Top List of Threadless Clones aka T-Shirt Vote Sites

Yes it’s another list, it’s not just the fact that ‘top lists’ seem to rank so well on Google but that this one has been bugging me for a while. I’ve been looking for the perfect t-shirt voting site for ages, something that offers high prizes, fair rates and provides most of the publicity themselves. There isn’t one out there, I’ve seen so many of these sites relying on popular members rather than fantastic designers to boost their profile. Besides there are so many good t-shirt designers out there not getting the kudos they deserve, it seems to make more sense to set up your own t-shirt voting/fulfilment site rather than submit your designs, which probably explains why there are so many on this list!

I’ve mentioned the whole problem before, if you’re a Myspace or Facebook star (I must join those two one day lol!), then you’re set to be a famous t-shirt designer (well almost). My first experience of t-shirt voting was at an ecological t-shirt site I’d reviewed (http://buy-tees.net/2008/06/vote-green-at-eco-t-shirt-competition) - District Cotton are a cool company, they contribute ten percent of their profits to charity and their ideology is so sound I had to make a contribution, I submitted my design and waited. Nothing happened. I asked a few friends, they voted for my t-shirt. Then some of the worst designs I’d ever seen started to accrue so many votes, and sometimes they’d hover exactly one vote more than my total, at other times it would jump by 50 votes in a period of five minutes… hmm. I suppose that’s why most t-shirt contest sites require membership, so they can try and put a lid on the cheating. That’s enough ranting - okay on with the list!

Threadless Clones are sites that follow the business model laid down and market formed by Threadless.com - if enough people vote for a t-shirt design, the designer earns a commission and residuals. Seems simple enough, but be warned it’s a t-shirt voter eat t-shirt designer world out there! Threadless sold $6.2 million worth of merch last year and has pretty much quadrupled in size each year for the past four years. Their designer quality control is one of if not the most stringent out there. They make big money from their products so only your very very best submissions here (and then some). This year’s target is $18-$20 million. The others have a long way to go when it comes to profit, but they offer far more opportunity of actually getting your t-shirt printed!

Threadless.com - The gargantuan t-shirt voting site that created the whole market obviously has to reside at the top! From the humblest of beginnings (Threadless began as a thread in a forum) in early 2000, Jake Nickell, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, and Harper Reed went on to form SkinnyCorp, the company behind Threadless.com that handles everything from site development to t-shirt fulfilment. They are geniuses at ‘soft marketing‘ which stretches far beyond their novel business model. For instance their golden t-shirt label idea, à la Willy Wonka’s Golden Tickets, which offers a free t-shirt to every lucky winner. Threadless was the first, the most profitable, offers the highest prizes, has the largest membership, and many more advantages. They even interview their top designers to give them a greater public profile (which in turn increases Threadless.com’s own popularity), and have a section devoted to celebrity spotting - essentially who’s wearing their tees where. But be warned, if you’re rising up on the Threadless manna you maybe heading for a bad comedown. This site is vicious, many voters are there to prevent success rather than encourage it. The most proliferate voters are usually designers with a bad habit of scoring as near to zero as possible, it truly takes a work of conceptual or artistic genius to win their competition, with very few exceptions, most of their t-shirts end up selling more than most independent t-shirt designers could sell in a lifetime. This is the bottom line, you’ll need a legion of fans, you’ll need to be a master of idea, illustration, colour and presentation. If people do start effin’ and blinding on your page Threadless won’t remove it (unlike DesignByHumans.com). What’s more they’ve refused my last submission ‘Prosper’ and they pulled the one before that early, have these guys got it in for me or do they do this to everyone, I mean, treat them like crap that is? They say copyright issues yet Glennz has designed two Star-Trek related t-shirts, it couldn’t be the Obama reference could it? Have Threadless banned Obama??? Worst of all the chances are that I, you or anyone we personally know will ever win their top prize, or any of their prizes. But then again I do like a challenge - if only these guys would play fair!?!

• $2,000 in cash
• $500 Threadless Gift Certificate (can be redeemed for $200 cash)
• $500 in cash each time your design is reprinted
• Up to $10,000 more if you win a “Bestee” in the Threadless Awards

LaFraise.com - The first shock in the list, a little known French tee contest site with a whopping amount of traffic! They have some very cool designs here too, well worth a visit.

• €1000 top prize and a temporary contract to sign whilst they sell the tees (so I guess you’re only leasing the rights!).

Myntra.com - This is probably as much of a surprise to you as it is to me but the third most popular t-shirt voting site is Myntra.com! They are based in Bangalore, India and hold just one t-shirt design competition a month, the prize is 25,000 Rupees which comes to nearly $600 or £300. This month it’s a Bollywood theme t-shirt contest, as you might expect.

