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Sneaky Spreadshirt?

admin    spreadshirt     new spreadshirt, spreadshirt, spreadshirt commissions, spreadshirt designer, spreadshirt license changes, spreadshirt marketplace, spreadshirt.net

It looks like Spreadshirt are pulling a fast one on all their designers. Let’s take a look at the new marketplace, product and licensing revisions at Spreadshirt.net:-

The new license can be found here.

The old license can be found here.

Essentially the differences mean, as far as I can tell, designers will receive no marketplace commission whilst making it far more work and more difficult to get your design to the customer. Why do I say this?

1) Spreadshirt are changing the focus of their website, essentially after a great deal of market research it seems that most of their customers skip the marketplace and head on directly to the Spreadshirt Designer tool.

Therefore for UK users (as an example) instead of being greeted by the marketplace section at http://www.spreadshirt.net/en/GB/Buy-t-shirt/Designs-63/

They’ll be sent directly to the T-shirt Designer at http://www.spreadshirt.net/en/GB/Create-t-shirt/Designer-59/

I’m assuming the same changes will be made to Spreadshirt.com and all of Spreadshirt.net’s other country versions.

Essentially Spreadshirt is slowly becoming an online t-shirt design application, perhaps the world has become a vastly more creative place, perhaps not, I think it more likely that Spreadshirt can make more money more easily this way, and essentially are abandoning the people who helped make them the success they are today. I have a feeling that Threadless.com and other crowdsourcing t-shirt sites have taken a large chunk of their profits too, the only competition they’ll have now are Cafepress.com and seeing as their print size and quality are significantly inferior, the only disadvantage for Spreadshirt is the price. Less overheads, less cost, lower prices? Perhaps not, but at least Spreadshirt will be able to survive on less sales by paying less commission and even attention to their army of designers.

I feel most sorry for those who’ve opted to upgrade their account, I could only ever display three of my designs in my free shop at Spreadshirt, I am glad I never upgraded!

2) They are diversifying the market. They give the example that a kid’s t-shirt with a flower design sells better than a man’s. Well that’s a pretty obvious one, but essentially they’re applying the idea that a specific design works for a specific product. Which for a start means far less free designer accounts I’m sure, imagine only being able to sell 3 designs of 3 styles of t-shirts, less products per design mean less profit. Yes it maybe a better experience for the customer, but unless Spreadshirt pay their designers hand over fist as compensation I can see a lot of them straying away for good.

The designers will pay for these changes with more effort for the same profit.

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7 Comments to “Sneaky Spreadshirt?”

• 

  toastyle1210 October 1, 2008 at 5:36 pm

  Hey Paul and Christina.
  While you¥re right with your observation that designers who want their designs not only to appear in the Designer but also in the Marketplace, might have a little more work in the future, that’s because we¥re changing our Marketplace from a design-centered platform to a product-centered platform. However, we won’t be abolishing Marketplace comission.
  What we do is: we merge the commissions for a) designs and b) products to one commission and thereby make it simpler foreveryone involved – the customers, the designers and us. Commission will still be paid to the designer whenever someone orders a shirt from the Designer with his design on, as well as when someone orders a product from the Marketplace with his design on.

  Hope I could clarify the situation :-)
  Tobias, Spreadshirt, Germany
• 

  admin October 1, 2008 at 6:16 pm

  Okay well that’s a little clearer, thanks for your input Tobias. Although I do think you could have done something to make the designers’ lives easier, someway of rewarding them for their loyalty, how about upping the number of designs per free designer for a start?

  I will have to scout around the new format and take a closer look at the new commission structure.
• 

  admin October 7, 2008 at 9:23 pm

  Here’s the latest explanation from Spreadshirt – I’ve just got back from Marrakech and am kinda jet lagged and can hardly focus – so I’ll let you read their blurb…

  At the moment, our ‚ÄòT-Shirt Designer’ receives a more traffic and, therefore, sales than our Marketplace especially the ‚ÄòProducts’ section. That results in that, you as a designer, make almost all of our design commissions through the ‚ÄòT-Shirt Designer’ and not through the Marketplace. Now, in our statistics area we display all of your design and product sales as ‚ÄòMarketplace’ and make no difference whether the design has been sold in the Marketplace or in the T-Shirt Designer. And yes … That is really confusing.

  For the Marketplace products that’s not surprising, isn’t it? After all, who will click on ‚ÄòMarketplace’ and then ‚ÄòProducts’ at the moment. If you really don’t know where it is, you’ll never find it. But … That’s a big chance for us and for all of the designers.

  Now, we are changing our main navigation to ‚ÄòMen’, ‚ÄòWomen’, ‚ÄòKids & Babies’, ‚ÄòAccessories’, and ‚ÄòCreate your own’.

