The Jeff Hoskins Experiment
The Jeff Hoskins Experiment is simply this: Can we enjoy cool merchandise and at the same time enrich someones life? At just 200 pieces of merch sold, we could absolutely, and incredibly, change the outcome of one awesome individuals existence.
December 2021
Backstory
The GIVE and GET mission is simply: Sell merch to provide money for hyper local and hyper effective community support AND double as a way to give PAID training to musicians who want hard skillz in order to better fund their arts career. Last year from December through the beginning of February we sold our Classic Handyband Hoodie and with each purchase we were able to give away a childrens hoodie on the behalf of YOU the customer. Those hoodies went to kids in the Salvation Army family shelters here in town. We ended up selling about 50, and gave away over 70! Those (adorable) childrens hoodies were handed over to the Salvation Army of Austin on the Thursday before Snovid 2021! We wanted this years focus to turn inward towards our own music community.
The Vision
In an effort to compress his living expenses and maximize his ability to make money, Jeff has decided to try and turn a large closet in his studio into a fully functional kitchen. He says that although it's not ideal, the small space becomes a lot more manageable as a newly blind individual. If he can convert his studio space into a work/live space he feels that he might be able to continue to be a sound engineer to Austin's music community - not to mention actually be able to pay his mortgage, bills, and buy food too! We have dedicated to use all of the profits of this endeavor to provide all materials, appliances, and labor for the project. The project goal is $3k dollars, but at around $8k dollars we can also help him find solutions to sleeping, equipment repair, and storage solutions.
The MERCH
We have teamed up with a sharp and up and coming artist from right here in Austin (@sammyness_atx) to reimagine our classic Handyband logo to be used on The Jeff Hoskins Experiment merch ONLY! That means when you see someone sporting one of these limited press merch pieces, you know that YOU and THEM actually did something (together) with your hard earned dollars! Whether your rockin' a TOTES COOL tote bag, a RAD BASEBALL TEE, or one of our CLASSIC HOODIES you will KNOW you helped someone who is genuinely a great person, and also just a regular person - like the rest of us.
For the record: It was the genuine outreach of all of Jeff's friends who made this happen. It was actually really challenging to get Jeff to agree to be the recipient of this effort. He is not one to have his hand out, and took some convincing to let the community give him some help when he really could use it. This merch is intentionally priced to provide funds for this project, not to make us mad rich. The Handyband Collective will only be taking around 10% of the funds to pay for operations of the project, things like: advertising, administrative overhead, taxes, etc. All other proceeds go directly to Jeff and the musicians who will be working on his project.