Sky Rocketing Costs, Web Site Delays, Media Exposure and Our First Official Sponsorships

The benefits of the promotional work we did over the weekend of the fight as well as the countless emails we’ve sent are now starting to pay dividends, we have successfully created a small buzz in the industry that is only getting louder by the day, but that means we have to be prepared for the residual benefits that come with that buzz. We need more shirts, but the costs associated with making sure you have the stock on hand to meet the demand you’ve created is not a small amount. I wish I could say that an investment like I’m faced with is one I could enter into without any reservations but it wouldn’t be true. The shirts we used from Alternative for our sample run were expensive but I have no idea why, the qualityof the shirts was not very good, in fact the necks on the samples were so stretched out before anyone wore them I was a little hesitant on giving them out, but after some thought and some positive feedback I decided to just send them, besides these were just a test run. Now that we’ve gotten the shirts and determined what we liked and more importantly what we didn’t like, those facts will only serve to make the next round 10 times better. The point is you should always have a plan for both ends of the spectrum, have a way to get out of the business in the event it doesn’t work out but also have a plan in the event the idea picks up and begins to snowball, you need to be prepared.

We got a call from Ted Distel our web designer yesterday, he’s having some trouble creating one of the aspects of the site that we wanted, specifically the blog. He gave us a new ETA for the site to be completed, mid-August. Now we knew it would be August but we were hoping for a completion date closer to the first. As long as the site looks the way he says it will I don’t mind waiting. My idea about these types of things is simple, I realize that I’m not an expert in the field and I don’t try to pretend I am simply because I’m paying. I wouldn’t like someone coming to my office and telling me how to run my business so I try not to do that to anyone else, delays are common, plan for them ahead of time and they wont hurt you.

Last week I was on the road when I received a call from a person who’s turning out to be a trusted friend in the business, Jake Hattan from Denaro Sports Marketing who called me with a really good opportunity. He told me that the shirt sponsor for Tim Credeur had cancelled on him last minute and if I was interested in creating some pre-launch buzz this would be a good way to do it. He gave us a really good deal so we decided to it was worth the money. Tim was a semi-finalist on this past season of T.U.F. Lookfor our signature Graffight Logo shirt on Tim as well as his corner men on July 19th when he takes on Cale Yarborough on Spike TV. We also began sponsoring a local fighter, a guy named Justin Hoglund. Justin is a local fire fighter and has been training for a long time, its our honor to sponsor both he, and Tim in their upcoming bouts, we wish them both the best of luck.

Lastly we were in the MMA media again the other day, a site called MMA Convert.com did a piece on us and our bid to carve out a niche in the big world of MMA Apparel. It was a really great article not just because it was more exposure for us but because Steve Barry and the people over at MMA Convert have the same ideas and goals that Graffight has, to change the way the public views the sport of mixed martial arts. Thanks and respect go out to Steve and everyone at MMA Convert.

Thanks again everybody for reading, check back tomorrow, we have 2 more big deals in the works so if they happen we’ll post it.

Respect.