Stand up and be counted

Considering the massive conflicting climate of “homosexual” anti-marriage hysteria mixed with the total embracing of gay style sensibilities that seems to be sweeping our country, I’ve decided to blog about the business I own called Qwear Gear. When first deciding to blog I thought maybe I would keep the business out of it. I’ve since decided it might be mildly interesting to others as well. Of course I could be wrong and instead it could possibly bore you to tears (yet to be determined). You can visit our website at: http://www.qweargear.net

I live the life of a proclaimed, very lackluster undercover agent of sorts. During the day I work at a non-profit as a marketing and communications manager (which amounts to a glorified graphic designer, yawn). At night I morph into the almighty alternative lifestyle goddess and owner of Qwear Gear.

Qwear Gear is one of the largest, all original lines of Alternative Lifestyle (gay, lesbian, bi, trans, drag queens, drag kings, bears, pride, leather, misc. other fetishes) “stuff” around. I basically started out in 2000 with a few designs for funny t-shirts (mainly designed to amuse myself), selling on eBay. I’ll try to post some of the first designs (all since retired) if I can dig them out of the archives.

Here’s the description of Qwear Gear from one of our eBay “About Us” pages:

"Greetings... from the parallel universe where all are welcome, no matter race, creed, religion, body size OR sexual orientation!

The Tiny Mad Idea...
One day while walking down a non-descript street, I came across the idea in my head of creating a line of GLBT T-shirts. Like stepping on a piece of misplaced bubble gum on a hot sidewalk in July, the idea just stuck with me. Qwear Gear by Sublime Design was born, and I've been doing it ever since... My problem was, I had too many design ideas that covered a large variety of lifestyles and fetishes. I didn't think I would ever find a way to get them all out of my head, and up for sale, to a large enough market, much less others who would understand and enjoy my humor. Guess I was wrong! Ebay has provided a wonderful platform for reaching millions of people who not only got my humor, but also wanted to own a piece of it for themselves. I have been a successful seller for almost four years now. Thanks for looking, and as always...enjoy!"


Then something astounding happened: Other people started buying them! So, I would list more, and other people bought those. On and on it went, and slowly I built up a huge cache of designs, expanding into more and more categories of lifestyles. Today, I have a catalog of well over 500 designs to choose from and lots ‘o stuff the designs can be put on and sold (t-shirts, clocks, stickers, magnets, etc). I still do a fair amount of eBay, but my main focus over the last two years has become selling my products wholesale for others to retail. One of my goals is to open my own store within the next six months or so. We are going to the southern part of Oblivion on June 4th to meet with a realtor and see some properties. I’ll keep you posted….