Greater>Than Clothing

In addition to welcoming Ryan to the Greater>Than team, I wanted to follow up on the change in strategy he described in his intro post. My original plan was for Greater>Than to play a design consulting/curation role, working with designers to help them achieve their visions and selecting the most promising designs for production. We would then contract with another company to get our shirts made.

This had proven a bit frustrating, especially since the company I had chosen to work with was in another state, and we were conducting all of our business through e-mail. Plus, we don’t want to compromise at all on quality, and I felt like there was an element of risk involved there, since the quality of the print itself (a crucial component in overall quality) would be out of our hands.

While I was trying to force my way through the frustration, Ryan saw this problem as an opportunity, deftly demonstrating one of the key operating principles that I had set out for the company (but had failed to live up to myself): use problems to identify opportunities. This principle of ‘probletunity*’ is a reminder to bring creativity to bear on issues that hold us back, so that they can be not only overcome but transcended.

Back to the idea of printing the shirts ourselves…this simple (even obvious in hindsight) innovation not only solves the quality concern, it allows us to extend the business in a couple of different ways:

• Once we get up to speed on the equipment, our expertise will allow us to execute the design concepts more precisely. We can select the correct inks, etc. to get the job done right. Hopefully a synergy will emerge, as our printing experience will inform our design choices and vice versa. It’ll be another way to enhance the overall artistry of the finished product.

• Since we’ll own the apparatus, we can diversify our revenue stream by doing some printing for hire. We won’t be a high-capacity shop, at least not at first, but through our work on Greater>Than we will (hopefully) become experts at producing top-quality prints. Perhaps we’ll become the print shop of choice for some other brands that emphasize quality over quantity. Maybe we can also offer our clients advice about marketing, etc. based on what we have learned. We are just starting to think about this new side-business, but it’s an exciting idea.

All this from a single problem turned into an opportunity! Imagine if we could approach every problem this way. We’re going to be so excited when things frustrate us.

Ryan has started looking into what equipment we will need to pull this off. Look for details in future posts.

*So I thought I had lifted the word “probletunity” from an episode of The Simpsons, but it turns out that I was a little off. I did some digging, and thanks to the good folks over at The Simpsons Archive, I now know that the episode I had in mind was #114 (Season 6, Episode 11), “Fear of Flying“.

Early in the episode, Homer gets banned from Moe’s, and Lisa tries to console him:

Lisa: Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for “crisis” as they do for “opportunity”?

Homer: Yes! Crisatunity!

So as it turns out I didn’t steal the word from The Simpsons, just the inspiration. Still, I would like to thank David Sacks, who wrote the episode (and later won a Golden Globe for his work on 3rd Rock From the Sun).

I’ll leave you with a clip that begins with the very next line of dialogue, containing one of my favorite Simpsons characters, Guy Incognito: