Looking Ahead to 2010 (Shirts)

Last Thursday, I joined Brodie McClain and Larry Lucas for our year-end board meeting. Our primary focus was to come up with an action plan for 2010 that would help ensure Abort73’s financial viability after a rather difficult economic year. After much prayer and deliberation, we arrived at a number of critical decisions which I believe will help us be better stewards of all God has blessed us with. All of those decisions will be disclosed in the weeks to come. For now, I want to highlight the portion of our summary document that deals with T-shirt sales:   

When it comes to Abort73 T-shirts, volume has always been our primary objective. Making money was never the issue. We wanted to get as many T-shirts out the door as possible – by selling them at an absolute bare minimum and often selling them at a loss. Four years later, it has become apparent that our T-shirt model must now evolve. Though sales have increased dramatically each year, our bottom line has not. As a result, our expectation for 2010 is to sell less shirts but to more carefully price them – ensuring that they become self-sustaining and do not continue to hamstring our broader ministry operations by consuming so much of our cash reserve. We will carry fewer quantities of each shirt, which will increase the per-shirt production cost shirt but will significantly limit the amount of cash tied up in inventory. We will cap our on-hand inventory at 2,000 shirts, so that at any given time, we will not have more than 2,000 shirts in stock (currently we have more than 4,300 shirts in stock). We accept the fact that certain designs may be sold out for extended periods of time.

For 2009, we have sold an average of 861 shirts per month on the website. Our 2010 target will be 800 shirts a month. The price structure will be set so as to make $4 for every shirt ordered. For now, we’ll assume that we can sell 80% of our shirts at full price. The other 20% may have to be sold at cost or given away. That means if we order 100 shirts, our $400 net profit will actually be tied to just eighty shirts. If 100 shirts cost us $6 each, then selling 80 shirts at $12.50 would yield a $4 net profit for each shirt ordered. If we can sell all the shirts at full price, all the better, but we’ll price them so that our profit margin is only dependent upon selling 80% of the shirts ordered. In order to maintain a fixed T-shirt price across our line, the price will be determined based on the cost of our most expensive shirts to produce. Where comparable colors are available, we may substitute Tultex shirts for American Apparel – as a means of keeping the per shirt price down. At this point, $12 - $14 is the likely T-shirt price for 2010. Selling 9,600 shirts for the year, with a net profit of $4 per shirt, would yield $38,400. Roughly $6,000 will go to pay for a new quarter-time position to oversee all aspects of sales and order fulfillment. The balance will be invested towards the purchase of more shirts and towards advertising on Facebook or in print.

Selling 800 shirts a month at $12 yields $9600. Of that…

$500 will go to salary

$450 will go to credit card fees

$300 will go to shipping supplies (bags, brochures, labels, ink)

$5600 will go to replace shirts sold

$1750 will go to advertising

$1000 will go back into general ministry fund

Our goal will be to introduce a new design every 2 months – to keep the product line fresh and keep people coming back.

We will keep an eye on the viability of this model over the next two years, with an eye towards the possible elimination of shirt sales altogether if it continues to disproportionately consume resources.

Abort73.com is what first opened my eyes to abortion. I’ve been raised to know that it’s wrong… bu

It just comfirmed to me that abortion is horible! My mom got pregnant with me when she was 17 and sh

Opening the Door to Adoption by Closing the Door to Abortion

Next February, Abort73 has been given the opportunity to participate in Southern Seminary's Adopting for Life conference. Because Abort73 is not a traditional adoption ministry, I wrote following to help explain the connection. Pending approval, this will be included in the conference program:

As you stop by the various exhibit tables this weekend, at least one of them might seem an odd fit. Adopting for Life is a conference to celebrate adoption, but Abort73 is not an adoption ministry – at least not in the traditional sense. For those of you who don't know, Abort73.com is a website that seeks to comprehensively educate people about abortion – on the premise that the more someone knows about abortion, the less likely they are to have one, recommend one, or support one as a matter of public policy. Abort73 exists because a general understanding of abortion does not exist.

