Snuzzlo Bun Shirt Company, LLC

At Snuzzlo Bun Shirt Company, LLC, we are happy to be introducing two new shirts to our offerings. Like all our shirts, these are casual button-downs for men in fun and funky abstract prints.  These shirts include a long-sleeve and our first shirt-sleeve offering. Both are made from a dark blue fabric with an abstract starfish print.  The fabric was the winner in our online contest where we asked site visitors to vote for the fabric from which they’d most like us to make our next shirts.   They voted. The starfish fabric was the winner and now those shirts are available.  Check them out at Snuzzlobun.com.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Player Piano, there is a passage about living on the edge.  Since starting our men’s shirt company, Snuzzlo Bun Shirt Company, LLC about a year and a half ago, we often feel we are living on the edge, so the passage struck me.  In it, one friend expressed concern to another that he might do well with help from a psychiatrist.  The friend replied, “(A psychiatrist) might pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center…Big, undreamed-of things – the people on the edge see them first.”

So, maybe entrepreneurs do live on the edge. Maybe it’s where they get their ideas. Maybe it’s how they get to be the first one to try those ideas.  Living on the edge or not, we just might be the first ones to create short and long-sleeved button-down shirts for men in fun and funky abstract prints, priced – at $45-$50 – for the everyman.  Now that’s edgy.

Check us out at Snuzzlobun.com.

In the July 28, 2008 issue of Newsweek, a Danny Clinch column called When Wynton Met Willie beautifully illustrates how two seemingly very different people can happily, productively and easily coexist when united by a common bond.  The subtitle says it all, “Marsalis and Nelson are an odd musical couple, but they make the sweetest blues you’ve ever heard.”

Snippets include: “Wynton wears crisp suits, reads sheet music and is the musical director of New York’s Jazz at

Neither sees the pairing as an odd couple. Says Marsalis, “As musicians, we like a lot of the same things…We came up on the same sounds.” 

Different people can find common ground in any number of areas.  A love of dogs can unite us, or a love of Mexican food, travel, Harry Potter or the NBA. Anything really. 

At Snuzzlo Bun Shirt Company, LLC we like to feel that our shirts bridge gaps among seemingly different people by addressing a common desire for a fun shirt.  A wardrobe that lets us express our personality is a good thing.  Fun and funky Snuzzlo Bun shirts do just that.  And that’s guaranteed to NOT give you the blues.

I recently read a list of some of the worst new-product flops of all time. They basically fit into a couple categories:

The first category is: New versions of existing products. These include a yogurt from Cosmopolitan Magazine, soda from Lifesavers, kitchen entrees from Colgate, perfume from Harley Davidson and, of course, New Coke.

The second category is: New products from new companies. These include the DeLorean car, and beef and fish-flavored bottled water for cats and dogs.

It’s a list I hope to never be on. At Snuzzlo Bun Shirt Company, LLC, we make short and long-sleeved casual button-down shirts for men in fun and funky abstract prints.  We’re pretty new at this but so far, men do seem to like our shirts.  Instead of making headlines on a list of really bad product ideas, maybe we’ll show up on lists of Cool New Stuff You Gotta Have, or Websites to build your Christmas Wish-List, or Places to Get Wild Shirts, or other swell lists like that.

In a July 24, 2008 Wall Street Journal column called, “Yoga Bears: It’s no Stretch to Say Traders are Taking Deep Breaths,” columnist Cassell Bryan-Low describes a number of big-city financial professionals who have began doing yoga in search of inner peace.   New York hedge fund manager Michael Karsch of Karsch Capital Management LP, a roughly $3 billion fund, said from yoga, he knows to “take a step back, have a breath and stay focused.” 

According to the column, Luciano Cortese, also a hedge fund manager, says he used to bang his desk, throw things or yell at someone when his job became particularly stressful.  But since starting yoga, he has been taking the stock market jolts in stride.

To further enhance a person’s ability to relax, roll with the punches and enjoy simple pleasures, maybe new shirt would help.  Fun and funky shirts from Snuzzlo Bun Shirt Company, LLC definitely have a way of reminding a person to not take things too seriously, to express their inner sense of fun and to let their individuality show.  Our long and short-sleeve casual button-down shirts in subtle-to-wild prints may be just what the yoga instructor ordered.  (Snuzzlobun.com.)

In the July 26-27, 2008 weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, an “Eating Out” Column by Raymond Sokolov called Tiny Spaces, Big Ideas, described a new phenomenon in the world of high-end restaurants.  To me it illustrates the point that, the way to drive large numbers of people crazy with desire for whatever you’re selling, is sometimes to deny them access to it.  

In this case, Mr. Sokolov said, “…in a handful of urban enclaves…a group of young people is bucking the culinary establishment by cramming into tiny counter-service restaurants where they pay high prices for avant-garde meals that tweak the status quo. Reservations in these hot venues can be harder to snag than a jumbo mortgage.” 

Mr. Sokolov goes on to describe one such Manhattan eatery, saying that the restaurant accepts “reservations only by registered applicants who compete against others each morning at 10, when its Web site opens slots at the 12-stool counter for a date seven days off.” 

A similar establishment in Washington, DC “reserves places for those willing to vie for them a month ahead.  They must sign contracts backing up their cybercommitments with guarantees with full-payment and promise to show up 30 minutes in advance or risk losing one of the six counter seats.”