• 25000 Rs

DesignByHumans.com - This should be my favourite t-shirt voting store, I love the feel and attitude of the site and community. Expect more support and a friendlier attitude generally, however the prizes are lower, the audience smaller, and problematically, no one but those you encourage to come will vote for your work. I’ve mentioned in a few posts and even an email or two to DBH that they should consider featuring their designers more, and not leave it to fate and karma and what have you. The truth is they should be the best, even the name conjures up ideas of egalitarianism and cerebral art communalism, and to be fair it does to a degree. I had a real plonker spamming my comments at DBH, I didn’t want to argue with the guy, he was getting on and very bitter, he produced a few drab watercolours and they’d had a few comments from his friends, but he was lording it over other designers. Unlike Threadless, DBH’s support was fantastic, they’d noticed he’d been giving quite a few other designers the same treatment. Generally slagging anything off anything and everyone was not what I call constructive criticism. DBH responded quickly, removed the offending comments, warned the guy and even thanked me for my advice. They’re currently considering making changes to their system to filter out the worst offenders. Democracy in action at Design By Humans!

• $3,500 plus residuals!
• $750 ($500 cash, $250 credit) Runners-Up.
• $1000 cash for Shirt of the Week.
• $1750 ($1500 cash, $250 credit) for Shirt of the Month
• Plus Rockstar Awards Program.

Uneetee.com - Has a nice feel to it, generous t-shirt thumbnails on their homepage displaying their latest design winners, a good selection of talented designers, overall a sparse but perfectly adequate layout (a rather tiny log in link on the top left though). Once you’re signed up you can either vote for other works or submit your own. Unlike Threadless they only accept a maximum of 4 colours for submitted designs, and if they’re accepted you’ll have to wait and see what their users think. There doesn’t seem to be that many people here, or most of them don’t seem to be too vocal, and when they are they lean more towards positive criticism and praise than out and out Threadless-style combat. I can’t say I’m bowled over by the t-shirts here, some of the winners are fantastic, but overall UT seems to lean towards old school illustrative line drawings rather than vector images or puns. The humour is muted, the colours and styles ranging between delicate and expressionist. I’m not sure if this means the site is left wide open for a few of my designs, or that they’d reject them, I just can’t quite get what UT are about. Friendly but a little confused. They do however offer a $10 deal on one featured shirt everyday and it seems like they offer residuals for their design winners, but I’ve no idea how much, I could research this on the net, but then again it’s another example of UT’s rather confusing approach to their users. Then again they have a popular store here so they must be doing something right!

• Residual Commissions.

Emptees.com - Took me a while to work it out - there’s an unobtrusive grey css button at the top labelled ‘New Tee‘ - that’s where you submit your work. The interesting thing is you can submit your work at any stage of development, perhaps an idea you want some feedback, or your latest design, and of course tees for sale from just about anywhere, although I’m sure they must reject Cafepress.com and Zazzle.com links because the standard seems too high. There’s not much clarification on the site and for the main part independent designers mainly using a BigCartel.com store and a few winners at DBH and Threadless. Saying that, however well crafted many of the t-shirts are I couldn’t find many that I loved, or even liked particularly! I was so confused when I first joined I had to email them to ask what I’d need to submit a design, I was convinced they printed them as does Threadless and DBH. I was sure they only served BigCartel.com stores, and then I realised what they’re up to. It’s great PR, especially for BC, who earn their bread and butter from successful t-shirt designers seeking a way to set up their own independent store. Offering subdomain hosting and not providing fulfilment put me off the idea, but if you’ve got a great (and cheap) local t-shirt printer it maybe worth a try. Essentially Emptees provide a perfect addition to any decent t-shirt designers marketing strategy, design a t-shirt, sell it anywhere, upload a photo and a link here and you’re done! One piece of advice for ET, try enlarging your thumbnails, seems like there’s plenty of spare space in the site’s design. Essentially they offer free promotion as opposed to prizes and sales.

• No Prizes!

SpringLeap.com - South African Threadless clone with some pretty good entries here, I’m a little perturbed that the most prominent section on their home page is devoted to ‘featured SA designers’ - which makes me think they’re seriously biased towards their own. Fair enough but I’d just make it the policy rather than give an unfair advantage to some designers over others merely because they live in South Africa! If I’m wrong then why even write SA designers. Besides that they pay in South African Rand (which has a notoriously low exchange rate) which at current values amounts to a top prize of US$ 1068.88. They do offer a few incentives including your own name on the label! Hey Threadless what about that idea? Plus they sell their tees via independent shops (in South Africa) and feature you in your own mini-blog. So great over all, if you’re South African that is.

• Top Prize 748218 South African Rand
• 2 Rand per t-shirt sold - what’s that then… 13 pence? 6 cents? Hmm..
• Free tees for runners up - which means you might lose your copyright for a measly t-shirt voucher!

