Selling Stay T-shirts is a laughing matter
Levity is a big part of Stay’s brand personality
A young woman walked past our table just inside the door at the Civic Club of Harrisburg and read aloud from the front of a shirt.
“Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful,” she said matter-of-factly.
I joked, as I am wont to do, that she should stop her littering. I thought I’d get a smile instead of the disbelieving stare she presented before moving on. She gave me a similar look on her way out.
So much for my sometimes-dry sense of humor. I’m truly sorry if I offended the woman. It’s not my goal to antagonize customers, although my wife of 21 years, Sara, still contends that it’s sometimes hard to tell whether I’m kidding or being serious.
We are very serious about Stay when it comes to providing our customers with high-quality American-made products at a good value. We do everything in our power to deliver top-notch customer service, in part by engaging with customers in a respectful manner.
Levity is a big part of our brand personality because, well, we’re just trying to sell the world a T-shirt. We sing the praises of Hershey, Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA. We raise a toast to Pennsylvania, the “Kegstone” State and local brews of days gone by. We promote Made in USA but not in a preachy way.
We have strong convictions but don’t take ourselves or what we do that seriously, as evidenced by these social media posts:
Another exchange at the Civic Club of Harrisburg event illustrates how useful humor can be.
Two sisters and their brother gave me a hard time (good-naturedly, of course), which I returned in kind. There was a prolonged exchange with one sister, who practically pleaded with me to offer v-neck or scoop-necked shirts for people such as her who don’t like a crew-neck tee.
The siblings gave of their time and their money, each buying shirts and generally making my day with their willingness to be a little silly.
I have the sister’s email address for when we add a v-neck version of our Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful Tee. I’ll probably avoid making any jokes about her littering, though.