One of the toughest things a new company faces is what opportunities to accept. As new company, staying alive is the number one priority short term, but long term building a brand and a core value structure is the number one priority.
I call this balance “Brand vs. Opportunity Economics”. As a new company every opportunity needs to be plotted on this chart. A great brand opportunity that financially tightens the company can be just as bad as a great financial opportunity that is immoral or erodes a companies brand.
The question we’ve looked at this month is “How can we get involved with the election, but still position our selves as a fashion company?”.
Our answer was to have a “Keeping Politics Positive Campaign” and have our designers make fashionable, pro-candidate t-shirts promoting their favorite candidate. So we are having Obama shirts compete against each other and McCain shirts compete against each other to produce the best designs.
Political t-shirts are not our brand, but the democratization of design is. So we are going to showcase how our voting system works and how head to head competition can equate to the best clothing as it does in politics.
Right now this is a hypothesis, but we believe this is a great way to showcase our voting system and the positive values Collar Free represents.
What dilemmas has your company faced?
Jimmy Hendricks
patrickdillon