andy got a dog

The other day Andy got a really little ‘handbag’ dog. We teased him about it for a bit, and then when that got old Joe made this. Good and nice one.

You must always blow on the pie.

This guy has to be one of the quickest thinking cops around. I’m terribly stoked that cops can actually have a bit of a laugh like regular people too. I remember when I worked at Mitre 10 we used to always play little games as well – like seeing how many times we could slip in the F-word when talking to non-English speaking customers. His gag is way better though. And it's true... You must always blow on the pie. Safer communities together.

I was talking to my old mate the other day, who's a cop, and he knows this dude. Reckons he's not even that funny, and his persona is more 'boring and grumpy' than 'funny and hilarious'. Interesting.

We're making some Changes

We’re ALWAYS LISTENING to what you, our customers, are saying. Whether it’s through facebook, twitter, enquiries through the website, or feedback in-store – we always take note and every now and then we sit down and see if there’s any logic in what your saying. And there is.

Here’s a bunch of things you lot always seem to ask for:
• Can I get this on a v-neck?
• Does this come in a kids tee?
• Do you have this design on a hoodie?
• The item I want is out of stock, when will you get it back?
• Can you call me when this is back in stock?

Good news. We splashed out and bought a SCREEN PRINTING MACHINE. The bad news was there was no voucher in the ‘Entertainment Book’ for a screen printer. What are the odds? Anyway, it means we can print way quicker, and offer you more variety. So over the coming months we’ll be offering more style options to you per design.

We’ve decided that SUMMER is on the way too, so singlets are on the way ladies. So too is the scoop neck, just in case you wanted to show off your sternum in the summer sun.

My sister had a BABY and my brothers’ baby is now a TODDLER, so we’re going to be doing more 1 piece baby suits and toddlers t-shirts very shortly otherwise I’m screwed for Christmas presents this year. Plus all the Mums from the yoga class next door are really demanding, so we kinda have to print some more.

BUT THE BIGGEST BIT OF NEWS is that the ‘design of the day’ will now only be available for 24hrs. Thereafter, the design will go to the ‘RETIERD DESIGNS’ section. There you can vote for the design to be re-printed, and when the design receives enough votes you’ll be emailed personally letting you know first that it’s back. It means you’re going to have to be way quicker and check the website daily… Actually, the best way would be to JOIN THE NEWSLETTER and then you get an email with the design of the day straight to your inbox.

We realise that some people will be unhappy about this, BUT
• It’ll cut down on out of stocks of other designs
• It’ll allow us to get your orders out faster
• It’ll mean some of your shirts will be limited edition collectors’ items

And NO, we can’t call you when it comes back in stock. It’s much easier than that. Simply go to the product page of the t-shirt you’re after and head down to the ‘live stock chart’. There, just choose the size you’re after and click the ‘notify me when available’ text and you’ll be emailed when it’s available. Easy as.

The world is changing. And so are we.

Could you be the one?

We need a casual helper, as the title suggests. What you’ll basically be doing will be helping us out with little things that need to be done around the place, on a casual basis – again, as the job title suggest. I thought this was enough of a job description, but I’ve been told to expand on it. So here it goes.

The ‘little things that need to be done’ may include:

• Folding cotton t-shirts
• Checking inwards goods (counting the t-shirts)
• Talking to Hayden about what he did over the weekend
• In-store customer service
• Online and telephonic customer service
• Running up to the fish n chippery to obtain a package of $5.00 chips

How ‘casual’ is casual?

