Behind the scenes: T-Post

Based in Umeå in the north of Sweden, T-Post is a magazine like no other. Each issue is presented as a t-shirt wrapped in a cardboard cover, featuring a custom-made print on the front of the shirt and a full-length article on the inside back.

The most recent issue was made in collaboration with TEDx Umeå and includes the Norrland favourites of reindeer and northern lights. Intrigued, we caught up with the man behind it all, Peter Lundgren, to learn more about T-Post and the first ever wearable TEDx talk.

Could you start by telling me how T-Post started?
T-Post started back in 2004 within a creative agency I was part of at the time. Because so much of the work within a creative agency is in response to strict client briefs, the founder of the agency had a vision that 25% of paid hours should be spent working on projects totally unrelated to the client work. It didn’t have to be lucrative, it could be anything!

T-Post was one of the ideas that emerged from that. This was at a time when the so-called ‘death of print’ was a hot topic, and we started T-Post as a quirky response to that. We knew that we couldn’t lose money from it, so each of us forced 10 of our friends to sign up, and the ball started rolling.

Two years later we decided that I would take on the project full time, which forced me to scale the business to a sustainable size. It’s been a lot of trial and error, but we’ve been going for 12 years now.

Taking on a project like that full-time must have been a steep learning curve!
It was crazy! But I love doing things for the first time. Starting out, the problem was that I thought I was the best businessman on the planet. Because in the beginning everything – media and subscribers — came straight to me. Over the years I’ve learnt that the average subscriber stays on for one year, so before that year had passed, of course everyone stayed on. But then people started dropping off and I needed to figure out how to make it sustainable.

Right now the challenge is getting people engaged with T-Post without having to offer them crazy discounts. By doing that you’re just devaluing your own product, and also, those people aren’t really excited about your product – they’re excited about the great deal you’re giving them.

How has T-Post evolved since you first started?
T-Post has gone from being a t-shirt with a piece of paper, to what it is now; a shirt wrapped in a hard cover like a magazine with the story written on the inside back. I’m really happy with the product now – it feels natural. I want people to be able to pick it up and think “I get it”, and I think we’re pretty close to that.

To the annoyance of the people who look after our budgets, my focus is always on the creative side. So all the changes we have made were driven by the creative side. For example, when I decided I wanted to print on the inside of the t-shirt we had to move our production abroad where they could print the fabric before it was assembled. Only later did we realise how much money we were saving by moving the production overseas. It’s been learning by doing all along.

Your latest issue was made in collaboration with TEDx Umeå – how did that come about?
It was pretty simple; the guys who organise TEDx Umeå asked if I wanted to give a talk. I said I’d love to, but I had to do it the way we do things. So naturally our TEDx talk would be a wearable one – the first ever wearable TEDx talk.

Because of the nature of a TEDx talk, it was a challenge figuring out exactly how we would present the shirt as part of the event. The idea of standing on stage holding up the shirt while talking about it seemed ridiculous, so we decided to install a shirt dispenser in the venue where people could see it close up, touch it, and get one for themselves.

One of the most interesting things about making a magazine the way we do, is what it does to the story; when you read the piece, some parts of it stick in your head, and others are forgotten. So when you wear the t-shirt and someone asks you about it, you’ll retell the story like you remember it – you can’t check it exactly without taking your top off! That was the intention with the TEDx talk as well – we wanted people to talk about it amongst themselves so that the story could take on a life of its own.

What is the theme of the issue?
The issue is about nature and how, by returning to it, you can find peace of mind and be truly creative. It was an homage to the nature of Norrland in the north of Sweden, and a subtle reference to a clothing brand we used to run within the agency called ‘For More Information, Visit Nature: It’s So Fucking Fresh’.

The print of the shirt is a reference to the kind of t-shirts you’ll find in tourist stalls here in Norrland – crappy shirts with animal prints on them is what I grew up with! I think they’re beautiful in a quirky, corny way. It’s also an homage to this legendary t-shirt print called ‘three wolf moon’. After someone did a parodic review of it on Amazon it became a huge internet phenomenon – we swapped the wolves for reindeer and added northern lights to give it a Norrland makeover.

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