Brad

I have to confirm with the printer what sizes they have. I'll offer all possible sizes for people who pre-order, but sizes larger than XL will likely cost $1-3 more depending on what I am charged. For the free shirts that I giveaway, most will be in the M/L/XL range, so if you need different sizes than that, this will be your chance to guarantee one. Also, for the pre-ordering, you can order as many as you need. No limit. They'll all ship together.

So barring a flood of votes for one of the other choices, design #8 will likely be the one we go with, possibly with a minor tweak or two. Here is what I am going to do with the ordering: I have a lot of old GD merchandise that I want to get rid of (including some older t-shirts). If you pre-order a BF t-shirt, it's going to come to you in a box that is also full of other GD swag that you will get for free. I'll ship these in flat rate boxes, so I'll load as much as I can into the box. Consider it a bonus for being here early. The extra stuff could be anything, and no two boxes will be the same. I'm not taking requests for these items - what you get is what you get. There will be t-shirts (regular GD and BF from past years) pens, notepads, mouse pads, keychains, magnetic clips, calculators, coin pouches, magnets and more. If you don't want to buy a shirt, don't worry as we will give away a bunch of the new shirts like we always do. And those shirts will come also with some free GD items that I've recently ordered (details soon...) I'll post details on how you can order in the next day or two, so check back soon.

Also, a minor detail, but remember that the size of the caution sign (and any other design) will appear to be larger or smaller depending on what size shirt you get. On a small shirt for example, the caution shirt will take up a pretty big part of the back, where on a 2X or 3X shirt, it will appear smaller compared to the overall size of the shirt. Once we have a design finalized, I'll start taking orders for anyone who wants to buy one or more shirts and guarantee their needed size(s). I'll try to wait as long as possible before placing the order with the printer so as many people as possible can get their orders in. I'll then order a bunch more to give away like we always do, but most of those will be in the more common (and cheaper) sizes.

Yeah if either of those designs was the overwhelming favorite, I'd probably alter the design a little to mention GD somewhere. I still might play around with the final design. I might add white ink accents, especially if I decide to throw a QR code on the sleeve or somewhere else.

OK, here are 8 possible options based on your responses from the last thread. The first 4 are orange shirts/blue ink, the second 4 are the same designs but with a blue shirt/orange ink. The poll will let you vote for more than one design, so if you'd be happy with more than one, vote for more than one. Feel free to continue using this thread for comments as I'll close the old thread now. Here are the options: http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/1.gif http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/2.gif http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/3.gif http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/4.gif http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/5.gif http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/6.gif http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/7.gif http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/8.gif

OK, so it sounds like a lot of people either: like #2 as it is or with the colors reversed or would like the front to be in the style of #2 and have the caution sign on the back (possibly as a diamond shape) #3 doesn't seem to be as popular so I'm going to eliminate that one for now. The "word cloud" on the back of #2 was something I thought could be clever, but a lot of you disagree. The words were automatically generated by looking at the site/forum and getting the most often used non-common words. I'm thinking I might save that idea for a non-BF "GottaDeal 10th Anniversary" shirt that we could do next year - have a bunch of words/phrases related to the site that those who've been around for a long time will "get". I'm going to post a poll thread with some choices...

Here are 3 quick ideas I put together. Each has a front & back design, but that doesn't mean we can't combine a front from one idea with the back of another. Or we can not use any of these. I just wanted to get the process going. When commenting, refer to the ideas as #1, #2 and #3 to keep things clear. You can click on each shirt to get a closer look at the design. Idea #1 "Caution Sign" (could be done with a blue or orange shirt) Front: http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/shirt2.gifhttp://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/shirt1.gif Back: http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/shirt2b.gif Idea #2 "Simple & Distressed" Front: http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/shirt3.gif Back: http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/shirt3b.gif Idea #3 "Athletic Style" Front: http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/shirt4.gif Back: http://i.gottadeal.com/main/images/merch/ideas/shirt4b.gif So please post your suggestions, ideas for changing these or any new ideas you come up with. I've closed the old thread so we don't have 2 going at the same time. Like I said, I did these pretty quickly, so they can be changed in many ways (fonts, etc...).

A few more weeks. Mid-to-late September is whey they are normally updated.

Here's a CNN story. No fee through October 31st on most items, but some exclusions apply. http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/04/news/companies/toys-r-us-layaway/

Also, if anyone has an area of expertise and would either like to do a "guest" webcast on their own or be interviewed by Dev for a special episode, send him a PM.