It seems the harder they make it to grab one of these sought-after restaurant seats, the more people want them.  Maybe we should make and sell only a very few of our fun and funky casual button-down shirts for men.  Maybe if we hardly had any available and then promoted the heck out of them, we’d get quite a following.  Or. Maybe if we put a piece of avante garde food in each shirt pocket, that would make them must-haves on all the right snooty lists.  But, for better or worse, we don’t want our shirts on anyone’s snooty list. Our shirts are for the everyman. Our shirts are not about high fashion but they are highly fun.  So, come one, come all.  Step right up for a Snuzzlo Bun shirt.

Since we started our men’s shirt business about a year and a half ago, our friends have been very supportive and helpful. The list of things they’ve done continues to grow.  Take a look:  Initially they answered our call for feedback on our test shirts, and they shared them with others who, in turn offered more feedback.  Based on their input, we altered our next round of shirts, changed our logo and labels, and made changes to our website content. 

Next, they contributed to our online survey by voting for their favorite fabrics. Their input, and input from other voters helped us decide which shirts to make next.  Then, they got our pet photo gallery started by sending in photos of Fluffy and Spot.  Recently, many modeled our shirts (check out the Human Photos, next to the Pet Photos in the Share the Love section of Snuzzlobun.com).   Friends were even among our first customers who bought our shirts.  Some pointed out typos on our website copy and others told us the names of stores they thought might like to carry our shirts. Some steered us to trade shows where we might want to exhibit and others had great promotion ideas. 

So here we are, with our fun and funky casual button-down shirts for men, moving along in the right direction, doing pretty well for a start up.  And, a lot of it is thanks to our friends.  (Insert favorite mushy friends song here.)

Sometimes we can define ourselves as much by what we are as by what we are not.  For Snuzzlo Bun Shirt Company, LLC, makers of fun and funky casual button-down shirts for men, here’s what that means:

We are not about high fashion.
We are about fun shirts.

We are not about narrow rules and lists of dos-and-don’ts.
We are about doing your own thing.

We are not about exclusivity or snobbery.
We are about the everyman.

We are not about mass distribution and me-too fashion.
We are about finding the perfect stand-out shirt in your favorite specialty shop or website.

Sorry, that’s all I could come up with for now. Hope you get the point.

Let’s face it: Sometimes well-intentioned family members and friends – or official experts – give bad advice.  When my kids were both between infancy and toddlerhood, I existed in a state of sleep deprivation like most new parents.  During that time, I read an advice column for new parents.  The parent asked the expert something like this: “My baby awakens at 6:00 a.m. but I don’t get up till 7:30. What should I do?”  To me – whose kids awoke around 5:00 am no matter what time they went to bed – the answer was easy: You don’t sleep till 7:30 anymore. Get your butt up at 6:00.  Instead the expert said something like this: “Teach your infant to play quietly in her crib when she awakens until you are awake and can attend to her.”  I say, “Hah! Like that would ever happen.”  Maybe there are infants like that around somewhere but not in my house and not in the homes of anyone I knew.  Clearly that particular parenting expert was the book-educated type and not the type who actually had kids of their own.

Another bad idea – in my opinion – is for people on a diet to attempt to completely eliminate one whole category of food from their daily intake.  Perhaps it’s carbs. Or refined sugar. Or chocolate.  It seems to be that, as soon as you try to completely eliminate something, it’s the thing you just gotta have.  I’ve always been a proponent of the whole balanced diet and food pyramid thing.  

And another dopey thing people do is make choices based on what other people will think.  I’m not advocating completely nonconformity. I mean I do believe people should avoid stealing, keep their lawn mowed, not appear naked in public, and stuff like that.  But, cowtowing too much to public sentiment is how we get homes with all the interior decorating flair of a cheap motel. It’s how we get schools that still ban books. And it’s how we build a really boring wardrobe. 

And speaking of wardrobes, we at Snuzzlo Bun Shirt Company, LLC are all about putting fun in men’s casual wardrobes.  Our short and long-sleeve casual button-down shirts come in bright, funky abstract prints that will turn heads and put you back in touch with your inner sense of fun. Snuzzlobun.com.

Did you know there is such a thing as a Page Rank Checker, a free tool to check Google™ page ranking of any web site page.  (It’s at prchecker.com.) Our web developers tell us page rank is an important piece of any site’s efforts to earn favorable Google rankings.  Each site is ranked 0-10.

Even a ranking of 0 isn’t the kiss of death. It at least means the site is recognized by Google.  If a site is not recognized at all, you do have some work to do to get recognized.  Apparently, only the very biggest, most well=-known sites get anywhere near a ranking of 9.  A ranking of 3-5 is pretty good. Anything higher is outstanding. 

When choosing which sites to link to, from your site, the experts tell me it’s important to avoid linking to sites that are not recognized, or that have a ranking of 0, 1 or 2.  Linking to sites with a ranking of 3 or better, however, can help your ranking and your traffic.  Once you establish links on your site – again this is the experts talking – they say you should ask that those sites consider a reciprocal link back to your site.  That way, everybody is happy. Everybody gets traffic. Everybody keeps the search engines happy.

At Snuzzlobun.com, we show up on prchecker.com as having a rank of 3. That’s pretty good for a five-month old site like ours.  Our short and long-sleeve casual button-down shirts for men in funky, vibrant prints are pretty popular and a respectable page rank doesn’t hurt.