Buy Merchandise, Support The Barking Crow, Bring Back MilkTime

Note: The below was written in March. It all still stands! Except for the parts we edited out, but those don’t affect you anyway. We’ve since added merchandise, but the ordering process remains the same. Just some merchandise creation between friends.

ORDERING PROCESS AT THE BOTTOM SO SCROLL THERE IF YOU CANNOT WAIT

Since MilkTime (our former podcast, for those new to our world) went off the airwaves at the end of 2018, there’s been a consistent, quiet clamoring for its return. We’ve heard you. We’ve always heard you. Now, finally, the time is right to try to bring it back. Travel is easier than it’s been since the pandemic began. We have an actual plan for what MilkTime will be, unlike we did with its former iteration. Probably most importantly, we finally have a large-enough following for MilkTime to stick. What do we mean by that?

Plenty of podcasts are successful being recorded from home, in one location, or between cohosts over Zoom. We don’t think MilkTime can be one of those podcasts. From what we learned in 2018 and what we’ve figured out since, MilkTime’s best bet at success involves me, NIT Stu, meeting each episode’s guest in person and sitting down with them over a glass of milk.

Some of this, we can do here in Austin. There are plenty of Texan guests on our radar. Eventually, though, we’re going to need to go out of town, and eventually, we’re going to go out of state. Joe Kelly isn’t just walking through that door, guys.

To do this, we need money. Sponsorships would be ideal, and they’re the long-term plan, but to get sponsored, we need to beef up MilkTime’s following, and to beef up MilkTime’s following, we need to record some darn episodes. Which brings us back to the money.

We aren’t asking you to give us money. That would be uncouth. What we are asking you to do is to buy things from us. Merchandise. But also you can give us money. If you’re into that kind of thing. We’ll explain how below.

The Merchandise

32 > 68 T-Shirt

It’s March, and there’s a certain 32-team basketball tournament going on and there’s a certain 68-team basketball tournament going on, and we all know which one we’re here for.

MilkTime Pint Glass

A classic.

The Barking Crow T-Shirts

We may change the color of the shirts on these to white or a different gray or a different plain-cotton-color. They might be different colors, too. We won’t surprise you—we’ll let you know before you pay—but if you want something different, let us know. We will cater to the masses on these.

The Barking Crow Hat

Again, might do some color changing here—make the hat black with just white panels up front or something like that. Might stick with white, though. TBD. Express your opinion. Also, it’ll be embroidered, not screen-printed. Snapback.

MilkTime Onesies/Toddler & Baby Shirts

Who loves milk? The children. Foster that love.

NIT NFT’s

Ok, this is where you can just give us money.

We don’t fully understand NFT’s. What we do understand is that people spend money on them, and that they’re basically just entries on a big list saying, “so-and-so owns this NFT,” and, “so-and-so owns that NFT,” and so forth. So, rather than go to the trouble of putting anything on the blockchain, we’re just making a list of all the NIT’s and allowing you to buy them…on the list. So if you come our way and say, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars for the 2003 NIT NFT,” we’ll say, “Done.” Then, we’ll put your name on the list in the slot next to “2003,” and if you ever sell it to someone, you can let us know and we’ll switch it to their name.

You may be wondering whether this is legal. I’m not sure it is. The NIT is trademarked, and on the rare chance this picks up steam and on the rarer chance they then come after us, we will fold like an origami artist on amphetamines: tastefully, but with haste. Consider yourself warned.

Order Process

With the exception of the MilkTime glasses and baby clothes (some of which we already have in stock), we’re holding off on production of the physical merchandise until we have a substantial-enough quantity of people ready to buy. This isn’t a huge number—we could reach it today with certain items—but we don’t want to end up with unsold merch. That defeats the purpose of this.

To express interest, then, fill out this form and we’ll be in touch when there’s enough interest in the products you’re interested in buying to get them produced, nail down the price, etc.

Pricing

Our hope is to make all of the physical merchandise $32 apiece, plus a small fee for shipping (something like four or five bucks), but it depends how much we produce, especially with the hats.

Timing

Again, it depends how quickly we drum up enough interest. TBD.

Future Merchandise, MilkTime

One question you may be asking is how you’ll know when we’ve raised enough money to start producing episodes. We do have a target number in mind (not a lot of money, but enough to float us for three months of episodes), but we don’t yet know what our margins are going to be on each product. When we do, we’ll put out a tracker so you can watch us progress towards MilkTime’s return. If we don’t hit the target with this merchandise, we’ll just make more.

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Thank you in advance for your support, and if this merchandise isn’t your thing, thanks for the support you’re giving us in other ways. We’re building a brand here, and you’re what makes that happen. So thank you.