Where do you guys see this app in 10 years? What do you hope it evolves or grows into? Or is the hope it doesn’t grow and stays the same size, same functionality, etc? I have zero opinion here. I just joined - complete newbie. Genuinely curious.

The messy truth about making a western shirt in America. When we receive a box of 300 finished western shirts from our factory in L.A. , you’d think - this is awesome. I can throw them on my website, and start selling! Yay! NOT THE CASE 😀 Woven shirt manufacturing has largely left the U.S. The skilled labor that can do it - isn’t really here anymore. So when you find a factory that “can” do it - you’re often not getting a perfect product back, ready to ship (unless you’re okay shipping an imperfect product - which I’m not). So instead, we have to inspect each shirt, spec them, trim, iron, fold, bag and tag - ONE AT A TIME - before we can put it on a shelf, and it’s ready to ship to a customer. A good junk of my time is spent in a room like this, going through shirts, hunched over an ironing board for days. Putting the good ones in one pile, putting the bad ones on the other, with detailed notes, to go back to the factory. This is one of many reasons why most clothing businesses don’t manufacture here. They don’t want to deal with nightmares like this. Many factories here don't care sadly. You have to grind on them, relentlessly, to improve the product. It's like moving a giant cruise ship from factory hell. Just getting a perfect quality shirt made, with zero issues, at scale - again and again - isn’t possible today, and what I'm trying to achieve / solve at the moment. But we’re holding the line. Year after year, putting pressure on our factory to keep improving - and they are. Two years ago, they struggled with the sides of our pocket flaps. One side would be longer than the other. Now they’re perfect. This little detail alone is such a huge win. Little by little, we eat the elephant one bite at a time. The entire business is insane, and often times feels impossible. But the exciting thing is, IF we pull it off, we'll be one of the only ones in the world to make this product here.

HELP. Does anyone know what’s going on here? My “messages” show 3. But when I click on messages, it just takes me to this blank screen..

BEHOLD. Our new black denim western shirt. Took about 5 months to make roughly 300 of these - from sourcing the fabric and material, to cutting, sewing, and finishing.

Over the last two years, I’ve come back to this line from the book Courage is Calling again and again: “There are six things I can do right now, all of which will help make things better.” When those moments hit where everything feels like it’s falling apart, and the walls are closing in, I go back to this line. I write down 6 things - however big or small. And I do them. And then I do it again the next day, and the next. A week goes by and you’ve done 42 things. And usually by that point, things start to turn back in your favor. It’s been such a simple way for me to stop worrying about the future - and focus on what I can do right now, today.

New baddies at WM HQ. Slowly but surely, I’m buying machines to build a western shirt factory in Arizona. I scored these this week at a local auction, at a 90% discount. The left one sews on buttons. The right makes button holes. Now just need to make sure they work 😂🤘🇺🇸

A couple weeks ago before I met @Ben Justman🍷 I had no interest in Bitcoin. After talking to him over some wine, I’m now understanding why our costs will continue to rise and Bitcoin needs to be apart of our American Made Mission. Eventually we’ll be accepting it and have it on our balance sheet. NOSTR will be the first to know when it happens. I now view Bitcoin as having the same ideals that motivated an American Made brand like West Major. Here’s a little bit of insight behind our brand, and what’s gone into trying to make our product in America.

Okay I’ve got another question (thank you to everyone helping me learn here). Maybe this is a stupid question. Is the goal or one of the goals amongst the bitcoin community to eventually get to a world where everyone uses it - day to day - for every transaction? Your employer pays you with bitcoin, you buy your groceries with bitcoin, you rent Netflix movies with bitcoin? When that happens, what does the price of bitcoin look like day to day? Is it more stable? Or will it still be down 5% one day, up 20% the next?

Question for any business owners out there making a physical product - do you guys have to pay suppliers with cash? None of ours take bitcoin. And if so, how do you balance wanting to grow your business (which requires making more product and thus needing cash) with holding bitcoin? This is something I’m still wrestling with. I’d love to keep and hold what little bitcoin I have… but I have to make more shirts to keep growing the business. Down the road, when my business is bigger, and we’re able to distribute profit and/or have cash we don’t need for growth (hopefully 😂) I could see that being much easier. But at my stage now, we’re still trying to grow. Not for some vanity reason but to survive. Curious if anyone out there has some thoughts or strategies around this?