There are some things we are really good at. We know it, you know it. Sourcing the coolest magazines and presenting them to you in an attractive way is just one of these things.

Yet, we are the first to admit that there are some things we are really crap at. Selling T-shirts online is one of these.

We have one of the best T-shirt ranges in Australia. This comes from the mouth of Eddie Zammit, a guy who lives and breathes T-shirts, and who is also the person behind T-world: The Journal of T-shirt Culture. Eddie knows virtually every brand in the T-Shirt world, and salivates when talking about the T-shirt range that we have managed to assemble at mag nation. Yet most of you probably didn’t even realise that we had this offering.

Put aside the physical retail and marketing challenge of selling T-Shirts. We are getting better at the first and will start on the second only once we are really happy with our physical set up. However, this is still only relevant to you if you are in Melbourne or Auckland (yes – we are now adding some Ts into Ponsonby). Given the combination of niche brands we have and the demand for each of these brands, we should be creaming it.

And yet, we are not. Take one look at how we have displayed T-shirts on our website and you will see why. It just looks bad.

This is by no means a reflection on our website developers. They did a brilliant job based on what we specified. Our problem was that we approached T-shirts from what we knew best… mags. Bomp Bow (that’s an attempted spelling of that “you lose” sound from Family Fued).

The images are way too small. The photography of the T-shirts is crap (I can say that because I took the photos), and the functionality is lacking. No T-shirt sizing guides. Only one image per tee. We could go on.

I am determined that we do well with T-shirts. We think it really fits in with our increased focus on popular design culture. We don’t want to compete with the “design it yourself” sites that are all about creating a T-shirt community for designers. We simply want to present really niche T-shirts labels alongside the other niche design and pop culture products that we love.

We have however learned a very valuable lesson through T-shirts. Sounds obvious, but if you are going to do something, don’t just do it well, but make sure it is world class. In the online world, nothing else cuts it given the global choice we are now faced with. And this is what we are now trying to do – be world class. We hope that in around 6 weeks’ time we will be able to look at our online T-shirt capabilities with the same pride as with other parts of our business.