Back to it!
After a rather lengthy hiatus, Lowbrow Apparel is back to it. We’ve done some readjustments to the business model this time around.
Due to changes in the EU regulations regarding taxing of goods in addition to rising costs of shipping parcels internationally (from Norway), we had to stop selling overseas.
The Lowbrow model was as follows: Spend x amount of time on designs, promote the stuff, get feedback - do preorders, and order up a limited amount. Usually between 25-50 high quality garments from a trusted printer. We received, packaged and shipped most of the stuff upon arrival, and sold everything else in our webstore. The overhead on the apparel itself was not great - good enough to keep it going, but the shipping costs started to eat away at most of it.
Eventually, it was not sustainable, unless we did a large upscale in production, but the aim was always to keep it as limited, exclusive thing. The Lowbrow team is also involved in a design agency and other ventures (such as climbing), so the idea was never to make it a full time project, but rather a place to purchase, well, Lowbrow climbing and bouldering apparel, and some other stuff in between.
We’ve changed up the printing and shipping a bit by offering these designs through print on demand. We all know print on demand feels a bit less exclusive than getting the stuff shipped from the HQ itself. We know, we know. But there are some upsides. The type of, and quality of the shirt (the garment itself) is the same. The printing method is the same (DTG - direct to garment, think of it as a screen print printer). The shipping is better, but takes a bit longer. You get tracking though, and the option to order from other countries (in Europe at the moment), and the shipping cost is mostly the same. The designs are from the same guy, and the overhead is still OK. We’ve also limited the quantity of each piece to 100, so this is mostly the same.
Two of our previous best sellers, Beta Lord and Monkey Index are now exclusively sold through Magnus Midtbøs brand Rungne. Head over to his if you want any of those. We’ve also made a couple of other designs for them through our company Overhaus. Check it out if you want some banging t-shirts or climbing gear.