On Loyalty, Shirts, and Murders

In consumer behavior, I learned that there are four types of loyalty. You basically have a two-by-two matrix, where one axis is something akin to "relative attitude" (so, how much you like it) and the other axis is "repeated patronage" (how often you buy the product). The four types are:

No Loyalty (Non-Favorable View & Low Patronage): I have no loyalty to the MTV or BET stations.
Latent Loyalty (Favorable View & Low Patronage): I like nVidia video cards, but I don't buy them a lot, mainly because I don't need to.
Spurious Loyalty (Non-Favorable View & High Patronage): I dislike Apple, the iPod, and iTunes, but the time and effort it would take me to convert thousands of AAC files to MP3s makes me keep buying them. (Also applicable to monopolies, like old school Ma Bell.)
Loyalty: (Favorable View & High Patronage): I would say I'm pretty loyal to Nintendo products.

Really, the sweet spot for any company is pure loyalty, because not only will consumers purchase your products often, but when people are truly loyal, they will actually go out of their way to recommend you to their friends. It is a good day when a company achieves loyalty.

And I think a company has earned mine.

The company is called "Stranded." I've mentioned them before; I think they may be a branch of Target (to whom I also have high loyalty), because that seems to be the only place that carries them.

Why do I like them? A few reasons.

1. The shirts are soooo comfortable. I don't know what they do to the cotton, but they're so soft and nice, it's like you're wearing nothing at all. Yes, they're a bit on the thin side as far as shirts go, but that's the price you pay for comfort. (And it's not like they're transluscent or anything.)

2. The designs are badass yet classy. One of the main problem I see with a lot of graphic tees nowadays is that they are either funny and immature, or badass yet gang-member-making-you-look-like-one. Stranded tees are definitely, while definitely having a fierce side to them, still have an old-world style to them, which makes them seem quite classy. Just look at some of their shirts. They can make a koi fish look cool. That's pretty good.

3. They make crow shirts. I loves me some crow shirts. In fact, I just purchased my newest crow shirt when I was at Target this past weekend, prompting me to realize that I had become loyal. So, let's take a look at my crow shirts, shall we?

Oh, you'll notice I'm wearing my hat in all of these. No real reason. I just think the hat goes well with crow shirts.

If I'm not mistaken, this was my first crow shirt. Unfortuantely, it's dark-on-dark style make it had to see any crows on said crow shirt.

Here's a close-up of that las crow shirt, so you can better see the crows (and don't try to tell me that they're ravens. Even if they were, ravens are just a subspecies of crow).

Here's me with a brown crow shirt and a surprised look. Grandmother, what big eyes I have!

I really like this one. It has such a sense of transcendence about it. Plus, save for droppings and/or other apocalypse harbingers, you have to admit that it would be pretty cool to see a murder of crows descend from the clouds.

This is the crow shirt that I just purchased. Three interesting notes. First, it's a collared shirt, which I haven't worn (barring formal shirts) since high school. Second, this is actually a size small. A relatively big small, but a small nonetheless, so that felt cool. Third, you have no idea how I literally stopped the cart I was pushing around when I saw this in Target and said aloud "Crow shirt!" It was love at first sight.

Here's a closeup.

You may notice that three out of four of these crow shirts also feature trees (two of which are dead, one of which has a few scant leaves). Maybe this means I don't enjoy crow shirts, but rather dead tree shirts. Or perhaps this love of crow shirts is a throwback to my childhood, during which I would always since about three chartreuse buzzards sitting in a dead tree...except with crows...y'know, instead of buzzards...*cough*

Takeaway: I am now loyal to Stranded tees (go to Target and buy them!) and I've used "crow shirt" in this post 15 times.