In 2000 Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart recognized a unique opportunity in the area of e-commerce and crowd-funded design. See the reality of young, talented artists unable to monetize their creations because of a lack of connections they create a profitable solution. Jake and Jacob put up $1000 of their own money to found “Threadless”. This unique company capitalizes on the notion of customers providing their own market research by getting them to vote on various designs before they go into production ensuring a consumer market when the chosen products come to fruition. This unique business model has proven extremely profitable. By 2004 Threadless had their own self-sufficient warehouse and manufacturing facility, with revenues over 1.5 million, and in two years they rose to 6.5 million. In 2008, Threadless was featured on the cover of Inc. as “The Most Innovative Small Company in America” and it continues to make a 30% profit margin.
There are many things that make Threadless unique, but most notably is undoubtedly the amazing sense of community it creates between the artists and consumers.
Contests are often run, and the regularity of amazing new designs keep customers coming back again and again.
Great thoughts, Sarah! 🙂 I know of a website very similar to this called deviantart.com and has a lot in common with the general idea here. I think that this is a great way for artists to share their talent with the community and also make some revenue from all of their hard work.
This is such a great example of innovation. Market research can be such an expensive part of running a business, and they created a way to avoid this as well as create a community within their company. I, personally, want to find a way to do market research in a similar manner to this, in order to provide the best product to customers in an inexpensive manner.
This is cool idea and shows the value of right brained thinking and the power of creativity. The idea of creating a culture of people who are working to create the best t-shirts is a great way to utilize the internet and the ease of connecting through it. Utilizing the power of people’s creativity Threadless is revolutionizing the t-shirt industry and getting people excited about it in the process.