41–50 of 112 posts
It was a nice monthly surprise. A cool design for the most part, though, fabric quality varied from one shirt to another. Some of the shirt's fabric was so thin, it did not hold much after few washes.
At some point, I canceled it.
You want to surprise me, no problem, I'll join the game, just make sure you play it fair.
I really loved Threadless back in the day and this was an interesting read. While it did a good job of covering what changes Threadless made that ultimately changed the culture around it and led to its fall, it didn't cover the why. Was their model no longer profitable? Were they facing outside competition (and what was that competition doing better?). Did they take money and have to grow big / fast and therefore sta…
What they should've done IMO is spin off a secondary company or website, approach Threadless' thousands of artists and get them to publish to that one too - while keeping the weekly competition and availability that made Threadless neat.
Are there any alternatives to Threadless? Tees from my last order have a completely horrible quality.
CottonBureau runs a bit more expensive, but the quality is top notch: https://cottonbureau.com/
What isn't quite clear to me from the article: are they still places around doing the competition/selection thing, or is everyone now offering "stores" to everyone? EDIT: Limited production runs (maybe originally needed because of printing tech, but also a possible marketing move) where also quite popular for a while.
https://shirt.woot.com/ has been doing the competition thing since 2007 -- almost as long as Threadless -- and is still going strong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"premature profitability"? I think it's easy to sit on the outside of a business and judge it smugly, but considering that the estimated net worth of the founder is north of $50mil ( https://www.fundera.com/blog/successful-entrepreneurs ), I don't think he would say that there is anything wrong with their "premature profitability". Maybe there is mismanagement, or poor decisions, or just not staying ahead of trends i…
Society6 and Redbubble are still losing money but they will also crush Threadless by the time it's over. This is a winner take all marketplace business, not a t-shirt business.
...What? Please explain why selling t-shirts online is a business where one winner will take all the market share.
Utilities are a natural monopoly. T-shirts are a commodity. There will always be thousands of sites selling them.
I'm just one data point but having purchased from Threadless a few times, I haven't bought one graphic tee in the past five years or more. The novelty of a graphic tee wears off quickly. I'd rather have a more expensive but high quality plain shirt I'll like for years to come.
The shift to a more equitable royalties and rights model removed the gamification elements of Threadless that made the site so addictive to some designers and users... many designers said that the windfall $2,500 prize for winning the weekly design competition was preferable to them and they lost the motivation to submit designs due to the change.
That's a pretty dark lesson in human nature. If you give somebody nothing, they'll judge you by the big payoff you gave to someone else. If you give them a little more than nothing, they'll judge you by that. Better to give a few people a lot and give the rest nothing but dreams so everyone will always see you in a positive light.
> Threadless fans report that the shirts now appear in UK T.J. Maxx stores Over here they're known as TK Maxx.
Are there any alternatives to Threadless? Tees from my last order have a completely horrible quality.
Expanding on that - what's your go-to T-shirt shop inside the EU? Ordering from Threadless (US) to the EU is quite expensive (shipping + taxes) and I haven't found a quality EU alternative yet.