So our first year in business has almost come to an end… But what has really been going on in the past year? We started the company, had a few very successful designs, and had a few that flopped. But it’s been a great learning experience for us, and something we will begin to build on over the coming years.
RMR’s first year was actually pretty successful. We launched in mid February only at hip-hop events, and out of Mitch’s house. People were picking it up so fast we couldn’t keep it in stock. Our opening launch had only two shirt designs, the well know “Damn it feel good to be from the Northwest” tee and the purple side logo tee. It wasn’t till that Fall that we launched more then those two designs, and officially got licensed. Fall we launched a bunch of tee’s and more color ways of the “Damn” tee and the logo tee. It was here we saw the first real boom in sales. Again, we were having trouble keeping stuff in stock, and stores/shops began to approach us for consignment.
We chose to wait a little bit on putting our stuff in stores, mainly because we couldn’t provide enough stock to actually get it in stores. But the guys at Royal Sports informed us that they would love to have us in the shop, so we worked it out with them, and made their shop the headquarters for RMR sales. It was a major step in the evolution of RMR, to have our stuff in a shop, and it has taught us a lot about pricing, promotion, and designing.
At the beginning of Respect My Region, we didn’t have any major goals. We didn’t know where we wanted to go, or what the brand was going to be. But it slowly evolved to what it is today, we have goals, we have a plan, and we know where we want to be in 5 years. Below are a few numbers from 2011:
- In our first year, we broke 1k Facebook likes. It was a goal to utilize social media to our advantage, and I think we have started to do that.
- We had over 10k unique visitors to the site. The website will become a more useful and beneficial place for us in the future, but 10k in a year is a good start.
- We broke 30k page views on the website.
- Over 600 followers on Twitter. This is another way we utilize social media, and it’s proven to be a great way to communicate with our customers and fans.
Those are just some of the great numbers we have had in the first year on the web. It’s great to see the growth we have had over the year, and we are excited to see what our next year in business has to bring. Throughout the year we have also brought people on to our team when we have needed more help, and boy have they come through.
From friends just coming to events with us to help run the tables, to groups of people that come over to fold and tag shirts. It’s been great to see how much our friends and family believe in the company, and want to help us make it successful. I’m not going to name names, but to all those that have helped us out over the past year, you are truly appreciated!
To all our fans… I hope that you have had as much fun as we have had over the past year! We truly enjoy what we are doing, and are grateful to all the people that helped spread the word about Respect My Region. We are excited for our 1 year anniversary and all the Spring 2012 gear! I hope you can all make it to the event on the 18th of February. Your continued support is greatly appreciated!
So what’s next? In the next few days we will be announcing some plans we have for the next year, and some exciting opportunities for some of our fans to help us out! I hope you all keep checking the blog to find out how you can help make Respect My Region even better! Feel free to comment below on things you will remember about the first year of Respect My Region.
