They say that hindsight is 2020. But no one could have known what a weird year 2020 would become. The following is my account of what happened when I opened a Slovenia t-shirt brand during the Coronavirus pandemic.
The BREG Ski Mežica t-shirt - as modeled by American in Slovenia - Julia B - in Ljubljana.
I had been playing with the idea of creating a Slovenia t-shirt company for a while. But it was not the realisation of some long-held dream to start such a business. I created BREG Apparel simply because I was looking for interesting Slovenia t-shirts for myself and I couldn’t find any that floated my boat. Because when it comes to Slovenia’s image, maybe Slovenia is too beautiful for its own good.
I say that, because Slovenia’s renowned natural splendour has meant that almost every single piece of Slovenia-flavoured merchandise it produces, from t-shirts to tea bags, obsesses over a sickly-sweet, super-cute aesthetic. And whilst the saccharine-saturated ‘SLOVEnia’ images of hearts, dragons and Lake Bled cater well to tourists, when you live here, that angle gets pretty old, pretty quickly.
I wanted to showcase Slovenia in another way. Having been visiting since 2007, and living here since 2017, I had already experienced so many fascinating facets of Slovenia’s language, culture and cuisine that I thought would look good on a t-shirt.
A selection of BREG Slovenia t-shirt designs
So, after several months of working on a set of Slovenia-flavoured designs, finding suitable printers in Slovenia to produce a small t-shirt run, and finding a willing vendor in Ljubljana to trial stocking them – BREG Apparel was finally ready for launch.
It was with great excitement that I hung the first few garments up in Črno Zrno, a tiny speciality coffee shop in Ljubljana’s old town. The owner – a Colombian who imports beans from his home country and roasts them in Slovenia – had kindly agreed to indulge my entrepreneurial urges. But less than one week after my t-shirts were on display, COVID-19 struck, the pandemic was declared and the shops of Slovenia – like much of the world - closed their doors for business.
No sooner had I hung my first shirts up in Črno Zrno, a cafe in Ljubljana, when The Pandemic struck.
I couldn’t have picked a worse time to launch my Slovenia t-shirt brand. Not only were the retailers of Slovenia now unable to stock and sell them, but the media was saturated by Corona news, drowning out almost all other stories. No one was going to be interested in hearing about a new Slovenian t-shirt brand when there was a Coronavirus rampaging around the world. There was nothing to be done; I just had to wait it out.
Eventually, towards the start of summer, the lockdown ended. But the damage was already done, and with travel restrictions still in place, everyone knew that summer 2020 was going to be quiet for business.
All was not lost, however. A respite from the restrictions in July and August allowed me to get out and meet several retailers around Slovenia, expanding my distribution network with shops stocking BREG shirts in Ljubljana, Kamnik, Kranjska Gora, Vrnnika and Bohinj. And of course my designs were also available for purchase online, making it very easy for people outside of Slovenia to order.
Encouragingly, the Slovene media also took a strong interest in my BREG t-shirts. I was interviewed for the Slovene daily newspaper: Dnevnik, I appeared on one of the national TV channels RTV, I was interviewed on Radio Student and in Total Slovenia News – Slovenia’s premier English-language news source, and BREG shirts were even featured in the Slovenian fashion mag: GLOSS. Somewhat hilariously, a picture of a BREG t-shirt even ended up in an issue of Slovenian Playboy (though sadly, not on a bunny).
Hilariously, a BREG shirt even ended up pictured in Slovenian Playboy.
For a brief period over summer, sales picked up encouragingly, despite my retail partners telling me business was just a third compared to normal. But the business boost wasn’t to last long. Global travel had been decimated, airlines had cancelled almost all routes to Slovenia, and even if you’d wanted to get here, the situation was so uncertain that most people chose to stay at home.
2020 has been a testing year for so many businesses. But BREG has survived. We even released some new designs, bringing our total number to 10. I have a sketchbook bursting with new ideas, some of which will be released next year. As we head into the final month of what has been a terrible year for trading, hopes turn to 2021, and more favourable conditions.
And that is how I launched a Slovenian-t-shirt brand during a pandemic.
If you’re looking for some unique Slovenia t-shirts with original artwork that provides the antidote to the tourist tat – check out the fully range of Slovenia t-shirt designs here.
Inspired by Slovenia. Designed by Slovenia. Ships worldwide.