Anyway, you can say it with flowers, but well she’s probably sick of the sight of daffodils. You could say it with chocolates, but hey, she’s probably sensitive about her weight these days. So say it with erm… a Spreadshirt t-shirt? Well maybe, I don’t know your mother, she might be that way inclined. I sometimes think Spreadshirt resemble Hallmark more everyday, at least they have a sale on to mark the occassion. Roll on T-shirt Review Bloggers Day, in case you’re wondering what I’d like, it’d have to be a manual flatbed screen printing press for my art (A0 and up). They seem to be rather thin on the ground in this part of the world.

Anyway they’re offering 10% off all women’s gear from the 7th to the 13th of March.

Anyway here’s the code:- GREATESTMUM

Here’s the site:- www.spreadshirt.net

Here’s a banner in case you didn’t read any of my verbiage (garbiage more like):-

Here’s the end of the news…

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.

Ninjas Design at SpreadShirt.net – Print on any item!
Ninjas Design

Ninjas T-Shirt
Ninjas T-Shirt)

American Pi Design
American Pi Design
American Pi T-Shirt
American Pi T-Shirt

SpreadShirt.net must have the most confusing submissions program for just about anything in the world!

Here’s what they’re saying now – I’ll point out that I did increase the borders to every shape in the design to 2.0mm (took me days!)

• Please set your design so that colours are clearly separate from each other OR
• Place the layers of colour on top of each other and set the bottom layer as the full surface area

I think they might mean a solid shape for the background and perhaps organize the other shapes by their respective colours – there are only 3 colours in the design so should be quick. If this keeps going on I’ll either have to drop SpreadShirt.net and turn all nasty one them or keep going on with this until I have enough material for my own movie. I’d make it a romantic comedy about a European t-shirt submissions assistant at a major t-shirt fulfilment company and a crazy kooky t-shirt designer based in the UK lookinf for fame and fortune. The two main characters continue to bounce submissions and rejections back and forth until one day Elke decides what the hell, she will get it submitted no matter the cost. The ensuing events caused by this one decision are obviously hilarious and heavily copyrighted by the first studio that buys the rights, however I an assure you it ends with the two of them running away as the evil headquarters of SpreadShirt Europe explodes on the horizon and showers the world with free t-shirts with correct layering and size/colour requirements…

What a downer… oh well let’s try again…

Here’s the complete explanation to why each site has a slightly different approval process for vector (.eps) image submissions.

Quoted from an email exchange with the very helpful “Eike-Marie” of the SpreadShirt service.

“I agree, this seems a bit contradictory here if we release the design on the one side (.com) and reject it on the other (.net).

You can see from this example, that the issue is not an easy one. Let me explain in detail:

- the size issue: 1,5 mm refers to the size an element should have (min) so that we can produce it with plot printing. The 2mm issue refers to another point (although similar): Designs that have more than one size are combined on the shirt, that means we first press one colour element, then another. According to our experience it is better if the element on the bottom is 2 mm bigger because the flex foil might deform slightly due to the heat with which the designs are pressed on the shirt. Your design almost fits this criteria (the black element is ca. 1,9 mm bigger), so it seems that in this case my colleagues from .net were stricter than my colleagues at spreadshirt.com. In my point of view we could do it with the size as it is now (1,9mm), but making the lower element a bit thicker would bring you on the safe side.

- There is another issue concerning a design that consists of more than one colour, which I think is important to know: flex foils are slightly different from flock foils. We usually recommend to create designs that are mainly for flex printing in a way that you place the different colour elements on top of each other. With a big design and flock material, this sometimes does not look (and feel) good. In such a case we recommend to interleave the colour elements rather to place them on each other.

Here is what I recommend: Thicken the black element slightly so that it is a bit bigger and let us upload this version for both of your shops. It seems a minor amendment, but it can do much when it comes to the print result.

For further questions please don’t hesitate to contact me again.”

Now that’s support! The only problem is that SpreadShirt.com seem to approve designs much faster than SpreadShirt.net

I’m keeping my fingers crossed all will be well very very soon, in the meantime I’m sifting through over 100 archive designs and a book of new ideas, working out which designs are most suitable for flock, the old adage “less is more” comes to mind!

Well… I have just had my first vector design accepted for flock printed t-shirts at my American Spread Shirt store. (Hooray!)

I’ll be featuring the design in the Buy Tees Store as soon as I have fathomed the strange and rather annoying submission process at Spreadshirt.net :/