Threadless: Prints and Inc
May 20, 2008
The Most Innovative Small Company in America? Threadless, according to Inc. magazine. The cover of the current issue highlights the $30M in sales and 30% margins. The Customer is the Company is the title of the article, which describes the way in which Threadless outsources value chain activities, including design, to its customers.
I join Jason at 37signals in congratulating the Threadless guys.
It’s a big week for them. On Monday, they added prints to their product range. Here’s Tree Town, my favorite of the first three shirt designs to be available as prints. It’s $35 for a limited edition art print.
Platform for T-Shirt Printers
May 1, 2008
If you want to print t-shirts using designs provided by others, take a look at Pikiware. Mashable Mark describes it as a company providing a fulfillment system designed to work with digital garment printers.
Let’s broaden the appeal of this post. Following this paragraph, there will be a t-shirt para, then a Web 2.rightnow para! And Pikiware isn’t just for t-shirt printers, it’s also for people who print hoodies! and mugs! etc!
If you’re reading this because you’re interested in t-shirts, then you might be interested to know that April 28 was the (IMHO) best shirt release Monday at Threadless for a while. My favorite of the new crop is “Attack of Literacy!”
If you’re reading this because you follow web stuff, then the point of this post is that Pikiware is the latest example of the platform trend. If Web 2.0 was about user-generated content and the web as platform, then Web 2.rightnow is about vertical platforms: platforms to enable others to build particular things on the web.
Hey, that oxymoron, vertical platform, deserves its own post.
Escape From Control T (shirt)
March 14, 2008
I found this rather wonderful image via reddit. It turns out that its a design for a tshirt at Uneetee. It’s a new design, currently on “pre-sale” for $12.
The regular price for a shirt seems to be $17.99, which isn’t out of line for shirts with cool designs printed on American Apparel.
Bestees and New Ts at Threadless
March 10, 2008
And the winners of the Bestee awards are… many. Partly Hungry Skies, pictured here, won for Title of the Year. It looks, if anything, even better on the kids’color of light blue. To provide some context, the Bestees are also known as the Threadless awards.
Today, being Monday, is new shirt day at Threadless. One of the new designs shares a name with one of our distinguished local Boston bloggers: Collateral Damage. By I’m not sure what I mean by “distinguished.” When the term is used about me, I think that it means “possessing gray hair.”
Spring and Music in the Month
March 1, 2008
“White rabbits,” or something like that. I wonder if posting about Microsoft before rabbits will bring me bad luck for the new month? Anyway, here we are in March, and spring is in the month, if not in the air. Or, at least, the Spring Equinox falls in March (on the 20th this year).
A few days before the equinox, Volume One of She and Him’s collaboration will be released. She is Zooey Deschanel, he is M Ward, and they first got together to record a cover of a song from my favorite album.
She did most of the lead singing and writing for Volume One. Her voice, for me, somehow evokes spring. I think that I thought that even before reading her thoughts on songs, acorns, and winter that appear on the MySpace page. Anyway, here’s “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”
Here’s something else spring-like and musical. It’s the design for We Are the Music Makers, a t-shirt design at Go Ape.
I hope that March has started well for you.
Tis the Season to Be Threadless
November 20, 2007
The Threadless holiday sale is on. From now until December 16, most shirts are $10. My favorite of the new crop of shirts is One Handprint of Nature.
Scary Kids
October 30, 2007
Just when I’d given myself the go-ahead to get both of the shirts reprinted last week, Threadless came out with this new one: Children Under the Bed.
My own kids were at least this scary last night. But once I realized that neither of them was going to go back to sleep, we had a pizza party at 5 this morning, and a good time was had by all.
Now, time to buy a Portable DVD Player for those long car trips…
Threadless Reprints
October 23, 2007
Threadless has just reprinted two of my favorite shirts: Star Men in Moon’s Milk (see image) and Foxy. O happy day!
Threadless Moose Service
September 27, 2007
We recently received six t-shirts from Threadless. We actually ordered five shirts and a onesie. But the Elusive Chocolate Moose arrived on a shirt instead.
So I had my first encounter with Threadless customer service. The response to my email, from Brianne, was prompt, pleasant, and professional: “we will need you to send the wrong tee back to us and include your return shipping receipt… When we receive it, we will reimburse the shipping cost and send the correct onesie.”
But we decided to hang on to the shirt. It’s hard to part with a moose, especially a chocolate one.
