MTees
MTees
The first print-on-demand shop — a Facebook storefront, broader catalogue, looser brief, the experiment that ChewOnTees was built on.
MTees was the first print-on-demand shop. Wider catalogue, less editorial discipline, deliberately scrappy — it was the experiment that taught me what didn't sell and why. The whole reason ChewOnTees got a tighter brief is what MTees got wrong.
The W5H
Who
Solo operator, same setup as ChewOnTees would be a year later: design + listing + Printful fulfilment. Audience was undefined on purpose — the whole point of the shop was to test what would stick.
What
A Facebook-shop storefront with a broad print-on-demand catalogue: slogans, illustrations, the occasional photo-graphic, no clear editorial line. Iteration 1 of a two-shop experiment.
Why
Cheapest possible way to learn the full e-commerce loop with real money on the line: listing hygiene, organic reach, customer-service tone, Printful's quirks, refund mechanics, ad spend, the works. Profit was not the goal; education was.
When
Live 2019 → quietly archived 2021 after ChewOnTees took over the print-on-demand slot.
Where
A Facebook shop as the storefront, Printful for fulfilment, Photoshop + Illustrator for artwork.
How
Volume-first: upload more than feels sensible, watch what gets clicks, kill what doesn't, double down on what works. Pure feedback-loop optimisation rather than a designed catalogue.
Brand report
Position
Generalist POD shop. Nothing strongly differentiating — that was the deliberate weakness, designed to expose what a brand actually needs to do to differentiate.
Audience
Whoever the page's reach happened to touch. No targeting discipline and no marketplace search to fall back on, so the shop never built a returning audience — which was one of the lessons.
Voice
Inconsistent on purpose. Some listings were dry, some were earnest, some were trying to be clever. The data made it obvious within months that voice consistency is what gets returning customers — and MTees didn't have one.
What I learned
Three things that became rules for everything after: (1) a shop without a tight editorial point of view leaks energy on every listing; (2) distribution is the actual product — on a social storefront with no marketplace search behind it, the design is the bonus, not the engine; (3) the difference between a hobby and a business is whether you can say no to a design that's 'fine'.
Design analysis
Catalogue spread too wide
Mix of typographic, illustrative and photo-graphic designs without a unifying treatment. Each individual piece could be good; the shop as a whole read as a folder, not a brand.
No grading discipline
Different palettes per design rather than a shop-wide system. ChewOnTees later forced one-colour discipline as a direct counter-reaction.
Mockup quality varied
Some listings had carefully styled mockups, others used Printful's default. Predictably, the styled ones converted better. Lesson absorbed.
Iteration over polish
Designs were shipped fast and refined post-launch based on click-through. Useful operationally but produced a feed that looked like a sandbox — which it was.
UX analysis
Listings as A/B tests
Every listing was effectively an experiment: which title format, which first-image style, which colour count. Crude but real data, which is more than most design portfolios ever generate.
No customer journey
Each listing was its own island. Cross-sell, bundles, brand-of-the-shop continuity — none of it existed. ChewOnTees and ChicNordique inherit the opposite assumption: the shop is the product.
Customer service as feedback channel
Every conversation with a buyer fed back into listing copy or sizing imagery. The single highest-ROI activity in the whole operation.
Why it was archived
Once ChewOnTees existed with a tighter editorial frame, MTees was just noise in the portfolio. Honestly archived rather than left to drift — there's a version of personal-brand hygiene that's just knowing when to close the tab.
Note
Shop is archived; included here as the necessary first iteration that produced the rules ChewOnTees and ChicNordique run on. The lesson is the artefact.