Simon Kings excellent T-shirt Revolution article over at psfk just published its piece with Oddica. Its an excellent read and I think they came across well, they’ve achieved alot in a short period of time but are modest with it. I particularly liked:

…In only three months, we’ve developed a network of Customers and Artists who really care about Oddica, and it would be extremely difficult to ever call it quits.

Oddicas branding has been high quality from the start, the designs and site were slick, and they were upfront about their values right from the beginning. Its easier to buy into a company when you know exactly what it stands for and how it operates. In my eyes this transparency only promotes loyalty and customer buy-in.

Do you plan on giving your customers any control over your business at all?

“We already give Customers that in a sense. There are a handful of changes we’ve already made where a well-reasoned e-mail from a Customer swayed our opinion and resulted in us making a change. In the future, we might surprise a loyal Customer and give them free reign to pick the next Oddica design. Or run Oddica for a day?”

I think this is one area they could definetely focus on in the future to help keep people loyal to the brand. I think there is a direct link between Involvement & Loyalty. While the current model is sure to generate artist loyalty, finding ways to allow decisions to be made by your community would also keep them interested and involved.

I’ve been on holiday for a week, hence the lack of posts. I have returned now and I’m busy setting up some cool stuff for the next few weeks. In the absence of having anything interesting to say I’m attempting to fill time and posts with this rather lame news round-up.

1) Threadless reprinted probably their most popular t-shirt ”Communist Party” again. It really is a great t-shirt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2) Jake over at T-shirt Alert had a couple of good posts.

 

 

 

 

The first was about an interesting company called Seattle Exchange which offer a clothing modification service. I’ve heard of this being done at store drop-ins etc but never commercialised in this way. Its not really to my taste but interesting none the less.

The second was on Karmaloops (fairly) new etsy type offering called “Kazbah”, read what they have to say about it here (if you havent seen it already)

3) Somehow I missed Look Zippys take on the Virtual Community/Design Contest/Open Innovation. I’m setting up an interview with them as we speak. In the meantime the Mass Customisation guru Frank Piller has summed up them up well here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Normal posts shall resume in the next few days.

There is a great article on fashion psfk about the “online t-shirt revolution”.

I found out about this from a really nice post about Hiphipuk over at Exicting Commerce. The fashion psfk article will be in several parts, meeting some of the big web 2.0 T companies, which should be really interesting.

This week its Australians “People Like Us“. This was an excellent interview skipping the general background and getting stuck into what it is that makes People Like Us different and their take on this exciting industry. One of the things that attracts me most about the t-shirt industry is that its a great test bed for e-commerce in general. T-shirts are cheap to make, distribute and a t-shirt company needs little capital to startup. I think that this means the t-shirt industry is able to be more innovative than other ecommerce areas, the more successful models crossing over to into different industries. Judging by the recent flurry of serious journalism focusing on the t-shirt industry people are starting to take notice. You can find another fascinating article about the underground t-shirts brands by Rob Walker here (you will need to register for NY Times to get access, but its worth it)

Whats the future of the design contest format? Its a crowded market place these days, one company that I think could make it interesting again is Spreadshirt.

The Draw from spreadshirt looks intruiging and hints at a wider push towards design contests in the future. This is also the first venture I’ve seen under both the spreadshirt and la fraise banners. I thought that spreadshirt might rebrand La Fraise but I think it’s a smart move that they haven’t, after all the have different target markets and La Fraise has a great rep in its market space. I think this design contest (and I dont know how its going to run so I could be way off the mark with this) could be an evolution in the format because of spreadshirts one-off production capabilities. The design contest is an attractive format because:

1. It attracts community by offering involvement and discussion (you know my thoughts on community, if not read the community is king series here)

2. It reduces the risk for the host company, the voting allows you to see the popularity of a product before you’ve gone to the trouble of printed a thousand examples of it that you now have to try and offload. Threadless from years of experience and sales data can probably forecast better than anyone the likely interest in a design and configure production to match. Its a much safer investment to spend thousands of $’s on a run of t-shirts if hundreds of people have said its great.

Spreadshirts model is different, they own now own not only the format in La Fraise but the production as well (in spreadshirt) providing them with profit from producing one-off t-shirts.

Wheres the part where this gets interesting? Now…

Spreadshirts design contests can follow a different format. Take Threadless’ for example - like a design that was submitted? It didnt win? Oh dear, better wait for it to come to Yabbos or something.  

Spreadshirt on the other hand could build a store around every competition and although there are winning designs and the winner gets the £ and kudos why not offer every design for purchase? Write into the TOCs that every design submitted will be offered for sale (probably after the competition is closed) and that the creator will recieve x £’s per sale. The competition is still an interesting format, everyone that submits a design stand a chance to win but also make some £ in the process even if they dont win.

The only potential problem would be in deciding ownership of the rights to that design with it creator. The Threadless approach might work, by submitting a design you grant us the rights to sell it on La Fraise/Spreadshirt for 90days (with the creator receiving % of sale) after that period you have the right to request the removal of the design, at which time full copyright is returned to the creator.

Oh well I guess we’ll see soon enough…

 

Not often is there an innovation in the t-shirt industry. The model is pretty well established, and the product even more so. There are simply very few advancements left to be made.

It is my pleasure then, to be able to announce to you the very latest (well actually it came out in 2002) in niche customisation, the solution to an age old problem, the death of the builders bum – the Longtail T.

Clashing with a recent book release [link], this miraculous piece of attire has a longer back, to cover up the working man’s posterior during bend-intensive tasks. I for one, am all for it.

“The Longtail T. – three more inches of shirt body length – solved an age old problem: the infamous, much feared Plumber’s Butt.”

http://www.duluthtrading.com/store/mens/mens_shirts/95587.aspx

Just how I like my women

Fullbleed got lost in my buldging t-shirt site directory and I only stumbled upon them again by chance. I remember loving the designs first time round and having forgotten them only made the rediscovery that bit sweeter. Some of the concepts of the designs are really smart. My favourites are “Surfs Up Dudes” and “Work is for the Birds”, although I like them all.