• Pretty casual really – we don’t have a uniform or anything
• You’ll need to work on Saturdays though
• Pretty much full time leading up to Christmas
• When you’re hung-over we’ll allow you to nip off to grab a blue Powerade from Caltex

Think you’re right for this role? Here’s a checklist for ya:

• When you see a big pile of work to do you just can’t wait to get amongst it
• You notice little things that others might miss
• Working towards a common cause motivates you
• You’re friendly and have strong ‘small talk’ skills e.g. she’s a nice day today eh?
• You’d hand in a wallet that you found at a supermarket
• Even when you’re really super hung-over you still come in to work on time

How to get this job:

• Quickly prepare a CV and cover letter
• Email your curriculum vitae (CV) and cover letter to sales{at}mrvintage.co.nz
• Make sure your references are included in said CV
• Tell us in under 20 words why we should choose you

friendbook

Watched Outrageous Fortune last night. I’ve watched it for a while; I think it’s a good show with some good characters. Last night’s finale was a cracker… if you missed it I suggest you check it out. People were updating their facebooks and tweeting tweets about it. Crazy.

It’s amazing what some people put on their status updates. Anything and everything. Case in point Joe our designer. The guy is full of updates – he’ll update about his lunch, music, bowel movements and mood. He’s easily the most sensitive of all the guys here. But there’s far worse than Joe, check out this update. It’s not the sort of information you need to share on facebook…

Fight of the Century

The Fight of the Century was on Saturday night. Or should I say my special lady friends’ birthday was on Saturday night. lol. No surprises with the fight anyway, I knew Tua would destroy him. I play Wii boxing at home, so I know what I'm talking about. That being said, Tua was animal in the ring on Saturday and totally deserved such an emphatic victory.

I am looking forward to seeing all of my friends that were certain Monsieur Cameron was going to win though. Their reasons varied. Age, physical shape, recent activity, literacy, height and mountaineering experience were all bandied about pre-fight. Oh well. Earned me a tidy $20 bung off my stupid brother-in-law Jono. Shwing.

Our operations Executive Andy Shackleton actually went to the trouble of driving down to Hamilton to see the 3 minute and 7 second fight. He is pleased to confirm it is not in fact the city of the future, and noted on a more promising note that certain establishments now carry EFTPOS facilities. He arrived back in Auckland unscathed and free of Chlamydia. Great success.

Yeah, no shit.

Tsunami fun.

All this talk of a Tsunami coming has me quite excited. Not in an insensitive way, people have died in American Samoa and that’s terrible. But whenever there’s a threat of a natural disaster I start thinking about the possibilities. I think the ideal scenario would involve some kind of rioting.

Not that it’s even a natural disaster, but it’s a disaster all the same. I’m thinking the best chance will be if the All Blacks lose the 2011 World Cup final. All hell will break loose. There’ll be rioting and looting. Looting. Oh my goodness. Is there anything better? I’ve thought about this before, and I know straight where I’m heading. Subway. I’ll grab the buckets of meatballs, a sack full of bread rolls, and all the sauces. Great success.

I now see that the Tsunami Warnings have been cancelled. Anti-climax.

Delicious.

Blogging.

Blogging. It aint always easy to keep up with. Especially when you’ve got a new shop and new accounting software. Anyway, just touching base to let you know that we’ve got some exciting giveaways coming up on the blog very shortly, and I will soon be back getting amongst the blogs.

In the mean time, here’s a funny little image to keep you going. Well not that little, but you get the idea.

kids.....

Under no circumstances should this person ever have kids. ever. "...a 5 year responsibility... you have to give up drinking for like a month" Isn't it more like a 7 year responsibility and no drinking for like 2 months. dick

We got an email from a genuine Australian!

We got this email from Peter L*&^ard on Sunday.

Subject: idiot
From: peter l*&^ard
Enquiry date: 2009-09-13 18:35

your coments on tv are ignorent and shocking. im an aussi here in auckland running a buisness as kiwis are to stupid to. aussie are in control of most buisnesses in new zealand as you are ten years behind us. if you want to call australians lazy say it to there faces. the kiwis i have working for me are the worst people i have ever been in control off .
you are an idiot and i will relay this back to your aussie opostion and make sure that it gets harder for you. this is part of the world is forgotten as you have nothing to offer the world.


He thinks we’re idiots. Here’s 12 reasons why we’re smarter than him.

