> Concerns about controlling quality make sense given that artists on Threadless’s forum complain that they’re unable to promote their work because the print quality has dropped to the point that designs flake off after a few washes. Reviewers say the sizing, feel, and weight of Threadless’s shirts is inconsistent and getting worse over time, with some customers reporting that shirts bought five to 10 years ago are still holding up better than those purchased this year.
This is exactly what happened to me, I used to wear a lot of their t-shirts, and needed a couple of new ones, so I did an order, and the fit had changed completely and they started loosing their print after a few washes.
I didn't bother contact them, since I did not want to get into a "ship items back, receive item again and pay import taxes again"-cycle and wrote them off.
They have been turning on their marketing emails a lot with me last couple of weeks, I think they are bleeding.
Same here. I have a couple of ancient (roughly ten years old) Threadless shirts that still look good, and I have a couple of recent ones (within the last two years) that never fit the same and have not held up.
Since many (most?) designs that are on Threadless are also on Society6, and since Society6 shirts are still relatively high quality, I order from them now instead.
I too made a comment about the huge drop in quality,
https://www.threadless.com/forum/post/1009183/disappointing_...
I even pointed out how they put a sizing sticker directly on the shirt print which pulls the design off when removed. No shirt I bought in that order survived more than 2 machines washes.
Interesting. I haven't brought a shirt from them in a while, but was wearing an old one. Someone liked it and asked me where I got it. It was a Threadless shirt, they make a comment that the quality of the shirt seemed too high to be threadless...
When I bought Threadless t-shirts (around 2006 I guess) they used to be printed on the inside with "Do not wash. Buy again from Threadless.com". I guess that was supposed to be "ha ha only serious".
> some customers reporting that shirts bought five to 10 years ago are still holding up better than those purchased this year.
This isn't just a Threadless problem. All T-shirts now seem to be made out of this thin stretchy garbage material--good if you are an Italian model, bad if you are a normal 40 year old.
I'd kill for a supplier that actually still uses nice solid cotton material that drapes rather than stretches.
The premium t-shirt from teefury is good. It's high quality cotton and the fit is fine for a fast b*d like me :) The print doesn't last forever though, about a year for the big prints (same as Threadless was back when they didn't suck).
Yeah, I haven't bought a shirt from them in like 10 years (high school?) and I just started getting literally dozen+ emails from them over the course of a day or two. Unsubscribed immediately.
Something else not mentioned in the article is that graphic tees have fallen in popularity in the past decade vs plain t-shirts.
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.
Have they fallen in popularity or have you aged out of the target market?
Same "single data point" disclaimer, but most of my peers lost interest in them mid-college when they began dressing more mature. The high schoolers I know still wear graphic tees but for whatever reason Threadless never connected with the next generation.
"for whatever reason Threadless never connected with the next generation"
This is super insightful, and shouldn't be missed here. For them to stay successful for 17 years amongst a 5-10 year age group, they would need to completely refresh their customer base 2-3 times. That type of cultural relevancy is extremely hard, as anyone watching FB/Instagram vs Twitter vs Snap can attest.
I wonder if they lost a lot of non-US/Canada customers (like me) when they changed their printing set-up. You used to be able to buy a couple of T-shirts and have them shipped as one batch, so shipping and handling fees were reasonable when you ordered three T-shirts at once. I've gotten a good number of shirts from them this way.
A few years ago I tried ordering a few T-shirts again, but didn't get past the final order screen because custom-printed using Direct-to-Garment T-shirts had varying processing times, so I would have had to pay shipping fees for each separate T-shirt. That may be fine for domestic shipping (and Canada), but it quickly turns the deal unappealingly expensive anywhere else.
Threadless announced Artist Shops in 2015 and rolled them out to Threadless’s general community in early 2016. Artist Shops, still in existence, allow designers to sell items printed with any design (allowed by Threadless’s terms and conditions) directly to customers and receive royalties on each sale....
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.
Why is it so surprising? From both the designer and shopper perspectives, the Old Way does seem better.
With the Old Way:
Designer: does N work to create a design and has X% chance of winning $2500. They focus on what they love (i.e. design) and can get a nice quick payout if they're good. This is even better than a lottery, because it has the same excitement, but talent is also a factor which is very motivating. The marketing is done for them. Competing head to head is also kind of fun.
