Websites and Brand Perception

If you’ve been following us on Facebook and Twitter (you are following us right?) you’ll have seen we updated the our website.  We’ve been getting plenty of good reactions from fans and it made me realise how important a website is to the perception of a brand.  So for people in a similar position to us here a few tips from my experience …

Get the colours right

Colours are so important to perception in ways that I don’t even fully understand yet!  What I do know is that even I get a different and better feel looking at our new site than the old.
Think about how you want people to feel when they look at your site.  This isn’t just about you favourite colours but about what each one represents and how that relates to your brand.
I’m not even going to get into colour theory because I’d be way out of my depth.  However, you might want to take a look at helpful article from Smashing Magazine we used to get us to think about this.

Show, don’t tell

If you’re selling something, visitors should be able to go on the website and immediately see what you sell.  Don’t make people work for it, because you usually only have a few second before they go back to Facebook so don’t waste time!
If you didn’t know about us, it wasn’t easy to tell what we did looking at our old site.  There’s no question now: T-Shirts (OK, we do hoodies to but stick with me here I’m trying to make a point).
Pictures help in a major way as they let people see your product in action and let people get a better idea of what you are about.  Hopefully they like it and look deeper.i.e. start browsing your shop.

Let the world know!

Don’t just keep it to yourself, tell the world.  There’s always a danger of being blind to your creation’s faults,  but your site can always be improved so be on the look out for opportunities to do just that.  It is so important to get feedback from people who have had nothing to do with the development.
It never ceases to amaze me how someone can point out something that I had been staring at for ages, but never even noticed.  Plus,  getting people involved engages your audience and makes them feel part of the process, which is a good thing.

And on that note…What do you think of the new site?  How important is the website to a brand?  Let us know your thoughts here or on our Facebook page.
Don’t forget we also have to new tees ninjastar and superstar, available now in male and female.  Check them out!

New Site and New Tees This Week

It’s been a hard few weeks, but we’ve been hard at work getting out an all new website featuring the pictures from our photoshoot.  We think it looks great and you’ll get to see it over the weekend.  Along with that, we’ve got two new tees from a new theme.  Here’s a preview:

We’ve had a good reaction so far and hopefully you will like them too, we’d love to know what you think.  They’ll be available as soon as the new site is up on Friday…finger crossed!

What else is coming up for mayamada?  Well we’ll be at StreetFest on the 30th of May checking out all London has to offer in street culture.  We’re looking forward to meeting some interesting people and seeing the mix of talents and styles at the event.  Look forward to lots of pictures and video from us there.

Check out these pictures and video from past events:


First Image: PHOTOGRAPHY Yoshitaka Kono
Second Image:PHOTOGRAPHY SUELAN & YOSHITAKA KONO

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyTxLFWC8ec

Have you been before?  Are you going to this years event?  Let us know on our Facebook page.

Just Start Running

I stumbled across this presentation via the How To Start A Clothing Company blog.  It features Jeffrey Kalmikoff and Jake Nickell, co-founders of Threadless.  They talk about how they turned a hobby into a multimillion dollar business and more importantly (for me at least), a leader in their market.  Only a few companies are able to dictate trends in it’s market and when it comes to crowd sourcing t-shirt designs, Threadless are the go to guys.

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What really struck me was the way they approached their business in the initial stages.  When I first came across Threadless, I never really thought of how it got started.  I would have thought that for a company so big, there much have been some corporate business plan indicate how they were going to utilise crowd sourcing to maximise profits or something like that, but apparently not.  It was simply two guys doing something they loved.  The most important thing I took from this is that they just started doing something.  That’s a really important lessen for me.  If you want to go somewhere, just start running.  Don’t get caught up in how things could turn out or what happens if…just start doing it.  You never know what a start could lead to.

Night and Day

As you may have noticed if you’re a fan on our facebook page, we spent some time over the weekend at a gig headlined by the Luminaires band.  The plan was to get the word out about ourselves and try and sell some tees, it also ended up being a lesson in the difference between knowing when to sell and when to promote.

Here are two things we learnt from the night.

Know the audience

Although we got to talking with a a few members of the crowd, most where distracted by a notion that they were here to see a band and drink.  Buying something that doesn’t come in a shot glass doesn’t usually come into the equation at that time of night (time to rethink our packaging maybe?).  People just want to have fun, anything else is a distraction.  Try selling a t-shirt to these guys:

Ok, it wasn’t exactly like that but you get the idea.  Talking to people about the brand is much more effective in a situation like this.  People are much more approachable and will listen.  Have a few business cards handy and you can get yourself a  bunch of interested people checking you out.