When the forum gets a little busier. So if you all want contests, start referring others to GD

Keep the ideas coming. A lot of good slogans so far. The caution sign and jersey themes are also good ones. Going to be tough to decide this year...

I don't know how much weight I'd put into that article. I believe almost anyone can submit articles for that site. I really doubt all those stores have announced plans so early.

Another idea someone had was to put a QR code (those newfangled square barcode things you see everywhere) so if someone sees it, they can scan it with their phone and go right to the site.

What about orange for the shirt color? The site's colors are blue and orange yet we've never had an orange shirt. Maybe not a super-bright neon orange but something more "muted"? I'm going to wait another month or so before ordering so we'll have plenty of time to get suggestions in this thread. I'll post some designs once we decide on something and we can fine-tune it as needed.

Yep, same as every year. Which is why I don't understand people wanting the forum open more than 2 months before that

Keep in mind that we want these to appeal to a lot of people. Not everyone wants tie-dye or something that makes them seem like a crazy lunatic talking about mace

Yeah, Black Friday is on the earliest possible day this year, the 23rd. Next year, it'll be on the 29th, which is the latest possible date.

Anyone have any cool ideas for what this year's BF shirt should look like or say? Slogans, color of the shirt, design, etc...?

We took the data from the past 6 years to get an average of how many days before BF each store's ad typically gets leaked here on GD. We then took those numbers and made a "calendar" for this year based on this year's BF date of 11/23. Here are some of the more popular stores and when they could possibly be posted this year based on past history: 10/1/12 Ace Hardware 10/9/12 Half Price Books 10/13/12 Harbor Freight 10/27/12 Sears 11/3/12 Gander Mountain Lowe's 11/3/12 Office Max Walgreens 11/6/12 Military BX Kmart Macy's 11/7/12 Kohls 11/8/12 Navy Exchange Costco JCPenney 11/9/12 Target Best Buy Old Navy Radio Shack CVS Pharmacy 11/10/12 Dell Home hhgregg 11/11/12 Toys R Us Meijer Bass Pro Shops Staples 11/12/12 Pep Boys Modell's Big Lots Office Depot Michael's Kmart Thanksgiving 11/13/12 Walmart Dick's Sporting Goods Home Depot BJ Wholesale 11/14/12 Cabela's Menards 11/15/12 PetSmart Sports Authority Sam's Club 11/16/12 Gamestop Ikea Again, these are just guesses based on past years. Don't whine if these dates don't hold up this year

BLACK FRIDAY AD ITEM LISTINGS: http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/BlackFridaySaleAds BLACK FRIDAY AD SCANS: http://forums.gottadeal.com/forumdisplay.php?164-Black-Friday-Ads

Here are the dates (according to our records) when various ads were posted during the past 6 years: http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/Dates And here are links to text lists of the items in the ads (at least the ones in our database) dating back to 2003: 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

We made some changes to the forum organization today: 1. The Black Friday forums are open. The holiday discussion and store-specific sub-forums will open in a month or two, but the main BF board is open. 2. Due to lack of activity, the Contests forum has been closed. The major threads like "post your wins" and the other stickied threads have been moved to the Deal Discussion forum: http://forums.gottadeal.com/forumdisplay.php?4-Deal-Finder-amp-Deal-Discussion. Feel free to use that forum for any future contest-related discussion. There are also many other sites that focus solely on contests which you may find useful. 3. The Travel & Finance forums were merged back into their original home, the GottaTalk Lounge (our off-topic board). Access to the Lounge requires you to be a member for a short period of time and make a few posts on the board. Once you have done this you'll be granted access within an hour. The Lounge is a great place to interact with the GD community, make new friends and discuss nearly any non-deal related topic. 4. The Freebies forum is now a member of the top "hot deals" group of forums, so if you can't find it, look there. If you have any questions about these changes, please PM myself or a sitewide moderator. Update 9/4/12: We have also merged the Deal Finder & Deal Discussion forums today. We've noticed a lot of overlapping between these two forums, so to make things easier, we're just going to have a single forum for all those threads which are not regular posted deal threads.

The BF forum is now open. The whining can stop We're not going to send out any mass e-mails yet, so consider this the "soft opening" just for those of you who are already here. So if you want to start any threads, now is your chance.

100 Days Until Black Friday! Who's ready? (and who, like me, wishes it were at least 200 days away? )