Welcome to Ballerado
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We've started a new street team system for our followers & Sales Reps around the country. Anyone currently involved or looking to become involved with Atone Clothing's global domination just keep reading. (All of you already on the team we've also already sent you emails with the details, get better at checking yo emails or get an iPhone or something.)
So here it is,
Overview
The Atone Street Team is comprised of individuals who only job is to get free gear & money and get people stoked on Atone. You get paid on commisionto be a part of the extended family of Atone, get an inside look of what’s going on in the company, what future lines we’re working on, and input to which way you’d like to see it going, and, we pay you to do it. We seek out the people with a passion to be involved in something like this, with energy and ideas to constantly keep us moving and developing. As of now we have a great following and are looking to recruit some more quality people into the team. There's different levels to membership, and it's what you make it. Some choose to just sign up and get the updates and free promos that come their way but others have gone above and beyond and made a considerable impact on Atone as a whole. Either way its a good time, we love having you guys involved.
Here's how it works now:
- For those of you new to this, to get involved in the project fill out the application on this entry and follow the instructions. Simple.
- On signup, members get an exclusive Atone Militia tshirt, stickers, the Militia manual on how to get up in the ranks and Atone's print catalogue of available & upcoming gear.
- Our rewards system for reps has been greatly improved; as you move higher in the ranks of the Atone Militia, you get more and better gear. And this time we’ve got limited edition designs, apparel and color variations not available to anyone else. Most times these limited editions are direct ideas from the reps themselves.
- Now you get rewarded for doing more than generating sales and having people put in your referrer’s code. Now, you get points (aka $$/free gear) for doing other things such as:
-Submitting pictures of your friends, strangers, DJs, Presidents, Hobos, or whoever repping Atone. Bonuses for film footage.
-Stickers. Same goes for them; pics of sticks wherever you can get them slapped.
-Recruiting other blokes into the Atone Militia. Quality entrants to the team are always appreciated.
-Your own independent & Atone funded ad campaigns & a ton of other methods to get points and move up in the ranks
- We are also instating a few other sweet perks for Reps high up in the chain:
-Travel. We’re now sending our reps to shows & conventions in their areas to go party and spread the word.
-Cash prizes for monthly competitions amongst the reps.
Basically it’s a killer deal, so get on it.
So those of you hearing this for the first time, download the form at the bottom of this post, receive the details and get on your way to being part of the Atone Militia and our extended family.
Sophomore year in high school I began to approach this idea of getting my images and ideas out without the help of spray paint and breaking laws. I took a trip to Hobby Lobby and got a little $30 silk screen kit with a 10x12in screen and some fabric paint. Then using my stencils I had been previously utilizing on derilect walls and buildings and began to transfer them onto some of my blank t-shirts. I was still hand cutting stencils with an X-acto knife, laying the stencil on the shirt, placed the blank screen over and carefully pressing fabric paint through as to not shirt the stencil or screen and smear or have it seep up underneath the stencil and bleed all over the place.
Granted it was a process, but I loved it, inky fingers and all. But fabric paint wasn't free so I figured I could make a couple bucks off the shirts to friends to cover the runs to the store for paint. Charging 5 bucks for a print on a shirt they brought me seemed pretty lucrative at the time, adding a little profit to the few minutes and the dollop of fabric paint. I made a brochure and began to distribute it around the high school with the help of the library Xerox machine. I needed a name and called Riotwear.
The first Riotwear flyer:
Soon I was up til 1 or 2 in the morning printing stacks of shirts what then worked out to be around 10-20 bucks and hr. Having a fat stack of lunch money was pretty good trade for making a small army of walking talking soldiers repping my thoughts. This turned to that, and I was painting shoes, skateboards, skis, bags, you name it for kids around the 80906. Out of the back of my hatchback I was starting to distribute more apparel than the nickel sacks and dime bags the faux-rasta kids were slingin. I had a following, nothing of the celebrity extent but a core group of kids who were down for the cause.
Some of the first hand-made stencil pressed shirts I had out:
After a couple months of this and with summer coming up and everyone entering the workforce at the car lot, Carrabba's, swimming pools and other small jobs and with encroaching pressure from parents to do the same, I figured why not take this little project as far as it'll let me? I dropped the "Riotwear" identity and began toying with other names. With that I jumped ship from just covering costs to getting behind the wheel of the retail machine with no idea where to drive.
Bottom of a hand-made Atone Poolboard:
It started with graffiti, tagging midnight powerboxes, billboards, whatever we could get our hands on. Not with any set direction for fame, recognition, or anything remotely associated with a business, let alone clothing line. The purpose then was to get people to think, most times without them knowing it. Working mainly in stencils and writing utensils, the mission was to bring a little light and curiosity to places people were trained to look over. Soon we had boxes, closets and shoeboxes full of stencils, inky markers, polaroids, paint tips, krylon cans and tattered old blackbooks.
In our eyes we were Public Enemy #1, at the height of our game, on top of the world with no cares. We were invincible, midnight warriors distributing material wherever we please, being quoted by newspapers and fellow graffers, just for following our pursuit of spreading word and image. Yet we were just a couple of kids with something to say, and our weapon of choice was aerosol.
As anyone in this world can identify, it doesn't last. Eventually things catch up to you, good or bad and force you to funnel everything you have into a different briefcase. In my case, with the split of my partner and crime and I, and my relocation to a much more locked-down neighborhood and city, my outlets to get my blackbooks outside the pages were no longer there. I needed a legal way project, and this is the start or Atone.
Gettin linked up to Posterous,
"All human beings are interconnected, one with all other elements in creation.
Henry Reed "
And now my computer is. Wicked, stay posted, stay fresh.
-Atone
Official Posterous Page of Atone Clothing Ltd -
Website:
http://ATONECLOTHINGLTD.com
Fanpage:
http://facebook.com/ATONECLOTHING
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/ATONECLOTHING
