So in some ways, yeah, it was special and identifiable. You know, in the future we might do something like, a denim jacket or flannel shirt or something, and you only can get it for a limited time. And it would be, you know, kind of a special thing. Marshall Atkinson You’ve done so many of these over the years. So somebody who maybe they’re just brand new to the business, let alone like doing stuff for causes... what were some lessons that you’ve learned or something along the way and that can help somebody out if they’re starting? Rick Roth Well, there really are some benefits. One that I really didn’t figure at first, but you can get some much better employees sometimes when they know you’re do things like this, you know, I’m not the only one that cares about what happens on this planet. And I’ve had, I had one of my best managers ever. And she said that she would not have worked probably the last two or three years that she worked, except for the causes that we did work for. That was a really important part of her job and she was proud to work here because of that. Another thing is that a lot of times we have free rein to do a little more. So we’re going to put it as a shirt or cause, and my designers have a little more free rein instead of taking somebody else’s logo. And, you know, doing something very specific, you know, we made a shirt for people and, you know, we put our heart and soul into it and had a little more freedom; you know? So my artists like working on that. Sometimes, when the organization doesn’t have any money and gets rid of something you have put up, they really just need some shirts. We sometimes take an assortment of things that we have leftover and, you know, they get a deal and we get rid of them and that’s a benefit mostly, you know, it’s been more like proud of what we do. I think it’s been more than a financial benefit. But you know, goodwill towards a company is pretty important. So if you’re just starting out and you do some things for people in the community, they’re going to notice, and people are going to feel better about your company than they might otherwise. And, you know, corporations spend a lot of money trying to get people to have a good attitude towards your company. Marshall Atkinson So do you put your logo on their design? How do they know you were associated with the garment? Rick Roth You know, I usually prefer actually that it’s in the other materials. And then on the shirt, you have to be careful about that. A lot of times I don’t want it sometimes, you know, it just gets other people trying to ask him for free shirts or whatever. Although, you know, I kind of put an answer to that and I just tell people that call me that no, I did some shirts. For one particular cause, and they want me to do them. And I just say, “You know what? We really get involved when we work on something, and we only have a certain number of places, and we really work hard with them, and we care about it a lot and we get deeper into their cause.” And so, we can’t just willy-nilly do stuff for everyone. We have our causes that we really put our effort into it already.
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