Lest you miss the connection, here it is. Adoption and abortion are inextricably linked. In individual cases, they're mutually exclusive. When abortion happens, adoption cannot happen. And when adoption happens, you can rest assured that abortion did not happen. In America today, the battle between abortion and adoption is being won by abortion – in a landslide. The National Council for Adoption (NCFA) reports in their 2007 Factbook (IV) that for every 1,000 live births, there are 5.5 adoptions and 326.5 abortions (30). Though the NCFA takes no official position on abortion, they state in Factbook III that the number one barrier to adoption is the "almost exclusive focus on abortion as the preferred option when an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy occurs" (557). Domestically speaking, the biggest obstacle towards placing children for adoption is not a lack of adoptive parents; it's a lack of adoptable babies. If abortion-vulnerable women aren't first convinced not to abort, it makes little difference how many couples there are waiting to adopt.

Therefore, reshaping the way culture thinks about abortion may be the single most-effective way to increase the total number of adoptions. Women don't abort because they think no one will adopt their baby. They abort because they view adoption as a fate worse than abortion. It's tragically common to hear girls who have no problem justifying abortion say things like, "I could never give my child up for adoption!" In their minds, adoption is abandonment – the abandonment of a visible, huggable, kissable baby. Abortion on the other hand is mere elimination – the elimination of an abstract, unseen, pre-baby. As long as this illusion is maintained, it's no wonder that adoption is seen as the crueler of the two choices. But when abortion is seen and understood for what it really is, the equation flips. It becomes impossible to maintain that abortion is the more loving choice – as so many abortion-ignorant men and women do today.

To put it simply, for the promotion of adoption to be broadly effective, it must be accompanied by the exposure of abortion. That doesn't mean that individual adoption ministries should change their focus, but it does mean that the collective body of Christ should be in the business of boldly, creatively, and proactively exposing the darkness of abortion. If there is a tendency for the church to focus more on abortion-alternatives than on abortion itself, it likely owes to the fact that promoting adoption is relatively safe. Exposing abortion is not. Even Planned Parenthood gives tacit support to adoption, but when the topic turns to abortion, things can get ugly. There is a natural inclination in nearly all of us to steer clear of the abortion issue in favor of more pleasant fare. Combatting abortion is awkward, unpleasant, and exposes you to all sorts of verbal abuse.

As a result, most churches remain publicly silent about abortion – the cost of speaking out is too high. Those that do make its elimination a priority focus thier support almost exclusively on Crisis Pregnancy Clinics (CPCs). These clinics provide vital services, but they all face the same problem. In America today, most girls don't want help getting through a crisis pregnancy; they want help getting out of it. Until public perception shifts, CPCs will remain largely vacant while pregnant girls continue to flood the offices of Planned Parenthood – where (according to their 2008 annual report) only one adoption is referred for every 62 abortions!

All that to say, as you consider the glorious, biblical, God-exalting act of adoption, don't forget about the monster lurking in the shadows. And as you consider how best to combat abortion (this great enemy of adoption), remember that the path of least resistance is often the path of least reward. Publicly standing against abortion will invariably step on some toes, but so long as the church fails to speak out against the atrocity of child sacrifice, the myriad blessings of widespread adoption will never see the light of day.

No Regrets

Given a Choice, They’d Want a Chance.

End the Ignorance

Educate Yourself. Educate Your World.

Educate Yourself. Educate Your World.

Speak for the Weak

Speak for the Weak

Love the Least (A Lot)

Yay for Kids

Slogans Prove Nothing

Better Off Alive

Better Off Alive

Fight Injustice

See Things From the Other Side

Engaging the Monster

Love Lets Live

Love Lets Live

Why Wear Abort73?

There's a crucial connection between the Abort73 shirts and the Abort73 website.

There’s nothing particularly unique about “pro-life” T-shirts. You'll find thousands of them listed on Google.  Some of them look great; others look... less great. But almost all of them share one thing in common. They express an opinion, without providing much in the way of facts. How could they? The evidence in the case against abortion is too vast to be adequately communicated on a few square inches of  fabric.

