All through the year we get asked a LOT of different questions about Tossa De Bar Brand, what we do, how we do, and why we do it. So here are some answers and thoughts to a few of the questions we get asked the most...
#1 Our Prices: The MOST common question we get is "Why are our shirts so cheap?"
"Cheap" No...Inexpensive, Yes.
The founding idea of Tossa De Bar was to create something unique and inclusive, for all people. We want our shirts to be available to everyone...no matter their economic status in the moment...and for nobody to ever have to feel like they aren't included. We never want anyone to walk away with that feeling that they'd really like to have one of our shirts, but it's just out of reach. Too many times in life, that is the case...we've felt it too, and it sucks. We never want that for Tossa De Bar. We are an inclusive Brand, so we try keep our price at just the edge of operating cost, and easily affordable to everyone. As a true "People's Brand", it was our goal over the years to keep the same consistent price...even as the yearly costs for materials continued to rise. In fact, in 2021, for the first time ever, we had no choice but to raise the price of our Official Season shirts (for the first time in 7 years!) because at the current price we were just basically paying to give away t-shirts at a loss. Still...a price change of only 3€ after 7 years...we're really proud of that!
Unfortunately, a side effect of this ideal is quite often people associating "cost with quality". Being in a tourism based village, we've had many people not familiar with our brand, assume our shirts are of the same quality and manufacture as the cheaply sold souvenir shirts at many of the tourist shops. The reality is, despite our goal of creating a brand that is made for, and easily obtainable for everyone...our shirts are equal to and even ABOVE the quality of the common popular "name" brands. Our shirts are made from durable and long lasting medium weight 100% cotton, super soft and comfortable with high quality weave and stitching. Also, we were very insistant on chosing a base brand that is certified BEYOND international standards of textile industry regulations for ethical fair trade manufacturing processes in treatment of workers, as well as low ecologic and environmental impact. In our packaging, we always try to avoid the use plastic. All of this means you can wear your shirt and support our brand guilt free and knowing that together we are part of the solution, and not the problem!
Finally, our shirts are very small run, truly one of a kind designs, and actually hand printed by us. This takes a LOT of time. Aside from the weeks and hours in creating what we hope will be a great design that people will love, the manual set-up and actual print time is beyond what most people could even imagine. Typically, we only make around 500 Limited Edition shirts per year...making them both collectable and exclusive...and they are not mass marketed in shops. They are made, and sold by the designer (us!) and are very limited runs. After the end of each Season, the screens are completely erased to then be re-used for the next year's design, and the old year's design is never to be made again. It's our little tradition, and we believe that by doing this, every new shirt carries the spirit and "soul" of all the shirts that came before!
In actuality, all of this puts our shirts in the category of brands easily selling in the 30-40€ range. So in our specific situation, "cost equals quality" is far from the case. Anyone familiar with textiles, knows that certified and high standard garments come at much higher premium costs...often double and triple the price for just the base, unprinted shirt.
So, if we are not sacrificing quality to keep our price affordable to everyone...what ARE we sacrificing?
Profit.
#2 The Shirt Colors
Many people ask about the colors we choose to make our Limited Edition Season shirts. We even get requests for different colors. There's actually a great reason for the specific colors we choose, all it all goes back to #1 above (we'll be returning to this a lot!) Tossa De Bar Brand is a shirt of the people. And, quite often those people include many of your favorite workers, barmen(women), and wait staff at your favorite village locals. With long days at the plantxa or behind the bar, grease and spilled drinks will ruin a shirt or hoodie in a matter of hours. So with them in mind, we try to choose more neutral and darker colors, that blend in and hide the stains!
Over the years, we've had a few requests...and even have had some of our own cool ideas for great designs with brighter colors. But not everyone is a "yellow" or "bright red" type of person, so we use very neutral colors that everyone can wear and that go great with just about any style or outfit. Whether kicking around the town in shorts on a hot day, or dressing "fast casual" for evening cocktails on a terrace...our shirts look good!
#3 The Print Designs: Perfectly...Imperfect!
Again, we create and hand print our own designs. And we are very lucky to have a wonderful relationship of collaboration and input with our great friends at local seriography studio KinkPrint Tossa de Mar. Their level of quality textile print is un-equalled. But if you ever really take time to notice and look close, you can find print variances in every shirt we make. Slight color differences, small flaws or imperfections...are what make every shirt unique. It's how you know it is truly made by hand. Sometimes, it can be as simple as conditions of the day or time we print..heat, humidity, how the inks react. We actually don't even try to correct it...we like it that way!
While we strive for the best QUALITY and consistency in prints, we also embrace the differences. Just like the People they are made for, our shirts are not a mass produced factory product in a controlled environment...where 1 million shirts are identically the same and indestinguishable. So there will be unique variances and differences in every run!
#4 Language: Say What?
This is one of our most difficult ones...and we really still struggle with this one. While we are a Tossa Brand...and our pride in promoting the culture of the village is the inspiration behind everything we do, our core idea is to be universal and again inclusive to everyone who visits or lives in the village. We are international, reaching out across the globe. Our shirts are worn in (and have been shipped to!) 3 continents and over 23 countries! From Moscow to Sweden to Argentina to California...even the tiny Isle if Man! And that's just the ones we can remember. We are Tossa De Bar. One World!
