Local Success Mondo Tees Hits New Sales Milestone

Alamo Drafthouse spinoff Mondo Tees has reached a new milestone.  The boutique store opened in the original downtown Drafthouse location on Colorado, selling t-shirts and custom posters for Drafthouse events.

Over time, Mondo has built a powerhouse brand name working with in-demand poster artists and building a license portfolio for major film franchises. Sales of the extremely limited-run print editions have become notorious for selling out mere seconds after being announced.

Since the debut of the new Mondo gallery during SXSW this March, three month-long shows have featured a theme or artist resulting in dozens more sold-out pieces, which inevitably can be found on eBay listed for prices several times the original cost of purchase (at least). Mondo has also worked with studios to produce several posters given only to attendees of midnight film openings at IMAX locations.

This week, fresh from a San Diego Comic Con trip selling a number of show-exclusive prints, Mondo announced a first-of-a-kind sale for the store. (The trip itself followed the announcement Mondo had acquired the license for a run of posters featuring the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films.)  

For 24 hours on July 18, Mondo would accept orders for a poster by fan-favorite artist Olly Moss commemorating the opening of the final entry in Christopher Nolan's Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises. Rather than specifying the usual limited run of 200 to 400 prints, the edition size would be determined solely by the number of orders placed that day. No problems with overloaded servers, no problems with selling out, no dreaded eBay "flippers," just a really cool poster that any fan could have for $40.

The sale completed at 12:01 am, and in minutes Mondo proprietor and driving force Justin Ishmael tweeted "Looks like the Olly Moss THE DARK KNIGHT RISES poster will be an edition of 9,350. Thanks everyone!"

After print runs of 400 posters, 9,350 is an extraordinarily large order to fill. Mondo's credit-card processor will also probably be double-checking their systems this week in wide-eyed disbelief. The purchase price of $40 along with shipping and Texas sales tax brought the total for each poster order to $58.46. It's not every day a small boutique store processes over half a million dollars in sales!