Threadless founder Jake Nickell and chief creative officer Jeffrey Kalmikoff chat with TechWeb's Jennifer Pahlka.
(Credit: James Martin / CNET)Threadless.com founder Jake Nickell and chief creative officer Jeffrey Kalmikoff on Friday chatted with TechWeb's Jennifer Pahlka about crowdsourcing design and feedback from a user-base that's buying up more than 100,000 T-shirts a month. Despite darkening economic times, Nickell says the site is still getting 150 to 200 user submitted designs per day, a number that the Threadless community whittles down to just nine that get released as new shirts on a weekly basis.
Kalmikoff said one of the things that keeps the designs coming in is how much designers are getting paid. According to him, the $2,000 (plus being able to retain the copyright on the image) is approximately four to five times what's being offered at other design shops. Nickell also said that unlike efforts from competitors, the Threadless formula has worked so well because the site doesn't ask designers to create T-shirt designs around specific things, something he said can limit the number of submissions they get.
Part of the operation that's not quite as streamlined, however is Threadless' marketing, something Nickell and Kalmikoff say they've learned on the fly after a few follies. "The whole idea of reciprocal promotion is something we now think about when doing a partnership," said Kalmikoff, who described early missteps where the company would offer what later turned out to be free sponsorship for movies, video games, and film festivals without getting any promotion in return.
Not all is bad though, Nickell says there are more than 800,000 people signed up for the company's weekly e-mail newsletter, which he says has driven repeat business.
To further the site's marketing push, Nickell says Threadless will soon be getting Facebook Connect integration. "All these moments when you could be sharing, commenting, posting a blog post. (That) interaction becomes content," he said. Threadless users who log-in with their Facebook credential can shoot their activity on the site and favorite designs back out to their public feed.
One thing that was not mentioned in the interview was how well the company's brick and mortar store was doing, and if the pair planned on continuing retail expansion. The Chicago store, which opened up in September of 2007 offers most all of what's available online, in addition to designer's art in a gallery space. It was also the first in a series of planned retail operations across the country, including stores in Colorado and California which have not yet opened.
- 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. ... Read more
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.
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.
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