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Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

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Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#41

Post by mathattack »

jedberg wrote: post #14

If you want to build a huge business, building a platform where other people can make money using it is a great way to do that. eBay, AirBnB, Uber/Lyft/etc, Teespring. Even Google, with their adwords product (and reddit with it's self serve ads). There's lots of great businesses where people pay you for a service, but if you can create one where people make money when you do, they are heavily invested in your success…

Very correct. And... You're not requiring undue capital or specialty expertise. I like the idea quite a bit.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#42

Post by mikefivedeuce »

askinakhan wrote: post #32
jedberg wrote: post #14

If you want to build a huge business, building a platform where other people can make money using it is a great way to do that. eBay, AirBnB, Uber/Lyft/etc, Teespring. Even Google, with their adwords product (and reddit with it's self serve ads). There's lots of great businesses where people pay you for a service, but if you can create one where people make money when you do, they are heavily invested in your success…

Yeh absolutely. It's another extension of the sharing economy. These kind of business models change societal habits and as generations shed, the sharing model will become more prominent (It's even been predicted by Gartner; not that this should be taken as gospel). Think about the amount of income you could make from renting your flat (AirBnB), Being a driver on Uber, Selling your skills on Udemy and now selling your…

I'm not sure I agree that it's part of the sharing economy because the users aren't gaining income from assets they already own. Teespring is making sure that they control the platform that users need to continue doing business, similar to how Apple controls the App Store, Google with AdSense, Amazon, etsy, eBay, etc. If they can expand the offering beyond t-shirts, this is a really interesting way to open small scale production to a broader audience.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#43

Post by mathattack »

I have to believe this is a bigger play than just T-shirts. If they're in the "create your own retail company" business, they're either in comp with Amazon, or an acquisition target of them. Either way, it's an interesting position.

When you look at their board, you see visionaries, not operators.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#44

Post by icpmacdo »

jedberg wrote: post #14

If you want to build a huge business, building a platform where other people can make money using it is a great way to do that. eBay, AirBnB, Uber/Lyft/etc, Teespring. Even Google, with their adwords product (and reddit with it's self serve ads). There's lots of great businesses where people pay you for a service, but if you can create one where people make money when you do, they are heavily invested in your success…

Also mobile app stores.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#45

Post by WhitneyLand »

ensignavenger wrote: post #40
anigbrowl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics. Suppose you have a factory and a growing order book but you're running at or near full capacity; if you get any substantial increase in the number of orders, it's going to take longer and longer to fulfill them, and customers might start to go your competitors if they feel the quality of your service has dropped. This is a diseconomy of scale - you've run out of room to grow and the more business you get t…

Excellent answer- I wonder though why more start ups don't take out loans/issue debt? Is it simply because they can't find anyone willing to lend to them at reasonable interest rates? I would think a company like the one you describe would be a pretty good bet for a lender to give a loan to build a factory.

They do, and there are companies setup to make those kind of loans but the parameters have to be just right.

Also things like IP, or growth curve, can usually not be used as collateral. You start to need deep analysis of those assets and people willing to bet on them which is where VCs come in.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#46

Post by physcab »

askinakhan wrote: post #32
jedberg wrote: post #14

If you want to build a huge business, building a platform where other people can make money using it is a great way to do that. eBay, AirBnB, Uber/Lyft/etc, Teespring. Even Google, with their adwords product (and reddit with it's self serve ads). There's lots of great businesses where people pay you for a service, but if you can create one where people make money when you do, they are heavily invested in your success…

Yeh absolutely. It's another extension of the sharing economy. These kind of business models change societal habits and as generations shed, the sharing model will become more prominent (It's even been predicted by Gartner; not that this should be taken as gospel). Think about the amount of income you could make from renting your flat (AirBnB), Being a driver on Uber, Selling your skills on Udemy and now selling your…

Not all sharing economy "jobs" are created equal though. Being an Uber driver (or Taskrabbit or Instacarter or Postmate courier,etc) is certainly closer to being a servant than being an owner of a business. If we're thinking of societal impact, we have to also keep in mind the widening disparity between owners and workers.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#47

Post by anigbrowl »

ensignavenger wrote: post #40
anigbrowl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics. Suppose you have a factory and a growing order book but you're running at or near full capacity; if you get any substantial increase in the number of orders, it's going to take longer and longer to fulfill them, and customers might start to go your competitors if they feel the quality of your service has dropped. This is a diseconomy of scale - you've run out of room to grow and the more business you get t…

Excellent answer- I wonder though why more start ups don't take out loans/issue debt? Is it simply because they can't find anyone willing to lend to them at reasonable interest rates? I would think a company like the one you describe would be a pretty good bet for a lender to give a loan to build a factory.