Allmightys.com - I’ve not heard of this one before, a lesser known European based site in the list, however they offer some really nice features, and I feel many elements of the Allmightys will set them in good stead for the future. The site is well designed, clear links at the top reveal a social network set up with everything from forum discussions to archives and member pages, the forum gives designers a chance to provide more background on their work, sulk if it has been dissed, and cheer if it wins. The voting system is a tad slow for me although I do appreciate their larger than usual thumbnails and featured designs throughout the site. You also have a chance to change your mind at any stage which is a nice change from the Threadless model, although there were only 7 designs to vote on when I was there that may be a good thing. Voters burn out easily and soon mark everyone down. They have a great offer on their shipping, buy four or more tees and they’ll ship them to you for free, internationally, yes anywhere in the world (are you listening Cafepress? International shipping for free, I had to repeat that before CP decides to give up totally on Europe). So to recap, small but perfectly formed, friendly, helpful, easy to navigate and great if you’re looking for your first prize as a t-shirt designer! If you want to submit a ‘discussion’ aka a t-shirt design and win you’ll receive residual commissions from every sale - read the full details of payments. Essentially the more they sell the more you make. I do like the fact that runner-up winners can still make a profit.

• Gold prize winner €2 per tee for the first 50 sales.
• Silver € 1.50 for every shirt
• Bronze and special selection € 1.00 for every shirt
• Sell over 1000 you’ll earn €4 per shirt, and €6 if you win the gold prize simultaneously!

Hereitself.com - I’ve given this Istanbul-based site a mention before because it offers a $4000 top prize however they don’t pay residuals, so be sure you don’t mind losing the copyright on your best designs. Furthermore I made a boo boo recently, call it fool-proofing their site if you will - I being the fool in question - anyway I entered the wrong email address when signing up and got them to correct it or me (great), but I never received an activation link and even though they said they had activated my user-name, they haven’t. Eve though I’ve reviewed the site, even though I’m mentioning them again here, they still haven’t managed to activate my user-name. So i can’t fully review them and now I’m thinking better off not.

• $4000 but no residuals?

A-better-tomorrow.com -German T-Shirt Voting.

• €500 top prize.

TshirtMonster.ca - A straightforward and friendly t-shirt voting site (they don’t even give preference to Californians!) that offers a reasonable top prize but also gives you a chance to sell your work, no matter what the vote result!

• $1000 top prize (but can sell tees there anyway).

TeeTonic.com Wow what a stingy site! £100 or $200 top prize plus residuals from this UK-based t-shirt competition site. They pay 50p/$1 per t-shirt sold which doesn’t really make up for the uninspiring first prize. Could do better!

• £100 plus residuals.

InkFruit.com - The site template isn’t great and neither are their t-shirts.

• Prizes? They won’t say!

Bestylin.com - First problem, they can’t spell. On their home page is the statement ‘$250 + 3 free t-shirts + residules’ - not residuals but residules. It makes me wonder what other mistakes they might be making! I don’t like the designs here and I suspect they’re all DTG.

• $250 and 3 t-shirts + residuals.

SplitTheAtom.com Friendly enough UK-based Threadless clone with some cute designs.

• £250 top prize.

Roygbivlab.com - I’ve no idea what the name means but the site seems promising except for one details, the winner’s circle features some of the worst t-shirts they have on offer, not sure why, there are some rather beautiful tees in the running so I’m guessing it’s because it’s still early days for these guys. They mention that your t-shirt will be on sale in a national retailer, I’m guessing they mean the USA, but which retailer I’ve no idea. I’d say it’s too soon to judge but I’d seriously think about getting a new domain name!

• Preliminary Review $500
• Final Review $1000

• £250 top prize.

GorillaTank.com - Another UK-based Threadless clone.

• £420 top prize.

Scribtee.com which is actually a dynamic page at UK-based ShirtCity.com feels more like an afterthought rather than a real t-shirt voting site - in fact it kinda sucks! Sure they have a decent site design but their address looks like this in my url bar http://www.shirtcity.com/shop/index.php?sc4_start=en_idcom The prizes are mean and I have a feeling they’re hiding this site at the back of their main store in order to ‘keep it quiet’. Essentially this looks like a big corporation taking advantage of independent designers - the sweatshop of the Threadless clones. A one off payment and a voucher from such an enormous company is almost insulting. There are no real residuals, just more vouchers (if you’re lucky), and even then very little credit given to you as the designer once SC are making a fortune from it. If you want to see good work go to waste, this would be the site

• £350 cash + £70 SC shopping voucher
• £250 cash + £70 SC shopping voucher - if you don’t win but SC want to print it anyway???

IceCreamTshirt.com - okay looks friendly enough, they print up to 5 colours, the prizes aren’t great but neither are the competitors, however almost two weeks after submitting a design I’ve not had word either way. My ice cream has melted and is now little more than sticky pool on the carpet. Very iffy.

• €350 per 200 t-shirts sold.