Webware

Start-ups that sell T-shirts are a dime a dozen, but a tool to let you search across all of the stores has been nonexistent. Enter PleaseDressMe, a simple search engine that lets you hunt for specialty T-shirts from several vendors at once using some simple filters.

Included are big-name online T-shirt stores like Threadless, BustedTees and TShirtHell. More will continue to be added, but for the time being the selection is far greater than any of those stores alone.

You can find the shirt you're looking for by keyword, tag, the color or price. You can also see shirts that the engine thinks are related. In my testing of this it tended to do a pretty good job, mostly basing the decision on color, although in one case it managed to pull together several shirts featuring boats or water from a T-shirt of Noah's Ark. That was impressive.

All links on the site lead to the online store where you can buy the shirt. Missing from the engine is some of the local color you'll find on those sites, like their user ratings, reviews, and photos of the shirt on actual people. Presumably the site plans to make its money off of affiliate linkage and sponsored results which are not yet a part of the picture.

PleaseDressMe is the creation of Wine Library TV's Gary Vaynerchuk and his younger brother AJ, as well as Joe Stump, Digg.com's lead architect.

Related: Web Shirts: 20 rad T-shirt sites

PleaseDressMe lets you search for T-shirts by tags, colors, price tag and keyword. It also shows you shirts that are related to the results.

(Credit: CBS Interactive)

New York based Neighborhoodies has a cool new tool for people who are all about customization called the "hoodie-o-matic." Like services that let you custom design clothing to sell to others, you can create an entire garment in your browser and see the results in real time as you toggle various options.

The results aren't actually a new service offering. In fact, the previous system would let you do the same thing, although it was a series of drop-down menus, the result of which you'd only see once you received the garment. The new system takes away that element of surprise, and also cuts down on some of the manpower needed to transfer over those design orders for printing.

I had great fun creating the one pictured below, although as you can see from the price tag these designs don't come cheap. Each additional design element costs a little extra on top of the base price, although you can stack on as many as you want.

For now the tool only works with hooded sweatshirts (hence the name), but considering the large volume of t-shirts the company sells, there could be a version for t-shirts or another articles later on down the line.

The Hoodie-o-matic lets you design hoodies with all sorts of custom touches. They don't come cheap though.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

It's no secret I'm a fan of Web T-shirt shops. This time last year I rounded up 20 different online shops that specialize in selling the cotton wonders, but few of those were as interesting as Cameesa.

Like many online T-shirt operations, everything on Cameesa is designed by freelancers who submit their stuff with the hopes of making a buck and getting some recognition. These designs (once approved by human editors) go into a pool where shoppers can pick out a shirt they want; the only catch is that they've got to invest in it so Cameesa can scrap together enough money to get it printed.

Designs have 31 days to get funded, and any investors who fund a failing design get their money back. If a design is completely funded, the 20 benefactors get the first run of the shirt and a small cut of future sales. The designer gets $500 and a free print of his or her shirt. From then on, anyone who comes by Cameesa can freely purchase that shirt like they would any other shop--seeding the dividends to the initial investors.

The shop currently has three shirts that have gotten over the funding hump. Meanwhile, the upcoming pool is filled with a handful of really good-looking designs that can be sorted by date or what needs the most funding. Because of the slim selection I'll still likely stick to places like Neighborhoodies which pumps out 200 new designs every month, and Shirt.Woot.com which has a new shirt every day for $10 shipped. Neither of those have nearly as cool of a business opportunity for the buyers, though.

Artists and shirt investors can make a buck or two off a hot design with Cameesa, a crowd-funded online T-shirt shop.

(Credit: Cameesa)

CafePress and Zazzle got you down when it comes to creating an online shop? Check out Pikistore: half site builder, half storefront for apparel that sports whatever logo or design you slap on it. Believe it or not, it's from the same folks who did Comeeko, the zany comic strip builder our very own Caroline McCarthy called "the best Web 2.0 site in the history of the universe."

Pikistore's angle for getting you to ditch the competition is that the online store you create exists as its own destination, and not a part of some network of other stores. Unlike Etsy, which does something similar, but focuses on the network of other sellers as part of the advantage, Pikistore is all about letting you create a standalone site that can be populated with your products, then giving you a way to make it a part of your existing blog or Web site.

Make your own custom clothing to sell to others with Pikistore.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Like other online store makers, you can take a single design and populate it onto a multitude of products without any sort of repetitive reproduction on your part. You can set markups and pick which items you want to let people buy, from mouse pads to kitchen aprons

It's also got some pretty slick-looking themes you can simply click to reskin the look and feel of your site entirely. Users of WordPress, or any other Web-based blogging platforms, will be familiar with this, and advanced users who want to make the store simply match with their own sites can drop in the CSS and whatever graphics, logos, or backgrounds they're using. It also allows for free domain transfer, which means you can link it up to your site's .com address without having to sign up for a premium plan--something we've rarely seen in a free service.

