1) There’s an interesting post about a piece in the Chicago tribune on Threadless over at Frank Pillers Mass Customisation blog. It’s Franks work that got me interested in MC. If I hadn’t found his articles I would never have written my dissertation on Threadless. I can’t reccomend his work highly enough. He also mentioned hiphipuk in the post which I’m chuffed about.

2) I’ve been over at the London Design Festival all weekend with Sarah from Spreadshirt. Its my first ever visit to the event and I was really impressed. Lots of cool stuff on display. You can see the photostream (yep I’m the one under the floating hat) on Sarah’s flickr.

3) I’ve been a little slack on the blogging front, I move to Germany on Thursday and there’s just so much to organise, I’ve barely started. I apologise to people I’ve been setting up interviews with, things should return to normal after thursday.

The about page has been updated with my new employers details, thanks Spreadshirt! Back to basic, it is and will continue to be business as usual at HipHipUk. Now time for pt.2 of the Stagr interview. In this weeks thrilling installment the caped crusaders play with the stagr configurator…

The lastest big player in the design your own/mass customisation space is the in closed beta Stagr.com. I’m pretty sure this site is going to make a big splash especially when you consider the credentials of its founder Nick Swinmurn. Nick is the former founder of Zappos.com the big online footwear (amongst other things) e-tailer. Although he stepped aside to run Stagr in Feb this year, Zappo’s is a thriving business with nearly 700 employees and a $600m turnover. Experienced is the probably the word I’d use to him!

This interview will be posted in three parts, firstly about Nick and Stagr, secondly my experiences of using the beta and thirdly the transcripts from an interesting web chat where I introduce Nick to Miles the founder of Innertee (they were previously unaware of each others businesses), Innertee’s model looks the closest to Stagr and we chat about the industry and the future of the two companies.

(Read the Interview in the full post.)

As you may know theres a La Fraise/Spreadshirt powered design contest on the go in aid of the London Design Festival. I spoke to Sarah from Spreadshirt about how the contest was progressing:

(interview in full post)

I’ve been meaning to write a long post about online entrepreneurship, today I read a interesting article about the college humour (and now Busted Tees along with others) guys over at Cool Hunter. Also yesterday I spoke with Nick the former founder of zappos and current pulling the strings at soon to launch stagr.com. I’ll write up that interview over the weekend. The part I found the most interesting was Josh Abramson saying that

” “Ever since I was little kid it was my dream to run a company,” Abramson is one of those who believes that the entrepreneurial spirit is something some people have while others don’t. “Some people have the natural ability, some people don’t. It is a way of looking at an opportunity. You could study business your whole life and still not get it.” ”

This you have it or you have it is something you hear repeatedly about entrepreneurs. While I agree you can study your whole life and not get it, and that when it comes to some things the more you learn the less you understand. Anyone with the passion and determination can do this. Its something that lies dormant in us all, for some the right circumstances never arise to bring it to the surface. Individuals increasingly need organisations less than we use to, all the tools of production (usually telecommunications) are available cheaply and easily to us now. I think this will only result in more would be entrepreneurs having that realization moment. I hope so, I like the romantic idealism of two friends in a basement building something for the love it. Now if only I had a basement. 

The majority of the t-shirts from my most wanted list are from Camiseteria (the Brazilian Threadless). No doubt like anything in life I want it most because I can’t have it. I chatted to Fabio one of its founders about when that would change and the history of Camiseteria.

Interview in Full Post