12. We use Capital letters at the start of sentences as well as for names of countries and people.
11. ‘Coments’ has two m’s. Comments.
10. ‘Ignorent’ is spelt ignorant.
9. im. I'm. It's like saying I am. That's a good way to remember it.
8. There’s an ‘e’ on the end of ‘Aussi’
7. Business. B-u-s-i-n-e-s-s. Not that hard.
6. This is a comma “,”. Try it some time.
5. To and too. Different words.
4. Say it to their faces Peter, not 'there faces'.
3. Have you been in control off them? Have you? nah.
2. ‘Oposition’. You mean opposition mate.
1. Just consider revising that last sentence.

Oh, and Peter. Please don't "make sure that it gets harder" for us. Please. Anything but that.

Cheers dudes.

Following yesterdays tiff with those dudes in Australia, we’re totally stoked with the support we’ve recieved from our loyal followers. You guys are wicked awesome. Facebook comments, blog entries, Tweets, and emails flowed in. Sadly no facsimile this time however.

Anyway, I chucked a few up on the site for you to check out. Get in to it; it’s a good laugh. With regards to how we’ll proceed, we’re pretty happy to put this all behind us to be honest – they’ve taken up enough of our time. But it was fun.

I know they maintain, “there is nothing that could be considered plagiarism on the site”, and I could spend more time making screen shots of the text that I wrote on their website, but there’s no point. I’m done checking their website, I suggest you do the same.

We've been robbed. Again. Intellectually this time.

The other day on Facebook some person recommended I become a fan of this site called Klub Retro, so I checked it out and noticed more than a few little similarities with Mr Vintage. As I continued to check out their content pages, I noticed that they’d copied our banners as well, and once I clicked through I realized that not only had they taken inspiration from our website, they had literally copied and pasted our copy from the website too!

They're like us, but way more shit. They're designs are pretty amateur, but bless them for trying...

It’s pretty annoying that a company would just come along and blatantly steal so much from our website. We worked on that for ages and put a lot of work and time in to designing it, and for someone to come along and rip it off leaves us with a pretty shitty feeling in the stomach.

I’ve included a few screen shots to show you how much they’ve copied us…. But if you really want to help out, just email them (sales@klubretro.com) and tell them how strongly you disapprove of their blatant plagiarism. CC me in (jay (@) mrvintage.co.nz) and the best few emails will win free tees.

Wholesale/Corporate pages. Remarkably different.

Sizing pages. Ctrl + C follwed by Ctrl +V.

Customer Service Pages.

About Us. Same axe.

Blog. Their monkey is slightly different. See.

Like.

Clean Up

On Friday we got amongst ‘The Great New Zealand Spring Clean’ to help out our brothers over at Keep New Zealand Beautiful – and to help preserve our fine country as well I guess.

I actually didn’t get to end up going because I’m such a workhorse I just couldn’t bear to be away from my work on a Friday afternoon. (aka. My people were slaves for thousands of years, ain't no way you're getting a Brother out there). But the rest of the dudes went down to mission bay to pick up some rubbish and said they felt all warm and fuzzy inside. No homo.

Andy put a little nail on the end of his stick so he didn’t have to bend over to pick stuff up. Apparently he wanted to use as little energy as he could, so his muscles didn’t get smaller.

Check out a few of the snaps Joe took.

Horatio. CSI. Yeee Booiii.

Andy using his stick.

Sleazy Hayden. Don't trust his seedy eyes.

Mel was the real thrust behind 'Clean up week'. Here she's shown picking up a shell she thought was rubbish. Bless.

Andy. He's 27 years old.

Hayden's rats tail. Ruby League!

Shop Now Open. As the picture suggests.

It’s down at 302B Great North Rd, Grey Lynn, Auckland.

We’re pretty excited that our new retail store is now FINALLY OPEN, it’s super classy, and we want all of you to come down and check it out too… so the first five people that come down and buy a t-shirt with a printed copy of this blog post will get a FREE T-SHIRT!