Shopper: look at the top / winning shirts and buy one if they like it. Paradox of Choice is not a problem.
With the New Way:
Designer: needs to setup a shop, do N work to create a design, then M work to market the shirt, and needs to sell nearly 400 t-shirts to get to that payout. For the winners to achieve the same outcome, it's a lot more work. For most designers, I think it's safe to assume that the marketing part is nowhere near as fun as the design part. The excitement factor is totally gone.
Shopper: has to wade through tons of shirts to figure out which one they like. Paradox of Choice is signifcant.
I totally agree, but I bet it changed because the Old Way is worse from the perspective of Threadless. Specifically, each contest needs to result in a shirt that they can sell more and more of in order to maintain growth. That pushes you toward a bland, inoffensive, mass-market design. They think they can ultimately maximize profits by doing the etsy/cafepress model, where it's loads of vendors on the ground doing their own thing, and the marketplace supplier just floats above the fray collecting a slice every time money changes hands.
Yeah, but why did Threadless possibly need to "maintain growth"?
They had a sustainable small business model. They could have consciously leveled off when they hit their natural equilibrium and remained a profitable niche vendor in perpetuity. Instead, it appears they threw out their existing succesful business model and a good chunk of their reputation trying to scale beyond their natural limits.
What's wrong with being small if you're good at it?
I completely agree with you, and there's nothing wrong with a successful cottage/lifestyle business. But it takes a certain maturity to see it that way, and they might have caught the startup bug and thought they could turn custom t-shirts into a billion dollar business... who knows?
I think you're right. It was probably a good bootstrapping strategy at the start to get good designs into the system and also some marketing benefits from promoting top designs from contests. The more I think about it, contest-driven marketing is likely not sustainable - contests are more of a novelty and very hard to keep fresh.
Great analysis. Altough i'm not sure that about the shopper side - since t-shirts are a self-expressive medium and not just a commodity like wine, probably there's value in offering a large selection.
And if we'd change the old model to something like this:
No prize. N designers competing. Top 1/3 win, and take all of the royalties of all the shirts in the competition, forever.
How would you analyze that ? would it be a good model ?
Yes, having a store with selection is good for shopping. The contest is part merchandising and part marketing to show the "top hot new" SKU.
For any contest to work, you need good entries. The prize is the payout that motivates those entries.
I think a hybrid approach could likely work, where everyone's entry is buyable by default (and they get royalties). I'm not sure people would like if the winner(s) get royalties of other entries, but it might work.
One factor I'm realizing (which may have motivated the change) is that contests are a more of a "novelty" from a marketing perspective, so it may have sustainability issues. People easily get bored, especially if it's the same experience repeated over and over.
The overjustification effect occurs when an expected external incentive such as money or prizes decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task. The overall effect of offering a reward for a previously unrewarded activity is a shift to extrinsic motivation and the undermining of pre-existing intrinsic motivation. Once rewards are no longer offered, interest in the activity is lost; prior intrinsic motivation does not return, and extrinsic rewards must be continuously offered as motivation to sustain the activity.
Tangentially, I would encourage anyone still in college to take some psychology classes while you have the opportunity. Fascinating and useful stuff.
Another angle is that when you build something a certain way, people who come and stay are the people who are attracted to that certain way. Those people are not going to like it when you take away the thing that attracted them.
It's impossible to know for sure, but what if Threadless had started out their "new" way?
The American Dream is a middle class lifestyle. Post-World War II America saw a vibrant middle class. Post 9-11/Great Recession America has replaced its vibrant middle class with the ‘gig economy’
The “vibrant middle class” has been in decline since the 1980s and was basically gone by 9/11. The "gig economy” didn't replace it, it maybe nibbled around the edges of the stable working class.
The gig economy is how the world worked prior to World War 2.
Prior to the Great Depression, 90%+ of the US population was independent workers.
It's been a very short period in human history where lifetime employment, sitting still in one job for 30+ years, became fashionable.
It only became fashionable when the US government saw an opening to conquer the world, but needed to insure they didn't drop the ball, and tried to institute workers rights and the like, in a very hacky way, at that.
