The Search for the Perfect HPFC Shirt
As our website, our brand and our business have grown and matured, we’ve added a bit of swag. There have been Half Past First Cast hats for fellow travelers, as well as some one-offs for specific trips or themes, but we’re still looking to invest in some shirts. There are, of course, some limitations: The first is budget – ours simply doesn’t yet allow us to go overboard with highly-customized bespoke garments. Second is personal preferences – some of our friends will only wear button-down PFG style shirts, while others will wear anything except those. I have a strong distaste for the tournament jersey style models in this context.
To me, the best bet for consistent branding and the greatest overall level of satisfaction would be a long-sleeved SPF50 shirt in some basic color like blue, gray or white. We could put our smaller (already vectorized) logo on the front and a larger one on the back – that would enable us to buy some in bulk and give out the greatest number. Then again, I love the idea of customization – bass for Mexico, tuna for Panama, sailfish for Guatemala, salmon for Alaska, and so on. With that in mind, check out some of the options we’ve IDed in our initial research efforts:
Cool Shirt Customizers We’ve Found
What is a Name Drop Shirt?
Briny, Boldwater, Harrington Graphics and some others offer what are called “Name Drop” shirts. In other words, they have preexisting designs featuring a species or several species, with space for your boat or resort name – which they then “drop” right in to make it your own. You may have seen them in some of your favorite tackle stores or marinas. The downside: You’re not getting a true original. The upside: you can find a wide variety of fish, and some pretty exceptional artwork, at a less-than-fully-custom price. Sometimes you’re paying for the art and the printing, other times you’re just paying for the design and you can license it to produce garments elsewhere.
The Custom Boat Option
The Custom Captain, Billfish Gear, Custom Yacht Shirts and RJ Boyle will all take pics of your boat and turn them into custom drawings for reproduction in high-quality clothing. As far as I know, they haven’t done bass boats, but it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard. Besides, we’d probably be better off reproducing one of the boats from Casa Vieja Lodge or Sport Fish Panama Island Lodge and pair it with our logo or brand name.
Seeking Help
The problem with us producing shirts with a limited number of species or a particular boat is that they won’t apply to all of our trips. Our bass guys going to El Salto or Picachos won’t want a yellowfin tuna shirt, and vice versa. What do you think? Should we just bite the bullet and get “generic” crew neck sun shirts with our logo on them and be done with it? Is there a more creative and/or economical solution to this problem? We want to see our name out there, across your backs and on your chests, but we need to figure out the right way to do it. By all means feel free to tell us about other options and other companies that might be able to scratch this itch.