It’s been a long time coming moving from Parnell, and for anyone that turned up at the old Parnell Showroom looking for us, we send our deepest apologies. We’ve moved to 302B Great North Rd, and you can now come in for your pick-ups & exchanges or just for a blat on your credit card.

Great North Rd is quite a big road though, so if you have any confusion about how to get to us, this will help you find our store.

So come on down and check it out now. We put a lot of work in to it, so we’d love to hear what you guys think about it. Tell all your friends as well; they’ll no doubt think it’s great too.

Loud t-shirt Week

This week we’re doing a ‘Loud t-shirt week’ in aid of ‘Loud Shirt Day’ on the 18^th of September. The Loud shirt day is an annual appeal of The Hearing House and the Southern Cochlear Implant Paediatric Programme - two charities who are dedicated to enabling deaf children with a cochlear implant to listen and speak like their hearing peers.

I hadn’t really thought about the charity too much until we started working with them, and since then I’ve seen a news piece on the life of one of these children who was supported by this surgery and the story was compelling to say the least. What these guys do is really awesome, and it’s a more than worthy cause that we’re stoked to be helping out.

As I’ve said, it’s an awesome cause, and over the next week we’ll be running a new ‘loud shirt’ inspired t-shirt, with 15% of each sale going towards the Loud Shirt Day appeal. So keep an eye out and your credit (or debit) card handy over this next week – we’ve got some wicked designs in store for you.

Make sure you get yours in time for Loud Shirt Day on the 18th... and ensure you're not only the loudest, but also the coolest at your workplace.

Daffodil Day

It’s daffodil day today. Give generously; they’re an awesome cause – Cancer affects everyone is some way, and the Cancer Society support thousands of Kiwis every year. We released the Official Daffodil Day t-shirts on Wednesday, and with 15% of each t-shirt sale going towards the Cancer Society, if you’ve already bought one you’ve shown your support.

We’ll keep them on the site till they sell out, so get in quick. I don’t have mine yet, but I’ll definitely wear it – regardless of whether it’s after daffodil day or not – cos it’s a sweet t-shirt. And the money goes to a good cause so don’t think about it, just do it.

Rob and Andy. No Homo

The other day the gayest thing happened. Rob and Andy both turned up wearing the same t-shirt, the same coloured shorts, the same coloured shoes, the same coloured jackets, the same coloured undies, the same coloured skin, the same cheesy smile, and a similar amount of facial hair. A coincidence? I think not. I mean seriously, what are the odds?

We've moved!

As I’m sure a few of you are aware we’ve been talking about moving offices for a while now, and on Friday and over the weekend we FINALLY MOVED!

At times it was quite a painstaking process - with a few ups and downs that I’ll touch on later - but for the most part I think we were all just excited to be finally getting everything done.

We’re not the most organised bunch here at Mr Vintage, and after boxing up all the t-shirts, packing up all the warehouse shelving, and turning off all the computers, it was finally time to arrange the trucks/Vans that we were going to pick-up all of our stuff with. Only problem was, when we got to Hireace they told us we couldn’t hire anything seeing as we all had our restricted licenses. I know what you’re all thinking…. What a bunch of losers, none of them even have their full licenses. But maybe the joke's on you cos we don’t have to pay the extra to get our full license. We just don’t drive after 10 or carry passengers. lol. But it is reasonably funny that there’s 123 years between; me, Hayden, Joe, Andy and Rob and we can’t even muster a full license.

But we got past that by getting my brother and rob’s Uncle in to hire the van and truck respectively. Our problems didn’t stop there however. Maybe hiring vans out to restricted drivers are prohibited for a good reason, as hours later I had scraped the van past Robs shiny black Holden pulling in outside of work. It was a funny angle, what can I say.

Rob's car came off second best with the van after I misjudged a turn horribly.

The Van. Unscathed.

So we’re all settled in now, and we’re getting out all the orders we had to delay while we were moving (so apologies if you were in that group) and we’ll be setting up the showroom as soon as we can. We’re down on Great North Rd, and as soon as the showroom’s open we’ll let you know. In the mean-time, here's a few images from our move. Exciting eh.

