Interview: Casually Hardcore Feature

While other internet stores have a few game inspired t-shirts lying around, very few of them specialise in this area like Casually Hardcore does. Marc, the owner, was happy to answer a few of our questions about setting up the business and what to expect from the future of the site.

Words by Adam Gulliver. Platform: Tiger Telematics Gizmondo

Hello and thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. So, how exactly do you get started setting up something like Casually Hardcore?
It was more a personal interest to own some shirts that weren't plain black or with some rubbish FCUK slogan on the front. I wanted to wear shirts that had cool designs on them and if they were Video Game related, all the better. If you go to your local video game shop you can buy official video game shirts with Sonic or Mario on the front. Great if you're five but older gamers want to wear stuff to do with their passion without looking like a child or a sad gaming geek. Im sure you've all seen grown men out there in your favourite video game shop wearing a faded Sonic shirt.

The only way to do that was to create my own designs, a few friends joined in with their own stuff and with the designs already created it didn't take long for us to think of selling them, the hard work was done, making the shirts was the easy part. So that's where Casually Hardcore comes in, Video Game Inspired clothing without people thinking you're a sad geek and which you won't be embarrassed about being seen in.

We've also concentrated on creating a huge women’s range (with women only designs) after some of our girl gamer friends complained about a lack of video game clothing for girls.

We’ve noticed a gaming blog on the site. Any plans to expand this section? For instance adding game reviews and all the other stuff you find on a traditional game site?
The blog is mainly to keep in contact with our customers so they know of new shirts arriving, special offers and things we're interested in, along with features on gaming. You'll find random game reviews where we talk about what we've been playing but it often won't be current. We game for fun, not for paid reviews. We believe in short but sweet reviews too, rather than 12 pages talking about how the characters eyes are the wrong shade of brown.

We're also very close to the games industry, some of us having worked within it, some of us still working within it and others running a mile away from it a long time ago. This lets us get scoops on what’s happening within the Industry before anyone else and lets us talk about it from a different perspective. In the future, we plan to have a number of features on working within the games industry with developers talking to us about their experiences. We want to use the blog to cover things that interest us that are not often talked about, mainly because the information can be hard to find. So you'll find also on our blog random retro gaming sites, indie flash games and news you wouldn't normally hear. If you want the latest reviews, previews and all that stuff then you can already get that at Gamestyle and 1up etc. There's no need for another blog site to regurgitate the same news and reviews when others can do it quicker and probably better.

Your site seems to have been endorsed by a number of big sites such as Gamespot. Must have been difficult getting the advertising?
It's not as hard as you may think. We're lucky that we have industry contacts already which allows us to get to the right people quicker and easier but we also reach out to them too. Podcasts and video game websites thrive on what people put into them and are often more than happy to work with us on anything such as contests or promoting each other. Everyone in the industry is extremely friendly and always happy to help out and we can't thank them enough for that. With Gamespot we did a contest offering some of our shirts on their podcast which was a huge success. We even got their host Guy Cocker to wear one of our HADOUKEN shirts on their Video Podcast (Start Select) when they reviewed Street Fighter 4. We're also big fans of smaller sites and podcasts such as Joypod and One Life Left so are willing to do almost anything to work with them guys.

Looking at the site you have an astonishing amount of items. Bags, clocks, posters, and even teddy bears. Any other items you want to add to this?
We've recently added hoodies to our range, just in time for those hot summer months. If anything we possibly stock too much but that doesn't mean people don't want to buy video game designs on teddy’s or bags. You'd be surprised at some of the items our customers buy and maybe even more surprised at where we've shipped them to. Our aim now is to make sure everyone is catered for, from kids to women to men and then to make everything better and hopefully cheaper.

So do you have an overall goal for the site? Will we be seeing Casually Hardcore stores on the high street anytime soon?
The overall goal is to just keep on producing even more designs. Gaming moves so fast and we move along right behind it, and sometimes even in front. There’s no point having our Red Ring Of Death shirts as our main shirt in 5 years time when a new Xbox is out so we always want to make more designs. We do try to make at least one new design available per week so do check back often or send in your own ideas. As for the high street, whilst there are no plans for a store we are in talks with a couple of other companies to get our shirts out there so watch this space.

Can you tell us of any future designs on the horizon? Personally we wouldn’t mind a “SonyLOL” t-shirt.
Consider it done! As for future designs we've got a whole bunch just waiting in the wings, so check back every week plus our 2010 video game calendar featuring original artwork inspired by 12 different games will be available in the latter half of 2009.