As for the end result, most shirts cost around what they do on other services. Like competing customized apparel stores, you don't need to buy an entire box of shirts; you and your buyers can simply get them printed one at a time. What makes the service especially cool is that you can track some of these purchasing statistics, including where your traffic is coming from, and what operating system and browser your users are on. These are the things typically found in analytics services like Google's, and very helpful for helping to target your audience.

I'm interested to see what the final product looks like, something that can only be accomplished with a purchase. My one qualm is that the editing interface might be a bit complicated to novice users who aren't comfortable going outside the general boundaries of the theme builder. Intermediate to advanced users, however, will find the high level of customization refreshing.

In case you're wondering what it's like to actually create a Pikistore, I've embedded an example video below (try not to get nauseous):

Related: Web Shirts: 20 rad T-shirt sites

Internet commerce is becoming the new pastime for many in my generation. Generation Yers like to buy interesting T-shirts online, and there's no shortage of sites out there that are putting out an absurd amount of user-generated designs. Here's a list of more than 20 quality sites that put cotton, and inspiration, on your back.

Readymade:

These services sell shirts that are designed by users and professionals.
• Threadless is one of the most popular shirtmakers out there. It started out with user votes to pick out which shirts would go on sale, and have since moved on to independent designers. When shirts sell out, they're typically not for sale again unless the demand becomes great. They're also set to open a retail store in Chicago next month.

• Glarkware, a small Canadian shirt company, is based out of Toronto, Ontario, and has a fairly eccentric line of humor-related shirts. They've also got a line of T-shirts on the way for toddlers.

• Shirt.Woot. From the same bunch that does good ol' Woot.com and Wine.Woot.com, is Shirt.Woot.com--a one-shirt-per-day service that rolls out a new design every night at midnight Central time. Every shirt is always $10 with free shipping, along with the option to get it delivered in two days for another five bucks. While a good deal of the shirts are designed by professionals, the service also runs a weekly "derby" with user-generated designs. The most popular design goes on sale, and the designer gets a cut of the profits.
  

  Dreaded Spam becomes T-shirts at SpamShirt.com.

• Bountee is a hybrid service that offers both professionally designed T-shirts and a build-it-yourself solution. Bountee features a variety of "Web 2.0" features like tagging, user ratings, and commenting. It's also got a really slick, easy-to-use design.

• Split The Atom is a U.K.-based T-shirt company that's pretty much exactly like Threadless, but with a smaller selection. It also takes user designs in return for a one-time cash prize.

• Design by Humans has a very small collection of shirts, but offers some pretty decent prize money for winning designers with a daily, weekly, and monthly design contest. Each designer also gets their own profile page for listing any background information and to showcase some of their other works.

• BustedTees and Defunker are two very different Net T-shirt services from the same company. Bustedtees is more about humor, while Defunker offers more designer solutions akin to Threadless. Both sites are really slick, but between the two, Defunker feels a bit snappier. There's also a pretty large price gap, with most Bustedtees topping out at around $16, and Defunker averaging in the high-$20s and mid-$30s.

• T-ShirtHell. There's a reason this site has a warning page and a hellish name. These shirts are the kind that will get you stares in public, and usually not for a good reason. Definitely not for the faint of heart, or workplace.

• The Cotton Factory doesn't actually make cotton, but they have a very solid selection of designer, and humor T-shirts. There's even a section of T-shirts less than 10 bucks. There's some real gems in this place, especially if you like "ninja" apparel.
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Online T-shirt retailer Threadless has announced it will be opening its first brick-and-mortar retail store in its hometown of Chicago next month. The store will open its doors on Friday, September 14, and will celebrate the launch with two free concerts that night (one all ages, one over 18).

Threadless has been hailed for its innovative business model, which it calls an "ongoing T-shirt design competition." Creatively inclined fans can submit their own T-shirt design ideas, and winning selections can rake in $2,000 in cash for the designer. There are plenty of quirky features, too--if you submit a photo of yourself wearing a Threadless T-shirt, for example, you earn a discount on your next one.

Threadless' in-house artist works on the store's 'mashup window paintings.'

(Credit: Threadless)

The company, which was started in 2000, has received more than 60,000 submissions and boasts more than 300,000 members.

"Sneak peeks" of the new Threadless store have been appearing on the company's news blog throughout the summer. They're clearly going for the same kind of tactics that made their Web site famous: in lieu of shopping bags, the store will use recycled cloth bags that can be returned to the store in exchange for a $5 discount; the store will also feature frequently changing artwork to match its current T-shirt designs.