Operation
Designers upload their t-shirt designs to the
website, where visitors and members of the community
score them on a scale of 0 to 5. On average, around
1,500 designs compete in any given week. Each week, the
staff selects about ten designs.[3]
Each designer selected receives $2,000 in cash, a $500
gift certificate (which they may trade in for $200 in
cash), as well as an additional $500 for every reprint.[1]
On occasion, special contests—known as "Loves
Threadless"—run in association with various sponsors.
These contests set a theme for designs, with a selection
of additional prizes being awarded to the chosen winner;
special prizes often relate to the sponsor.[4]
The success of this concept led to several spin-off
projects by the same company, including ongoing design
competitions for t-shirt slogans at OMG Clothing and
neckties and wallpaper
at Naked and Angry. The competition from OMG Clothing
was later integrated into the main website with the
introduction of Threadless TypeTees. Multiple other
companies have adopted the community model created at
Threadless. Nevertheless, in mid-2006, Threadless
expanded in a more traditional direction, adding shirts
designed by selected artists. These designs, known as
Threadless Select designs, are not subject to the voting
process.
In the open source community, a Threadless
t-shirt or design is
considered to be crowd sourced because the designer and
the company retain all rights to the design. As the
"source" of a design—i.e., its vector graphics file—is
not available for download, it cannot be considered
"open source".
Threadless shirts are run in limited batches. When
shirts are sold out, customers can request a reprint.
However, reprinting occurs only when there is enough
demand, and the decision to reprint is ultimately up to
company. New shirts are released on Mondays.[5]
Additional product lines
In June 2006, Threadless added three additional
product lines:[6]
Threadless Kids
Selected winning designs printed on American Apparel
kid-sized t-shirts and
onesies. In March 2007, Threadless launched
ThreadlessKids.com, a site exclusively featuring these
products.
TypeTees
Winning slogans printed on standard
Fruit of the Loom or
American Apparel t-shirts using fonts courtesy of
T26.com, the result of the integration of OMG Clothing
into Threadless.
The Select Series
Designs contributed from Threadless designers who
have previously won the main competition four times or
more, bypassing the usual voting system, printed on
American Apparel t-shirts, with the usual restrictions
on designs extended somewhat to permit the use of more
colours (8 instead of the normal 5), foils and metallics.
Blik Wall graphics
In August 2007, "surface graphics" company Blik began
producing a line of decals based upon selected
Threadless designs.[7]
Threadless Prints
In May 2008, Threadless announced that they would be
printing selected
designs on high quality paper.[8]
Threadless Prints
TwitterTees
On May 19, 2009, Threadless partnered with
Twitter to allow users
to submit "tweets" to be voted on by the community. The
winning tweets are designed by and printed onto
Threadless shirts. The winners receive $400 and a $140
gift card to the Threadless.com family of sites.[9]
New T-shirts
In November 2006, Threadless announced that it would
begin printing designs on a proprietary brand of tee
shirts. Threadless posted in the Blog Forum on its
website:[10]
"Imagine a tee that is less boxy than a Fruit of
the Loom, but not as skinny as an American Apparel.
Imagine a tee whose fabric is softer than American
Apparel but not as thin."
The first design printed on the new shirts was titled
"I Heart Threadless" and featured the Threadless logo on
a charcoal-colored
tee.[11]
This change in tee shirts had long been encouraged by
community members, although there were some complaints
regarding the sizing of the new
shirts.
Beyond this, complaints had also been posed
regarding the side seams on the new tees. Worried
customers had been voicing their opinions of the new
shirts on the Threadless forum; in an effort to ease the
concern, Threadless employee Craig Shimala posted "We're
still toying with the
specs [of the new
tees]."[12]
On January 3, 2007, Shimala posted, "[Threadless] made
some changes based on everyone's input and should be
receiving the revised samples soon."[10]
On December 3, 2007, Threadless posted, "Over the
past 7 years, we have took [sic] to heart your comments,
compliments, and complaints to help create our very own
custom Threadless brand tee. [...] Over the next few
weeks, we'll be introducing more and more designs on
this new and exciting tee and eventually we'll be using
them exclusively!"
[13]
Retail store
In August 2007, Threadless announced the
grand opening of a
retail store,
[14]
located at 3011 North Broadway in
Chicago. A variety of shirts from the
website are available in the store and
change every Friday. In the upstairs
portion of the store is a gallery, in
which customers may sign up for design
classes.
[15]
Threadless
Tee-V
In March 2008, Threadless began
creating and releasing a weekly video
segment called Threadless Tee-V.
References
External
links