  The products which you published in the Marketplace, will be found in the future, if you click in ‚ÄòMen’, ‚ÄòWomen’, ‚ÄòKids & Babies’, ‚ÄòAccessories’. Your designs that you’ve published in the Marketplace, will be in the T-Shirt Designer (‚ÄòCreate your own’).

  This means, that we actually do want to put our Marketplace much, much more prominent on our website. That means that you can sell much more products in the future in the restructured Marketplace while your design sales within the T-Shirt Designer will stay the same. Therefore, you as a designer, now have an an additional sales channel to make more money. You will not sell ‚Äòless products per design’. You should sell more products per design.

  Of course, we will both profit from this though. However, we always want to make money WITH our designers and shop partners. In no way, we want to do things which are bad for our designers as that would be bad for us at the end as well. We are not abandoning the people who us helped make the success that we have today.

  We believe that there are as much people that are too lazy to buy a custom shirt that just want to buy a ‚Äòcool’ shirt as people who want to create their own masterpiece. That’s why we want to change the navigation and I really believe that this is a huge chance for us as Spreadshirt and for you as designer to all earn more and have more people running around with Spreadshirt t-shirts!

  If Spreadshirt love their designers so much I would reiterate – why not expand the free services for their designers – if designers are the lifeblood of their business, perhaps a maximum of 20 designs rather than 3 per free shop would convince us all that designing for men, women and kids individually is worth the hassle. I personally gave up with them, but that’s just my personal opinion…

  This applies to all the fulfilment sites out there of course – why do they charge their artists to represent them at all? I really believe the future lies in crowdsourcing, not tinkering with the edges of an old formula. If it’s a matter of maintaining a unique place in the marketplace (the world marketplace not merely Spreadshirt’s marketplace) scrap the fees for all designers (this applies to Cafepress too). it costs very little except a fraction of bandwidth and web space, there are millions of free hosting sites out there, so unless the design is printed there’s nothing to charge for.

  Ah well I wish SS luck with the new jiggery pokery, perhaps it will highlight more designers’ work, but still, it’s a mean mean old world. We’re in a world recession right now, nay depression, how many artists (throughout history) have ever been able to afford representation?

  Who knows, perhaps something will come of my confused and meddling approach to the corporate t-shirt industry one day. But I will relent, there is logic in what SS are trying to do here, I just hope the results speak for themselves…
• 

  Marc Wojak February 27, 2010 at 2:31 am

  I spent several painstaking hours with spreadshirt. The wording was ambiguous. The contracts were ambiguous and deceptive. It was excruciatingly difficult to get around their website, access your account and make any sense of it. After deciding to just sell my image in their market place for the commission that I had set it for, i found it in their market place for free! as in no commission! It was tough just trying to get my account canceled which I hope removed my image in that process like it said it would. Bottom line with “spread-cheat”
  is this…they want you the designer to do all the work and dont want to pay you a thing for it. when you tell them you want 10 dollars commission for the product they sell to somone, they have to raise the price and the consumer may not want to buy it, so they do what they can to get your image in their system for free. It’s a rip off just like all the rest of these companies! Don’t waste your time.
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  Willard Conroy March 4, 2010 at 7:02 pm

  I read a review about spreadshirt. If you search “Can You Make Money With Spreadshirt” it should be at the top. After reading that review, I tried spreadshirt anyways. I should’ve heeded the warnings. The shop is a joke and there’s no point in paying them to remove their logos from it because you wont get traffic from it!

  Only allowing three colors is lame. They give the designers artistic freedom but tell us we can only use three colors? The hell? On top of that, the price of your shirts go up every time you add a color. For instance, a design with 1 color may cost 15 dollars but if you add another color, it bumps it up to 17! Talk about nickel and diming people.
• 

  sven gorlick December 16, 2010 at 6:02 pm

  The problems with spread shirt are their surprise delivery times. Most think they are designing a shirt to be made in their country, the truth of course is that the site you signing on to (say in England) looks like an English site.

  Many english online review sites reflect this horrendous delivery time, which the consumer does not expect in this day and age.

  Repeat custom may be a problem unless they shorten delivery times or make customers very aware of where the product is originating from.

  best of luck.
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  admin December 16, 2010 at 6:19 pm

  By far not the only problem Sven, but thanks for the comment mate. I suppose most people would rather buy from an artist or an indie label, or at least if they could. Spreadshirt does a little better than Cafepress, at least they offer screen printed tees, although many artists have a very hard time submitting them due to the obscure specs and rules. Besides that they are a traffic and PR hog, all those “pretend” indie brand sites out there are funnelling traffic to a “design it yourself” operation. What’s more, there are many many labels around the world that don’t merely focus on say the USA. Plus there’s a Spreadshirt plant in Germany which means no excuses. At all.