T-shirts are great for slogans, but slogans don’t prove anything – and until we prove that abortion is immoral and unjust, nothing will ever change. That’s why Abort73 has adopted a decidedly unconventional approach for our T-shirts. Instead of expecting a T-shirt to do the educating (something it’s not much good at), Abort73 shirts point people to a free, almost universally-accessible resource where they actually can be educated.

The Purpose – Every shirt we produce has one simple goal in mind: get people to Abort73.com. Why? Because the Abort73 website does things that T-shirts can't. It takes people past the mere expression of opinion and straight to the evidence which compels that opinion. Websites have the capacity to educate in ways that not even books or films can duplicate – let alone a T-shirt!

So why do we bother with T-shirts at all? Because T-shirts do things that websites can't! They walk the streets. They get on busses. They sit in classrooms. T-shirts have a built in audience and don't require the consent of those who view them. The relationship between the Abort73 shirts and the Abort73 website is an extremely strategic one. The T-shirts, without the website, would be useless, and the website, without the T-shirts, would be largely ignored. They need each other.

The Process – Pointing to the website is the big-picture connection, but perhaps you've noticed that the Abort73 shirts themselves can come off a bit confusing. They certainly don't do a very good job spelling out what Abort73 is all about. None of them say things like, "Free Abortion Info," or, "Learn More About Abortion Here." Wouldn't those kinds of messages be more clear? Yes. But would they be more effective? Probably not.

Very few people have a natural inclination to learn more about abortion. It's as taboo a topic as you'll find and carries all sorts of baggage and misconceptions. Openly advertising an abortion-related website would generate a whole lot of the exact same response: "Thanks, but no thanks." If someone is already interested in learning more about abortion, they don't need a T-shirt. They just need a keyboard. Lord willing, they'll find us on their own. For everyone else, we need to come in the back door, so to speak. Society isn't taking the initiative to better educate itself about abortion, and so we've got to be creative in the ways we reach it. To enact widespread cultural change, we must be able to engage those who, intentionally or not, have no interest in questioning the ethics of abortion.

How do Abort73 shirts do that? By not giving away too much on the front-end. Provocative but ambiguous phrasing and an intentionally vague URL help ensure that pre-existing biases don’t prevent someone from logging on. Our shirt slogans make sense once you know the context of the website, but until then they often leave people scratching their heads. That's okay. Curiosity is a powerful draw, and there is a very easy way for people to answer the question, "What is Abort73?!" Once they reach the website, the veil is lifted and they’re almost certain to find the case against abortion far more compelling than they ever imagined. Social-justice causes have never been so fashionable, and it doesn't take long to demonstrate that abortion is as crucial a social-justice cause as there is anywhere in the world.

The Place – Abort73 T-shirts can go just about anywhere that regular T-shirts can go and have an impact, but undoubtedly the most effective venue for these shirts is on high school and college campuses – where students consistently pass by the same people day after day. Here's how it plays out. You wear an Abort73 shirt to school one day. Lots of people see the shirt; a handful of them ask you about it or go to the website. A few days later you wear another Abort73 shirt. People see it a second time and a few more people are curious. The next week you wear one again, and again, and again. Week after week, month after month, students see "Abort73.com". Eventually their curiosity gets the best of them and significant numbers of students come to the site. Now imagine what happens when a couple more students (or 10 or 20) start wearing Abort73 to school on a regular basis. The repetition makes all the difference in the world and makes it possible for one student to influence an entire campus.

And it doesn't need to end with a T-shirt. We've got Abort73 pens, stickers, bags, bottles, cards, web graphics, and downloadable flyers that can all function in much the same way as the shirts. For better or worse, every T-shirt makes a statement, but most of those statements end with the shirt. With a little creativity, though, T-shirts can be a front door instead of a dead end – and that's what every Abort73 shirt sets out to be.

No Regrets

Given a Choice, They’d Want a Chance.

End the Ignorance

Educate Yourself. Educate Your World.

Speak for the Weak

Love the Least (A Lot)

Yay for Kids

Slogans Prove Nothing

Better Off Alive