Know the environment

If you are going to set up at an event, try and get an idea of the of the place before you go.  This could mean visiting the day before, asking someone who has been to the event…or casing the joint in the dead of night.  Whatever works for you.

The point is to know what to expect.  The one thing that bcome obvious when we arrived was the noise, we didn’t realise we’d be so close to the noise!  It makes it difficult to sell to someone when hand gestures are the best way to communicate.  We really need a t-shirt selling sign language for situations like these…

Despite this, we did get positive reactions from everyone we spoke to in between sound checks and performances and some good bands fo free which isn’t too bad.

The way I see it, daylight is best for selling, the night is better left to promoting…and maybe a spot of crowd surfing.

Mayamada in the Wild

We recently got word that one of our t-shirts made an appearance out and about.  Our friend Shaun from the Luminaires was sporting a design from the Styles range at a gig a few weeks ago.  Guess which one Shuan is…

And guys, I think it’s also worth noting the pulling power of a mayamada tee, just saying…

We’ll be joing the guys in person at an upcoming gig this saturday so stop by for some music (£5 entry with the flyer in the link) and if you want to get your hands on a mayamada tee, we’ll have you covered with a selection of tees from our shop at a discounted rate of £15!

See you there.

A Day Out In London

With all that’s been going on I almost for got to let you all know about our photoshoot!

We went around London with our photographer who took some great photos with her digital camera.  She even brought along a real film camera and a Polaroid!

We hadn’t figured out how to control the weather so it was left up to chance…it didn’t started well.  I was drenched waiting for everyone to arrive.  But after that, plain sailing.  On with the photoshoot!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFleZr8OFOg

We started right in front of the London Eye, navigating all the tourists for our first few shots.

This was a fast paced shoot so we had no time to stop before moving on to Trafalgar Square…

We attracted a bit of attention around the Square.  We even had passers by stop and take pictures with some of the models.

And finally we end up at Hyde park for the last shots of the day.


Oh and before I forget, there is a cafe/restaurant place in the park that  does a beautiful banana muffin.  It was delicious and capped off a great day.

I was exhausted at the end of the day and I wasn’t even taking any pictures or modelling so I can’t imagine what the other guys felt like.  Big thanks to all those involved.

Check out our facebook page for more pictures to come.

Ryan Leslie Talenthouse Competition

Remember our friends Luminaires from a few post ago?  Yesterday, one of the members (Skilaz) entered a worldwide competition to win a chance to work with producer and entrepreneur Ryan Leslie.

So the deal is…actually, let’s just jump straight to the point.  Check out the video and vote for Skilaz to show your support.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzUBEPv1TT0

The video which also features another friend of ours A.Sharn Dialekt.  These two made up the sing ‘Too Criss’ in a few hours just for this competition.  An amazing effort if you ask me.  Considering it takes Dr Dre over a decade just to make an album, I think these guys will be really big soon.  Jump on the bandwagon now and in 5 years you’ll be able to say ‘I knew them before they blew up’.

Look out for more on these guys at mayamda in the coming months.

Vote Now!  It’s free and all you have to do is text ‘ Z7RHPT‘ to +49 177 178 1208.

A London Tour

2010 is looking like it will be a busy year for us.  We’ve had a good reaction from people after launching the site earlier in the year and we’re working on some new designs to release in the weeks leading up to summer.  In the more immediate future though we have a photoshoot to organise!

We’ll be taking a selection of our tees and taking pictures across London.  It’s the first time we’ve done something like this and we are really looking forward to it!  Keep an eye out for a ton of pictures and video from the event on the 27th of February.  If you are in the area on the day and would like to feature in of our videos, follow us on Twitter, we’ll be tweeting the whole day as we move about.

Introducing Luminaires

I was thinking today, what good is a blog if you can’t use it to promote your friends?  That ‘s why I’m taking the opportunity to give a shout out to some friends called Luminaires.  They are a new band but have been doing gigs across London for some time and were recently featured on the BBC’s London Calling.

This is a big step for them and will hopefully lead to bigger things; more gigs, a recording deal…groupies.  All the things that let you know you’ve made it.

They are also working on making music videos.  You can check out the making of video for ‘Solid Gold’ below.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJaNgL2qyKA