There were shit-loads of boxes, but we got there in the end.

The Parnell Showroom. End of an era really.

PC Load Letter

Andy’s had a lot of trouble with his printer for a while now, and been it’s a cause of great frustration for our Muscley Oompa Loompa trainer. It always seems to have a ‘Paper-Jam’, even when there’s clearly no paper jammed in the little bugger. Earlier this year Andrew was luckily rewarded for his years of hard work and service with a brand new printer… and that meant only one thing, we had to destroy that evil machine with our bare hands (and a hammer).

Office Space: Great movie, and they really inspired us to beat the shit out of our asshole printer.

It was quite an emotional time, and in the end it really did feel like the scene from Office Space when Peter, Samir and Michael release their frustration on their ‘PC Load-Letter’ printer. If you haven’t seen it, Office Space is a fantastic movie and that scene’s a standout. We didn’t go to an isolated field though; we just went out on to Falcon Street outside our office and got to the job at hand. After the second throw to the heavens, we all ran inside like we had just broken the neighbors window playing cricket on the street. Man it feels good to be a gangster.

This is why Andy is better than us. He goes to the gym.

Impressive toss from Andy first up.

We were quite surprised it came out relatively unscathed after the fall.

It was obviously clear another attempt was necessary. So up she went for a second time.

That's more like it, the glass shattering was rather loud this time.

Andy proceeded to vent years of pent up frustration on the poor printer using his friend, the hammer.

Andy proudly holds aloft the battered carcass of his defeated opponent. Kinda like Conan the barbarian, except smiley.

Rugby and Restaurants

I asked Andy what I should blog about today, and he said I should just blog about what I know, rugby. He was taking the piss, as no one else in the office likes rugby at all. But I thought I might as well.

I seen all this kafuffle lately with some fight at a schoolboy rugby game between Kelston and Auckland Grammar School. They are making a bigger deal out of it than they need to really, fights happen, and brawls happen in rugby. No big deal, dry your eyes Murray Deaker. I might call him actually and say, “Muwwy, two things; you’re a dick mate, go back to your Team NZ BlackHeart campaign”. Probably won’t though. I’m a man of many intentions and little action. But I did go to Auckland Grammar School, making me a Grammar Old Boy I suppose – and I can assure you that Grammar didn’t start it. It was all Kelston Boys High. lol.

Rugby Brawling. That's fine.

One more thing, I went to dinner the other night with my special lady friend at this Greek restaurant Plato's in Ponsonby. Wouldn’t go there again. It’s a Greek restaurant, Greek themed, Greek menu…. You get the idea. So we get in there, sit down at our table, and then they start blasting the music. Now I’m all for music at a restaurant sure, but they proceeded to play the entire bloody Feelers album. It’s a Greek restaurant; play some Greek music for shits sake. And turn it the hell down so it’s not so obtrusive. Nothing more off-putting than hearing James Reid screaming down your ears while your trying to enjoy a Greek Moussaka! And then their EFTPOS didn’t work. They couldn’t quite figure out why. It’s because their phone line is disconnected – exactly the reason I couldn’t make a booking by phone you shmucks.

Plato's in Ponsonby: Wouldn't go there if I was you. Unless you really like the Feelers and paying in cash only.

Beckham wears GNK Sketch!

Check out this sweet picture that Mel spotted in the NZ Women’s Weekly. She claims she was just browsing and never reads the magazine, but we know she loves shows like Gossip Girl and Ugly Betty. Back to the photo though, there’s David Beckham’s little boy Brooklyn wearing our ‘Goodnight Kiwi Sketch’ t-shirt. Whoever has my dream job of writing the captions for NZ Women’s Weekly has speculated that David may have picked it up while on his last trip to NZ, but we know the inside scoop…. We gave a bunch of t-shirts to Becks’ family and the rest of the LA Galaxy team when they were over last year for their exhibition match against the Wellington Phoenix. How did we get them to Mr Beckham? I think Andy and Rob met him at the ‘Pony Club’ one night out; they were pretty much part of the furniture around that place back then. lol

Brooklyn's a Kiwi Kid. Well he's not but he's got one of our 'GNK Sketch' tees.

