In 2000, 311 was touring to support The From Chaos Album. I traveled with the band sporadically on this tour as more and more mail-order/Internet business was pouring in at home. Many shirts have been popular over the years but one that stood out was the 311 7-11 logo. It was one of the most popular. Whenever I ordered it though, in the back of my mind, I thought I wonder what 7-11 thinks of this. Well one day in October of 2000 we found out. The 7-11 corporation hired an attorney in New York, to contact us to say that they did not like us selling a shirt that looked so similar to their logo. They asked us to cease and desist selling the shirt, and to send them all the remaining shirts. We sent them a few boxes with an apology. Since we had just ordered hundreds of them we tried to unload them quickly at shows in New York, Pennsylvania, and Boston, at $5 each. They sold like crazy at $5 a pop, but soon we got another letter from 7-11 claiming damages. At this point, we decided to use them as giveaway shirts to local crew at the end of each night. Again, threatening letters came from their lawyers. At this point we just sent the rest to the lawyers and walked away from one of the best selling 311 shirts of all time. During the shows where we sold them for $5 some fans bought dozens at a time, and I still see them being auctioned on eBay from time to time. The venues who we asked to sell $5 HATED doing this, since it was equal work for ¼ pay. One venue hated it so much that they counted us back several dozen bootleg Jessica Simpson shirts slipped in with our returns for the evening, thereby increasing their profits. Merchandising is a cut throat affair, that any band who is popular is blessed by the curse of.