There's really no reason it has to look at all like it has to live a fulfilling life of creative output.
The whole dream of acquiring a stash of capital to free oneself from the daily grind seems largely illusory to anyone under the age of 50, thanks to many other things but the gig economy (IMO, the gig economy itself being a reaction to shitty office life conditions; the people are saying FU to oatmeal cubes, and staring a screen, being hassled by coworkers to do their job for them.)
A modern hunting-gathering lifestyle has been shown to promote positive moods on life as well.
Perhaps the notion of corralling the masses into "problem solver" groups (corporations) focused on some billionaires "problems" (not enough billions) isn't a sustainable model given inherent features of human biology and desire for free agency.
If you think about it, it's really just paid servitude to a rich master. Not really the American notion of freedom given history.
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 started selling to big box stores to increase revenues?
I don't see any reason why Threadless couldn't still be a profitable business (god forbid a lifestyle business) even today if they had maintained their cachet but maybe I'm missing something.
They pivoted to a system where all artists get a chance to make money - and probably moreso than the original prize - while also scaling beyond just one or a couple designs per week. I think there's a lot more potential money in that approach, however it's no longer the Threadless formula. I'd get links shared to Threadless frequently when they had a new fun or cool design, and I think those were so popular because it was always limited availability - one week only, get it now or forever lose it.
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.
I have quite a few and I'm happy enough with them. They also have some sizing issues but all it usually mean is that one tshirt will be a bit tighter/looser than other of the same size (the fact that I'm between two sizes doesn't help) but the print quality is decent.
The article fails to mention that there is a ton of competition and Threadless has been trounced by Redbubble, Society6, Teepublic, etc. Plus, t-shirts alone is not enough to sustain a site. Stickers, iPhone cases, mugs, etc etc. Threadless is a good example of the dangers of premature profitability.
"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 in the market - but putting millions of dollars into the pockets of the business owners is the intent of all businesses. Knocking that as "premature profitability" seems silly
> Maybe there is mismanagement, or poor decisions, or just not staying ahead of trends in the market
Or perhaps we need to consider the idea that it's actually OK for a company to not live forever. Threadless had a good run, made a lot of money for the employees and made a lot of consumers happy. It's not a failure if they don't continue to do that in perpetuity.
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.
You say that as if there's a guarantee that the upstarts will find a way to be profitable once they've spent several years losing money. The barriers to entry are pretty low in the t-shirt business so it's not like there's some golden goose to be captured after millions of dollars of capital are set on fire.
It's not a t-shirt business, it's a marketplace where designers sell their designs and the designs are placed on t-shirts, mugs, carpets, stickers, etc. So basically these sites are like eBay but for artists. Like any marketplace business, it takes a long time to build up both sides of the marketplace but once it's in place, it's very hard to compete with.
It takes a long time, so might as well be profitable along the way. Think of how many businesses enter a "it takes a long time" industry and run out of runway before they can turn a profit. Good for Threadless for being able to generate profits for the better part of 20 years, even if they didn't achieve world domination. They got rich and had almost no risk
Let's say the core business is to put customer designs on various products and sell them in a marketplace. So like Etsy, but instead of the artists making everything, the artist makes the design and the marketplace business produces it.
Becoming the number 1 player in that market could be profitable if said company could implement innovations that are difficult to replicate by others. But it's not the type of business where a network effect is going to shut out competitors. Customers will go to where they can get the best balance of price, quality, ease of use, and speed.
Spending a lot of VC funding selling dollar bills for 50 cents is not the only strategy, and it risks running out of money before getting to the promised land.
Running a profitable business doesn't mean you can't come to be the best in a market segment either. Profit can be reinvested in the business, and decisions can be made based on what makes sense for a sustainable business.
To understand why printing comes off of cheap T-shirts, see CottonBureau's excellent comparison of screen-printing and "DTG" spray-on inking processes.
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.
Spreadshirt? I've used it quite a lot and found it to be good quality, haven't ordered for about 18 months from them. I've got decade old stuff from them that's still good.
I usually go to qwertee (https://www.qwertee.com/). As I've said in another comment I've had some minor sizing issues but the print quality is decent enough.