Thanks for all the nice comments!

They do sometimes, but in recent years banks have been more reluctant to lend and issuing bonds typically involves an awful lot of legal overhead, so I think it's just easier to issue equity. Another reason is that if business doesn't go as well as you hope the debt might allow creditors to secure your secured assets/stock, whereas if you issue equity that's not an issue. Also, for early stage companies raising equity can be a good way to meet people you'd want on the board advising on the future direction of the firm.

But you know I just know about this second hand from being into economics. If you search for 'capital formation' you'll find lots of stuff and some people like grellas here at HN are specialists in that.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#48

Post by unclebucknasty »

fabiandesimone wrote: post #31
dangrossman wrote: post #4

It's surprising to me the degree to which Teespring has become part of the affiliate marketing community. The same group of people that normally spend all their time pushing "get rich quick" schemes, MLM programs, dating site ads on social networks and fake news articles about diet pills have really embraced t-shirts for some reason. There's a whole ecosystem of products around Teespring marketing businesses -- landi…

I'm an affiliate marketeer. Couple of points: 1) Not sure why all the hate towards us. We can take a company from zero to millions overnight. I get that there are some shady stuff floating around but that's not 100% of the industry. 2) Facebook + Teespring is almost a perfect combination. 3) Aff. Marketeers have created some issues in FB using Custom Audiences (T-shirts that said stuff like "This was made specificall…

We're in the space and I can say that affiliate marketing can be an unnecessarily shady industry from the top to the bottom.

It doesn't just come from the affiliate side. It can also come from the retailers and networks.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#49

Post by nana_gb »

dangrossman wrote: post #4

It's surprising to me the degree to which Teespring has become part of the affiliate marketing community. The same group of people that normally spend all their time pushing "get rich quick" schemes, MLM programs, dating site ads on social networks and fake news articles about diet pills have really embraced t-shirts for some reason. There's a whole ecosystem of products around Teespring marketing businesses -- landi…

As someone with over 14 years of experience in the industry, as an affiliate marketer and then the maintainer of the most widely used open source tracking and analytics software for affiliates, it's surprising to me how many startups choose to not leverage the affiliate marketing community as a powerful traction and growth channel.

I don't post much, but based on what I see here, many startups would be 10x more likely to succeed if they knew how to correctly leverage the affiliate channel for traction and growth.

One of many things Teespring did right was to build features into the platform that enabled affiliates/marketers to profitably test, optimize and scale their tee shirt campaigns.

For example, the ability for marketers to easily place their Facebook conversion/retargeting pixels on the Teespring site, meant that affiliates now had the visibility needed to profitably spend their own money promoting Teespring campaigns via paid acquisition channels (mainly Facebook ads).

I'll agree partly with you and say that there's a segment of the affiliate community that you want to stay away from, and I'm sure Teespring has their share of trouble affiliates. Unfortunately, the rotten apples are usually the most visible and make the whole community look bad.

Here's what I see is needed to help solve some of these problems:

1. More transparency into the affiliate marketing channel. Startups need to feel comfortable knowing that they are not working with affiliates that use unauthorized marketing methods and messaging.

2. Affiliates need to be more comfortable knowing that they are not going to be cut out once a business sees the successful methods being used by affiliates to drive sales, leads, growth etc. Teespring's model actually does a lot to protect affiliates and the designers that use their platform because the interests of both parties are closely aligned.

3. Startups need more education about the affiliate marketing community and the best ways to leverage affiliates as a traction channel. It's unfortunate, but the comment from @dsugarman is a perfect example of what can go wrong while Teespring shows what can go right. They basically turned every single person who designs a shirt on their platform into an affiliate, and gave them all the tools and support they needed to succeed.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#50

Post by cheez »

fabiandesimone wrote: post #31
dangrossman wrote: post #4

It's surprising to me the degree to which Teespring has become part of the affiliate marketing community. The same group of people that normally spend all their time pushing "get rich quick" schemes, MLM programs, dating site ads on social networks and fake news articles about diet pills have really embraced t-shirts for some reason. There's a whole ecosystem of products around Teespring marketing businesses -- landi…

I'm an affiliate marketeer. Couple of points: 1) Not sure why all the hate towards us. We can take a company from zero to millions overnight. I get that there are some shady stuff floating around but that's not 100% of the industry. 2) Facebook + Teespring is almost a perfect combination. 3) Aff. Marketeers have created some issues in FB using Custom Audiences (T-shirts that said stuff like "This was made specificall…

What kinds of things do you do to go from zero to millions? What is affiliate marketing if not the spammy stuff?
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