PUBLIC ANOUNCMENT #1

FEB 2026

In February 2026, we announced the financial difficulties the business is experiencing. You, our clients, rallied behind us & helped us push forward. but we're still not out of the woods, and business is perpetually uncertain. Advertising helped us to grow, but the return on ad spend wasn't worth the tens of thousands spent every month. Ads were turned off - and the uncertainty of the businesses future began.

HUGE SUPPORT

We heard from the true day dwellers.

After the announcements, the response was huge. We stopped spending £30k a month on ads, despite it being our main revenue stream.. and our sales didn't drop, in fact, they improved! After a terrible start to the year, that massive reduction in costs, with improved sales put vital cash flow into the business, considering we had accumulated tens of thousands in debt through years of aggressive growth.

These expenses accumulated through needing new equipment, new premises, more staff and everything inbetween. The support was immense. It was so overwhelming to see from far and wide how much the brand meant to so many & it reminded me why I loved doing the business.

We knew this huge response wasn't going to be permanent every month, but, there was hope.

Always Broke, Never Broken

DEBT CONSOLIDATION

Our financial commitments became a glooming concern. Because of the rate we'd grown over the years, we had to commit to larger premises, to maintain the demand of the workload and to allow us to procure equipment that ensured the quality and improve the speed of production.

Now that ads were off, workload had dropped, significantly, we needed to suss how to keep Day Dwellers engaged whilst also managing the rolling credit agreements.

We were able to consolidate all our lease agreements, ad account invoices, bank loands and everything else into one capital agreement, that works on a % split of all of our revenue month on month. This removed a signficant amount of interest that was accumulating monthly and made the debts manageable. As part of that agreement, we are unable to turn off the store and also, if we ever didn't have a sale in a single day, we would be in breach of our capital loan agreement and would be required to pay the debt in full. in 9 years, we've never had a day without a sale. Our worst day would be £300, so we had to keep sales alive.

Now, we had to work harder than ever to build sales and get the consolidated debt paid off in the coming years.

Things Are heating up

SUMMER RELEASES

The start of Summer is normally good for e-commerce clothing. The change in season means changed of wardrobes, holidays are booked and new holiday wardrobes are needed, festival season is coming and we always push metal festival design for the metal fest Day Dwellers.

The UK saw a huge heat wave out of nowhere, so we pulled our summer release early to keep up with demand for more tank tops, shorts etc.

Sales were healthy. Not great, but not bad.

Another month we push on.

Uh-Oh.

This isn't Good.

This was the month that the support slowed down.

The relentless hot weather in the UK meant that hoodies obvioulsy weren't being purchased which is a higher revenue product for us.. there's only so many t-shirts and tanks you can sell before everyone's got them.

Summer can get quiet, especially later Summer, it does it every year.

But we have minimum sales to do to make sure the premises is paid and my two employees are paid, and we weren't selling enough.

At this point I made it clear to the staff, who are good friends of mine, that new jobs may be required and I will support them as long as I can. Charlie & Joel are top tier employees & are close friends of mine. They wanted to ride or die with me until the very end. We spoke to the landlord about exiting our 5 year lease early, it looked possible, but it turns out it wasn't. The warehouse we have was essential for the previous level of demand. Now we're doing less sales, we're lucky to have two days of work. It was more important to me that I could keep the guys looked after. I stopped paying myself from the business and got my brain on the thinking table.

We kept our heads up and we powered forward. A complete overhaul in how we do business was needed.

The End, Was Just The Beginning.

WELCOME TO CHAPTER II

We're changing everything.

3 for 2 was our evergreen deal on tees. We wanted to ensure that if we were paying loads in ads, that if we got your interest, that you were happier leaving with 3 tees, than just 1, increasing our average order values.

However, this came at a cost. A free tee every time you bought two costs us money. Money that we didn't have. It needed to end.

We saw a demand in higher tier, premium products, but this means higher costs. I didn't just want to slap any old design on a fancier shirt and just charge more for the sake of it. I wanted it to be different. Still us. Still Day Dweller. But even better.

Thus the Chapter II range was born. One design dropped every week for 6 weeks combined with the end of the 3 for 2 deal.

Because the deal was ending, we saw a really great surge in orders. It was a breath of fresh air. it gave us some hope whilst sales were awful. The new premium tees were super popular it felt a corner was turned, despite there being a long way to go.

Lots was in the pipeline based off client feedback.

The 'Death By Tee's subs were launched to give Day Dwellers a regular tee service but for something exceptional, not just any old tee.

More was in the pipeline, but we needed to walk before we ran.

Another month, in the right direction. For Now.

This Is Bad

Our First Time Ever Selling £0 In a day.

August has gone from bad to worse.

Our worst sales day in the past, with or without advertising was around £300. In order for us to survive, we need to do around £1000 a day average.

We are seeing £50-150 days. We for the first time ever had had nearly fully days with £0 sales, with luckily one tee being ordered at 9PM. In order to not breach our capital agreement, we HAVE to have at LEAST one sale. I'm at the point where I need to buy something from myself just to make sure we're not in breach of that agreement.

August is typically a weak month. Summer is ending, everyones spent their money, not many plans are being made, no ones planning new wardrobes. We've release SO many new items but still, there's only so much we can do.

On the 13th, we released 'The Vault', old popular designs of ours, re-release for 1 month only. There was some intererst for sure. The 'Shred Til You're Dead' design was re-released and revamped, but, it was a weak release. We needed a good 80% more than we sold.

August is now 50% behind our worst month ever. If this continues, we're f*cked.

More is in the pipeline, but i'm working most nights until 2-4am, relentlessly designing whilst also managing my tattoo clients work + designing marketing campaigns + trying to manage my own sanity.

But, we rest when we're dead.

We push forward. We have some more bits to come, but we need a golden goose at this point.

TIME FOR A CHANCE

Something new

We have a full commercial digital printing space.

We have operators hungry for work.

We know so many bands, brands and small businesses that have SO much headache with merch.

It's time for Day Dweller to stop being the sole bread winner for all of our financial commitments.

We are working on a seperate brand, that will concentrate on offering affordable, high quality merch to the grafters, bands and small businesses alike that need merch support.

If you know a brand, band or small business that needs merch, we want to hear from you. Send us a DM on instagram.

More info to follow.

TO THE NEXT STEP.

We will continue to provide updates to this page as the situation develops.

Please continue placing your orders and showing your support, it honestly might just be tees and clothing, but this brand means the world to us.

BIG LOVE
LEW & TEAM DDW