Are T-Shirt Communities A Rip-Off?

admin    T-Shirt Articles     Design By Humans, T-Shirt Designers, Teextile, Threadless, cafepress, crowdsourcing, spreadshirt, t-shirt communities

I love t-shirts, that should be pretty much apparent to anyone who reads this blog, and I alongside a vast majority of fans of t-shirt arts was excited by the development of Threadless and other t-shirt communities out there across the world. But, and it’s a big but, as with almost all business sectors, there’s good practice, bad practice, and quite a wide range in between. Now, I know how it feels to be ripped off, we have all, in our lives from time to time, experienced a “poor deal” at the very least, and sometimes downright theft. There are charlatans across the globe, pervading all kinds of product and service based industries, who’s sole intention is to grab your money and run. Fortunately the vast majority of companies realise that without long term customer loyalty there’s little chance of them going on a “rip off” rampage and getting away with it, not including those that have almost sole or shared monopoly of a retail sector, banking being a good example of bad practice.

As with the rest of the business world, the t-shirt sector has its “bad apples”, one of the first to come to my attention following an initially positive review here at Buy Tees was Teextile.com. They still remain the worst offenders in poor if not non-existent customer service, sending out t-shirts late, sometimes never at all, and even neglecting to pay their designers. Today I received another comment at my post Teextile – A Rip Off? which highlights all the crimes and misdemeanours of this relatively young venture into the world of t-shirt crowdsourcing. Here’s what the designer Warren Hart had to say on the matter:

“I let them use one of my designs ( SLF ryu shirt ) (http://www.fourninjas.com/shop/product/1006828) to sell in January of 2010. They have yet to pay me a dime for the amount of shirts they sold. In total they owe me about $300. For months I’ve asked and asked for my money and nothing. Just one sob story after another. They were quite rude to me as well. Now they don’t even respond. P.S. Tanga.com have ripped off my design as well.“

A few days ago I also received a comment from a reader complaining about the French t-shirt community site Wordans.com:

“Wordans has very poor business skills! I ordered shirts for a festival I was attending, their web-site claimed it would take 5-10 days and it took my shirts over 16 business days to reach me. When I cancelled my order they said they would not give my money back and I should have put a rush on my order even though I ordered with more than sufficient time!“

Now, despite the awful example of Teextile, perhaps the most crooked and conceited t-shirt community on record (read these comments to see why!), I might be blowing things out of proportion. Although I have a suspicion that most t-shirt buyers experiencing problems with customer service and shipping times may simply be on the receiving end of companies that are a victim of their own success. For every Threadless, Design By Humans, Cafepress and Spreadshirt out there, obversely there are dozens (if not hundreds) of failing t-shirt companies and ‘Print On Demand’ t-shirt sites, and it’s simply a matter of under-manning and underfunding. Without enough staff and a decent contingency fund there’s little most t-shirt companies, or any company for that matter, can do when demand outstrips supply.

Then again, I’d like to see a single instance of say a car designer, a commercial architect, or a governmental advisor in a quango who hasn’t received monies for their services. The truth is that certain t-shirt communities out there are getting a very bad reputation amongst designers, far worse than they will have garnered through a dissatisfied clientèle. Without design, the lifeblood of all t-shirt communities, there is no community, there are no t-shirts, no customers, no profits, absolutely zilch. It seems extremely short-sighted for any company, no matter what they sell, to cheat their own designers, do they think we are all fools?

The time is at hand, I believe, to stand up against the commercial bullies, the cheats, the crooks and the thieves in the t-shirt industry, and the best place to start is with the current worst offenders, Teextile.com.

Above is a button to include on your own blog, site, or social network page if you want to help stop this ever pervading problem. If you wish you can link to this post or http://buy-tees.net/2010/03/teextile-a-rip-off

or not, the choice is yours. I simply think it would be a good idea to make it clear that we’re not going to take this s*** off any t-shirt community again. In the UK we have something called Trading Standards that to a degree can guarantee customer rights, along with our own Statutory rights. In America the best they can offer is the Better Business Bureau which seems to be something of a voluntary organisation with little legal clout and a tendency to ignore those companies that haven’t signed up to their register. Useless.

What we really need is an independent body, funded by all the major t-shirt sites as mentioned before, i.e Threadless, DBH, Cafepress, Spreadshirt etc. This body would essentially provide a seal of approval for new and old t-shirt communities, including a ratings system that is recognised world-wide by the industry and the buying public. The ball is in their court now, who knows, if we all stand together on this it might just happen.

