yesterday. I was doing more support work for the site and it kind of slipped my mind.

If you’re interested in the work that I was doing, you only need to travel as far as our store. I was busy adding all of the t-shirts, baby doll tees and hoodies back to their former glory. I even tossed in a few new designs that you guys might want to check out.

I’m approaching the sale of apparel a little bit differently than last time. Instead of offering multiple colors for each design, I’m only offering one. Part of this is to help manage distribution. Things get confusing when you’re sifting through 60 shirt orders and need to send a navy blue extra large to someone. “No! Not deep navy! Regular navy. And not large! Extra large.” One shirt color for each design will help differentiate things better.

I’m also offering less variety in colors to help improve customer service. Now I know in the back of your head, you’re saying that doesn’t make sense. How does removing options improve customer service? Let me explain.

First, to accommodate the wide variety of color selections, I would have to do a fairly lengthy pre-sale. Usually about two weeks.

Second, once I submitted my order to the printer, not only does he have to print up all the shirts, but he has to make sure that he’s printing up the right colors in the right sizes. Sometimes he has to specifically order t-shirt colors he has doesn’t have in stock. This all takes time. If it turns out he doesn’t have any small eggplant baby doll tees lying around, he has to put those on order, wait for it to come in, print it up and then ship it out with the rest of the shirts. It holds up everyone’s order. You could be looking at another two or three weeks after the pre-sale has ended. After the shirts are shipped to me, I have to ship them to you. And even though I ship First Class, that tacks another couple of days on things. In the end, you could be looking at a month to a month and a half to receive your shirt after you order it. No good. Offering designs in one color will expedite the production process.

I will also no longer be ordering shirts through “on demand” means. In other words, if 12 people buy a shirt, I won’t contact the printer with 12 orders. I’ll probably end up asking for an even 20. The extra shirts I have left over I will use to fill future orders even faster because I will have stock on hand. The process becomes faster still.

Basically I have reached the point where I’ve decided to stop being afraid of investing in Theater Hopper. With the merchandise I was offering, I would be terrified that I would lose money and would only order what I needed. I was crippled with fear at the thought of being stuck with merchandise I couldn’t sell.

I finally woke up and realized “It will all sell eventually.” And if it doesn’t sell right away, I can take the extras to conventions or discount them if they aren’t moving and that everything is flexible. I’ve been locked down for too long over the thought of failure and I’m basically not going to accept that from myself anymore. Especially when it comes at the expense of a pleasant experience for you guys. If I can get a shirt to you in a week where before it would have taken me a month, then that’s an achievement I hope you notice and will motivate you to spend money with us in the future.

That being said, pre-orders for ALL apparel is taking place now through May 16th. So please buy a shirt. Don’t make a liar out of me!

Anyway, explanations aside, I suppose it’s time to do a little recap on yesterday’s strip?

I originally envisioned the Nerd Police as being far less threatening. Original design drafts depicted them as fatter, not as quick on the uptake and their fingers coated in Chee-tos dust. I wanted Tom to have the upper hand the entire time, even as he was being carted off. I wanted him to play along as a means of boosting these nerds self-esteem.

But that scenario was kind of like looking down your nose at nerds. And I’m one of them! I’m not a self-hating nerd, so I’m going to do these guys right.

Wouldn’t it be funnier to give these guys actual authority rather than play into the stereotype that nerds are non-threatening? From there I was able to extrapolate a bunch of other scenarios. Nerd prison. Nerd judges. A complete nerd judicial system.

So expect to see that as our little storyline progresses