I am looking at Qwertee and want to find out about their business model and designer compensation, but whenever I approach the page footer, a new batch of T-shirts thumbnails is loaded in the page content pushing the footer away…
Someone didn't think that one through.
Edit:
> Artists/Designers receive 1 Euro per shirt sold or USD or GBP equivalent. You also retain all rights to your artwork before, during and after it appears on Qwertee (most other t shirt design sites want ownership of your design forever).
I'm living in Russia, we don't have any extra taxes. Actually, we have a lot of local clones with the same prints from Threadless(of course illegal), but a price and quality worse than Threadless.
I switched to http://www.fangamer.net ages ago because of quality issues and didn't regret a thing. Even if you don't know the video games references, they're good looking.
I'm a big fan of https://www.designbyhumans.com/ for their cool designs (they are constantly adding new ones). Their website is also pretty nice and they frequently have discounts.
Threadless was such an inspiration for me 15+ years ago. They found a niche and created a wonderful marketplace in which the artists got paid well (I remember each design was bought for $5K) and so the consumer would get more variety, so they would come back and the cycle goes on forever.
Or so we tought. I never bought a tee from them, since the international shipping fees were too high. And when they did, the stigma about their poor quality was very loud.
However I can't believe they're that low. Turns out quality does matter, and not just a very good design.
What I'm saying is what I remember back then, the article says it was up to $2,500 but I remember it was more as I myself was considering submitting a design.
$750 cash + $250 gift card is the price in these days.
In 2006 I was a consultant (dev) on a dot-com product (being done in Ruby and Rails). The founder had plans to use Zazzle as one monetization approach, and IIRC, Cafepress too. I think t-shirts were one of their products (at least for Zazzle). Anyone know how those two are doing these days?
On a side but related note: It might be interesting to read any stories about how some of the original dot-com companies are doing nowadays, those that survived, that is - from the 1997-2001 period.
Yes! I would like actually to know what's going with CafePress and Zazzle.
CafePress IPO'd in 2012 ("PRSS") at around $19 and has been all downhill since to its current $1.76. CafePress started in San Mateo but is now apparently in Kentucky.
Zazzle seems to be healthy and active and 12 years later still run by its founders, the 3 Beaver brothers.
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.
I got everyone in my family hoodies recently, and the quality of the printing is atrocious. Obviously "printed" and flaking almost entirely off after regular wear.
Never again. They had me as a fierce loyal proponent. Now they have an enemy who will warn people away. :(
Funny, I bought a dozen of tshirts on threadless 3 or 4 years ago.
They were pretty nice for the time.
They don't last that long though, and coupled with a desire to dress a bit better, I know try to buy better quality shirts .. and it is not the same price range at all !
Most of the good quality tshirts start at 40€, way more than a threadless shirt
I was a subscriber of Threadless for 2 years in a row.
Every month, a new shirt landed in my mailbox.
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 used to order new T’s from Threadless every other month back in 2010, but since then I have developed a different style, or maybe I just adopted the mainstream, which has more simple and plain colors and maybe nicer materials.
Wow. Thanks, @brentm. Paywalled for now so I'll find a work around and read this later. That is a drastic valuation drop. From what I remember, they were already quite profitable before taking on funding.
Uniqlo.com has great t-shirts with cool themes from amazing artists and they last for years. The only downside side is they get sold out as soon as they are released and you have to wait for the next batch to come in..
I have had good results on several recent orders using CustomInk.
You may also want to look locally. I came across a place that is local to me whose prices are competitive with CustomInk and it's nice to support the local business. Also no shipping. I'm sure they also do remote orders, so you can check them out too: http://eastcoastembroidery.com/
I am into print screening. It’s fun to print your own design on a t-shirt or even on a plastic bag. My friend printed text signs on plastic bags for a presentation on environment Pollution.
This is exactly what happened to me, I used to wear a lot of their t-shirts, and needed a couple of new ones, so I did an order, and the fit had changed completely and they started loosing their print after a few washes.
I didn't bother contact them, since I did not want to get into a "ship items back, receive item again and pay import taxes again"-cycle and wrote them off.
They have been turning on their marketing emails a lot with me last couple of weeks, I think they are bleeding.