MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE WITH TREESHIRT DESIGN
"Treeshirt Design is a new business, whose aim is to connect nature with people who are currently living in urban environments by creating a bundle of t-shirts that are sustainable and friendly towards the environments. We had the pleasure of chatting to Peter from Treeshirt Design, he explains how the idea involved.”
We sit down and chat with Peter to get a better insight of Treeshirt Design present and future plans..
Q: Hi Peter, Great to have you launching your first set of t-shirts with us. We are really enjoying them. Can you tell us a little bit more about them and where the idea originally come from?
It's a long story, but to put in a nutshell: everything started 10 years ago, when my future wife and I decided to share our life with a Hungarian Vizsla puppy. Such dogs require daily 6-8 miles walk at least, because of this we decided to move next to a forest, and we started our journey with long walks between the trees.
We were close to nature before, but with somebody "forcing" us to go for a walk whatever the weather is like, it became a different story. We started to explore the beauty of nature even more in all weather conditions and in all seasons.
As it became bigger part of our life, we started to think how we can connect nature with people living urban life and how to make a part of this beauty wearable. At the same time we read more and more about the environment damage caused by big factories (and human in general) so we decided to connect it all together. That's how the concept of Treeshirt Design was born!
Q: How did you hear about Print Social?
As the whole t-shirt printing business was completely new for us, there was a long planning and researching phase before we were able to move forward. We explored different packing solutions, different basic t-shirt brands to ensure we select an environment friendly but high street quality.
During this process we explored different t-shirt printing options as well - from the old stile heat press to the latest direct to garment digital printing – and we found a t-shirt screen printing workshop with 3rd Rail Limited. It was great fun and great experience to create something from sketch and all the guys at 3rd rail Print Space were really helpful and professional. We got in touch with the company to see how we can cooperate and that's when we've been offered to try 3rd Rail's Print Social services.
Q: How did you come up with the slogans?
First, our name "Treeshirt Design" came easily and there was an immediate agreement on it.
It reflects to t-shirts, trees and the combination of these – trees providing the main elements of our designs on t-shirts – so we think there is no better name.
We are easy going on the others as well, not forcing anything and not sitting down brainstorming. If one of us have an idea, we just speak out loud and if we both like it we go with it. If we are not convinced, we simply ask some friends and family members about their opinion. In addition, there is a "digestion" phase before we go public, sometimes it happens that we like something and 1-2 days later, we dislike it. We always have 5-6 future ideas in planning and digestion phase and we only move forward with them if we feel we cannot fine-tune further.
Q: Who inspires you the most and why?
As you can see from my previous answers I tend to chew things a bit too much but I have a fantastic wife who supported my ideas from the very beginning and gave me the final push to start our business. We are not just equal partners in our personal and business life but we also inspire and support each other on all levels.
From the "outside" world, there are different inspirations: a Hungarian company, BP Clothing started their business less than 10 years ago the same way as we do now. They had a design/brand idea and a concept around and they accepted pre-orders with small quantities. Today they have shops in the biggest malls and became a well-known, leading brand in Budapest. German Raubdruckerin (which translates to "pirate printer"), a Berlin-based art collective is printing street-art – the pattern of manhole covers, vents, etc – to t-shirts and other items from different cities and countries, like we do with trunks or timbers. It is a fantastic, unique idea!
Finally yet importantly, inspiration is coming from the nature as a sudden, whenever we are exploring it. We always try to walk with open eyes and open mind, catching some details that could inspire our designs later on.
Q: What is your favourite type of tree and why?
I don't have a favourite, different type of trees have their own different beauty and even they are the same type, every tree has its own "personality marks". Some of them have bark that is more eye-catching, some of them have stranger leaf shape, some of them is are more colourful, and all of these can change with the seasons, so the scale of variety is endless.
Q: What do you hope to get out of your campaign once it's over?
We hope that the campaign will trigger enough attention and we can move to production with our designs. We also hope that our brand and the environment friendly concept behind will reach more people and they will choose our products in the future.
We are committed to nature and we are planning to plant a tree after every
5 t-shirts sold.
Q: What's next for Treeshirt Design after the launch of the pre-sale t-shirts?
We are planning to re-invest into future campaigns and to move from current pre-order solution to a ready-made small stock, which will significantly reduce the waiting time in the ordering process. Then we can also go "offline" and meet people on festivals or other social events as a personal connection could increase engagement towards our brand. There are some longer term plans but it's too early to talk about those, we believe in ourselves, in our designs/products and the concept behind.
Moreover, of course, we keep planting trees after after our sales."
You can find Treeshirt Design on their website or give them a follow on Instagram.