Did you know that originally, in our first year, we published everything in FIVE languages?! While that was not only an extraordinary amount of time and work, it made our social media long and cumbersome. Boring. Nobody wants to see long posts that take up 3 pages of scrolling just to find their language...plus the risk of so much being lost in translation and cultural differences. So in the end, we enabled the "translate" option on our page, and decided on English as the primary language, as it is currently the most universal international language currently in use (we still love to throw in a little Catalan when we can!). Plus, with over 85% of daily media consumed via mobile, most users have their google translate set to automatic. (Hopefully you do too!)
#6 Why an Online Boutique only?
Actually, very simple: Because we like it that way! We don't keep a very minimum of stock. Other than a very small inventory of our yearly Limited Edition Season shirts to keep on hand at select bars, every shirt or hoodie ordered is made SPECIALLY for you. We love to get to know your names...learn where you come from...and we like to build a very personal relationship with who each customer is. When you make your order, we do our best to try to print, ship and deliver as quick as possible. And when you recieve your shirt...that shirt was made for YOU...lined up to print and specifically tagged with YOUR name on it. Pretty cool!
#7 But Why Not Sell at Boutiques, Too?
Too large, impersonal, expensive, and most of all, too detached from the YOU!. Creating a large number of shirts to supply inventory to shops, would not only significantly raise the price of our shirts (remember #1), but would require large quantities of shirts...making them more "generic". Our idea was never to "flood the market" with just another t-shirt, that loses it's significance and soul. We want to get to know everyone who wears and supports our brand...
#8 Your Website Sucks. (That hurts our feelings. Yeah, it kinda does...but we are doing our best!)
Basically, Amazon broke the f@cking internet. We are not Amazon. Unfortunately, Amazon and the other corporate eCommerce giants set such a precedent of seemless and thoughtless purchasing, that it is impossible to equal or replicate. They set a standard that has now become the expectation of all online commerce experiences. Their whole business model is based on making it so effortless and seemless to buy, that you get lost and detached from the concept of money and impulsively continue to purchase. Ours obviously isn't. They have billions to spend on this. We, obviously don't.
Large and super integrated online commerce sites are expensive. They are created for mass transactions of millions per day, fueled by the core idea of invasive gathering of your personal data, tracking your lifestyle and browsing habits, and influencing your preferences. This is against the foundation of everything Tossa De Bar is built on, and probably the reason we most likely will not be building any rockets or taking tourist trips into outer-space anytime in the near future. We are, and always be, the "little guys"...among the Outlaws of ecommerce, seriously out-gunned at the internet OK Corral. We manage and maintain our online boutique ourselves...and while it's a more simplified shop, still requires a lot of time and attention. Remember...we aren't IT or online commerce experts...we're shirt brand designers, and even a small eshop like ours is pretty complicated to integrate. Just the functionality and differences between our web shop platform and the facebook market shop on our page are a Machiavellian nightmare in creativity to match up together...so for the best all around experience, we keep it simple.
#9 Why No Insta, Twitter, or TikTok?
We'd rather be Social Drinking than Social Media-ing.
Truthfully, we hate social media. We f@cking HATE it. Maintaining a brand social media is a full time job in itself...and it's draining. Trying to influence and control everything from behind a screen defeats the core idea of a brand celebrating meeting and relationships. Behind the scenes it's constant time and energy fighting and trying to out-smart constantly changing algorithms to try stay visible. Tracking "likes", views, shares...just to see creative time, effort and hard work bumped off and pushed to the back by viral posts from "content factory" pages, endless page suggestions from said content factories, heavily paid for corporate junk product ads, and mindless information "fishing" pages. Analyzing data...hours and hours of reading and analyzing data. Stress over post engagements or effectiveness. Trying to sync up different parameters and abilities across multiple different platforms...plus constant glitches and general functionality problems. We'd rather spend more time creating and getting to know people in real life, than on social media. So, instead of fighting for realestate and clogging your news feed with pointless posts that will be ignored (or worse, bumping important things from your news feed, like photos of Grandma's cat or what your friend had for dinner on their apparent first time they've ever eaten at a restaurant), we'd simply prefer not to post at all. Behind the scenes, every large brand, product and influencer has a staff dedicated to full time social media, and spend 90% of the time just creating façades of (mis-leading) content and fabricated emotions, trying to beat algorythms and track engagement data...all in an attempt to stay relevant and on top. Next up, the constant alerts, notifications and email-clogging notices from a hundred different Apps. All day....all NIGHT. When that becomes the focus....we've lost the idea of what our brand is founded on...people, community and relationships. So, just one platform...Facebook...is enough for us!
Our intent was never and never will be, to put our focus on tricks to build up empty or pointless followers...our idea has always been to let our community grow organically with people who really are interested, share our passion, and engage. To share information, and network a bridge to bring like minded people with a love of our village together. Believe it or not, we actually know or have met nearly every follower on our page! How cool is that!!
#10 We skipped #5...did you notice? We're totally sh*t at numbers...
Hopefully these answer some of the burning questions you've been dying to ask, and everyone can sleep better and satisfied tonight!
As always, we want to say thank you again for everyone's support and joining together to make one of the world's most awesome communities. We love what we do, and are so proud of how far we have come in this journey. After the conditions and hardships of the last two years, we have more passion than ever...
Salut i Força!