Cafepress.com merging affiliate forum and users

admin    cafepress     affiliate, affiliate program, cafepress, cafepress news, cafepress.com, community manager

Here’s a quickie for all you Cafepress.com users out there. If you’re a member of the AffSpot affiliate forum then you might be interested to know that the username migration has been completed, Aunesty Janssen wants to thanks everyone for their patience and If you have already registered on AffSpot and have a login for CafePress, please email Aunesty at aunesty@affspot.com with both your usernames and they’ll be merged together. read more

Word Up To Wordans

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     European tees, French T-Shirts, Wordans, Wordans.com, cafepress, collective, crowdsourcing, designer t-shirts, t-shirt community, zazzle

Antoine the co-founder at Wordans.com t-shirt community gave us a shout at Buy Tees for a review. The site is in many ways a pretty straightforward Zazzle or Cafepress clone, except for a few vital differences. Sure the site design is clearer and friendlier than many of its competitors out there (which there are more than a few now), and yes there’s an English and French speaking version for all the Euro t-shirt fans and designers seeking something just that little bit different than the norm. But what struck me immediately about Wordans is the fact you’ll find no trace of tacky mugs and mouse mats and gawd knows what else their competitors like to dabble in. What’s more they actually have some really decent designers under their wing, and they make sure you know it! read more

Latest Buy Tees News

admin    T-Shirt News     Glennz, T-Shirt Vouchers, Threadless, blog marketing, cafepress, spreadshirt, t-shirt contest

Here’s a quick round up of what’s been going on for me lately.

First up I’ve just won the BlogDumps.com T-Shirt and Logo Design Contest!

Woot! I’ve won 200 Entrecard Credits and a t-shirt, but best of all it’s brought more attention to Buy Tees and of course my t-shirt designs in general. It’s got me in the mood to do a few custom logo tee designs if the demand is out there, and so if you’re interested I can sort you out a design for just $50 which is a piddling £25 here in the UK so get them whilst they’re hot! I take payments by Paypal to avoid the hassle and would take around a week depending on my workload to create one for your blog/site/company. T-shirts make great prizes for any purpose, as you can tell from the interest built up at BlogDumps.com recently, so well worth a try. If you’d like a custom logo/t-shirt design for $50 contact me at info@webdesignweb.com and I’ll come up with my best I can for you. If you don’t like the design, you don’t have to buy it, it’s all valid experience for me as I’m opening up my old web and graphic site WebDesignWeb.com and need to fill the portfolio with some more recent logo designs.

read more

Ultimate Top List of T-Shirt Fulfilment Sites

admin    T-Shirt Articles     cafepress, custom printing, customink, fulfilment sites, shipping t-shirts, shirtcity, spreadshirt, t-shirt fulfilment, t-shirts fulfilment, warehousing, zazzle

T-Shirt fulfilment sites offer anyone the chance to buy or create and sell custom t-shirt designs to friends, family or the general public. There only used to be the one, CafePress.com, a behemoth of the t-shirt industry, although it has since expanded into all kinds of promotional merchandise, much of which makes me despair if the truth be told. I took years to hop on to the t-shirt design, partly out of laziness, but mainly due to the expense, inconvenience, mess, endless hours slaving over a silk-screen or screen-printing machine, the mess (I’m repeating this for my partner’s sake, she knows I’d have ink all over the house in a day), plus the now over-inflated rate of GBP means I can’t really compete with all the USA designers, many of whom can be found charging as little as $9.99 out there, I must be the only man in Britain who’s urging the recession on lol. read more

American Pi T-Shirt

admin    T-Shirts     America, American Pie, Cap Sleeve, Raglan, Ringer Tee, T-Shirts, T-Shirts Store, cafepress, funny t shirts, mathematics, pi, spreadshirt, t-shirt, usa

American Pi T-Shirt by Paul Baines

A slice of mathematical Americana! I’ve mentioned this t-shirt design before when

I’d submitted it to Spread Shirt. It’s simple and straightforward and available from
various fulfilment sites including RedBubble.com, SpreadShirt.com/net and from
Cafepress.com – and yes it really is available from only $9.99!

American Pi T-Shirts at CafePress.com only $9.99! There are plenty of other items
available including American Pi Women’s Cap Sleeve T-Shirt, American Pi Jr. Ringer T-Shirt,
American Pi Organic Cotton Tee, American Pi Jr. Raglan, American Pi Baseball Jersey, and many more!

American Pi T-Shirt at RedBubble.com available
from US$23.94

Get American Pi printed on any item
at SpreadShirt.com.

Also Available at Spreadshirt.net for European customers and even have it printed on your choice of t-shirt here