The Big Week begins

This week is a very big week – not because Flavor Flav has some very important decisions to make (although he does, and they are in fact very important) – we’re finally moving premises this weekend. Yeah, it’s been a long time coming I know, but we had to paint everything and we’re not professional painters. Painting was quite fun though; we’d sink a few beers, and it kind of felt like the scene from ‘Shawshank Redemption’ when they have the cold brewskies on the roof. I also put some ‘war paint’ on my face, which was fun; it made me look like a real warrior. Sadly we don’t have any pictures documenting our painting efforts, so I’ve added this picture of Flavor Flav.

Flavor Flav: He's such a little cutie-pie.

Blogging

I see that 2 Degrees have now launched, and I’ve got to say that I’m pretty impressed with their whole marketing campaign and launch…. Using Rhys Darby in the campaign is like fishing with dynamite – the guy’s more bankable than Will Smith. And their plans seem pretty sweet too, Mel has got herself a SIM card, so it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out – I’m more than interested in jumping ship.

Insert 'Giant Logo' gag here.

To make this blog more of a blog, I thought I’d add a sweet picture for you to look at.

Cute eh. Look how small it is.

Telethon Returns...

Watched some of that Telethon this weekend. Saw that they raised almost $2 million, which is cool, it’s going to a good cause and that’s the main thing. Seems like the young kids really got in to it, and so too did a whole bunch of B-Grade celebrities – just like the old times really. Good shit. Apart from Brooke-Howard Smith, that guy needs to stop yelling so much and chill the hell out. And Toni Marsh (bless her soul) and Hamish McKay aren’t a good team, they were like a couple of virgins bumbling their way about on their honeymoon night – very excited, great enthusiasm, but little end product. Other than that it was a wicked event, and I actually stayed up pretty late watching it. I didn’t get around to building a fort though; I got a dead leg from football and my movement was severely restricted.

Raised a whole bunch of money for Kiwi Kids. Good on ya NZ.

We’re stepping shit up on the facebook fan page now too; we’ve decided to do daily giveaways to our facebook mates, so get amongst that if you haven’t already. I think I’ll probably struggle to come up with lots of little trivia questions by myself, so Andy will prove a helpful ally there. He knows all sorts of crap about everything. He also loves watching documentaries. We may just do it on Twitter also, but I’m not sure the Twitter community would appreciate all the Tweets – they’re more in to networking and ‘Tweet-Ups’, which is cool but it’s just not always for us so much.

Add us on facebook, we're giving away a tee every day.

Model Interviews

I was reading this American t-shirt companies blog the other day, and they had all these ‘model interviews’ on there… just a few words with the models that you see on the site all the time, and it was quite interesting that I was interested in it, usually I’d just look at the pictures. So I think we’ll do some interviews with our models on the blog – that’ll be one to look forward to. Not sure what we’ll ask them though, if you’ve gots any ideas let us know.

Car-Park Twat

Last Friday this Johnson (extremely under-utilised term for penis) parked right in front of our showroom door from about mid-day to after we left work. We could barely get out the door! Hayden kept going on about it being a fire hazard, but it was more the principle of it all. In any case, I just don’t understand what would make someone think that it’s a park; you can’t park in front of a door, that’s ludicrous. Anyway, we wanted to get them towed, but turns out it’s a council issue, and you know they only come with tickets when you don’t want them to. So the bugger got let off the hook. Well, not quite, we did draw some Johnsons (I know, you get it, I like using the name Johnson instead of dick) on the back of his car in the dust. That’s worse than getting towed. Don’t mess with us.

yeah, that's our showroom door. you can't park there. you're a dick mate.



only when we were about to nip up to Hollywood to get a Steak & Cheese did we notice that we could barely get out of the door.



look, that's scandalous that is.