Innovative fashion-sourcing plan fosters creativity, profit
Threadless.com, a thriving Chicago T-shirt business that created an innovative fashion-sourcing business plan, got its start when its creators won an online contest to design a T-shirt.
Jake Nickell, a Web developer and one of the three founders of Threadless.com, won the competition to design a T-shirt for the New Media Underground Festival in London seven years ago.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
Nickell, 27, and fellow Web developer Jacob DeHart, 26, were regular contributors to Dreamless, a global message board of Web designers and developers. The two decided the contest was so much fun they would do something similar. They issued a call for T-shirt designs, and opened an online thread -- a series of messages that have been posted by users as replies to each other. By reading each message in a thread, one after the other, a participant can see a discussion evolve. In Threadless' case, designers could see how a design was evaluated by participants, who then purchased the designs they favored.
Hence the name, Threadless.
Nickell, DeHart and Web developer Jeffrey Kalmikoff, 28, the chief creative officer, continued to run their design-and-development studio called SkinnyCorp., based in Ravenswood on the North Side, and let Threadless run on its own. But they noticed in mid-2003 that Threadless was making more money than their studio.
The three men were surprised and pleased. They had no background in fashion design, and no business-school education.
"We just thought it was great for Threadless to be a level playing field -- where people, no matter who they are, could submit designs, and others could vote on them," Kalmikoff said. "It wasn't about finding that one design that was iconic."
Anyone with skills in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and similar programs may download a template at Threadless.com and submit a design. A new feature of the site called Critique permits users to submit "pre-submissions" and get instant feedback. When the designer is ready to go, he submits his work for a vote by the Threadless community.
The Web site also enables registered users to post comments on a blog, and features podcast interviews with designers, celebrities and Threadless employees.
The Threadless concept -- from soliciting designs, to creating a community, now 400,000 strong, of users to vote on the best design of the week, and turning a profit -- has earned Skinny Corp. a 2007 Chicago Innovation Award.
Designers whose entry wins the contest receive $2,000 in cash and a $500 gift certificate to be used on Threadless.com. Designers get another $500 each time the design is reprinted. Threadless pays out more than $1 million a year to the winning designers.
Threadless releases seven new T-shirt designs and two reprints each week, selling the T-shirts for $12 to $25, versus costs of $4 to $10 to produce the shirts.
The company's revenue reached $20 million before its owners somewhat reluctantly secured their first infusion of venture capital financing in October 2006. The investment by New York-based Insight Venture Partners gives Threadless back-end logistics resources that it needed.
The company, which employs 30, opened a retail store at 3011 N. Broadway on Sept. 14, and plans to open more stores in the next two years.