Hendricks’ Happy Birthday Sale at CollarFree.com

Jimmy Hendricks (perhaps one of the coolest names of all time) is celebrating his 28th birthday (oh to be youngish) by offering a whopping 28% off all tees, available at his fabulous t-shirt crowd sourcing site CollarFree.com. I’ve watched this company leap from strength to strength over the last year with a mix of fond admiration and a tinge of envy. If you’re going to run a successful t-shirt label, Collar Free offers a textbook story of achievement and expansion that’s sure to make any CEO raise an eyebrow. With a strong range of graphic tees, a faithful band of designers and fans, and a savvy technical and business team working all hours behind the scenes, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s as near to t-shirt nirvana as you can get.

First things first, happy birthday Jimmy, may your all your birthdays be celebrated with as much success if not more! It does make me wonder if Mr. Hendricks lives to a ripe old age will the discount climb with him? It’s a long time to wait, but I’m sure it’d be worth the wait to celebrate Jimmy’s centenary on the planet. Although I’m sure by then accounting department for his multi-million dollar global fashion corporation (yes - I’m sure it could be if we wait long enough), will be shaking their heads as they wheeled him to the retirement home. Back to the present, and despite the fact it’s his birthday, here’s Jimmy’s gift to all of you! Just pick what you like and punch in the code “28on28” at the checkout.

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Horrible Threadless

Well I know what a nightmare it is trying to win at Threadless but never mind that…

Threadless.com is Daring Designers to Face Their Fears and Design for Horror in its Latest Loves Competition.

Community-centric tee shirt company Threadless.com is nixing the holiday calendar and brewing up spooky situations after Halloween. That’s right, as an excuse to keep those scary decorations up and continue asking your neighbours for candy, Threadless’ latest “Loves” challenge is asking designers everywhere to conjure up a design for a tee based on the concept of horror.

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A T-Shirt Forum For A New Generation

As Liz from PopCultureTees.com - the creator of the brand new t-shirt forum TeeDesignTalk.com told me the other day - “one forum (no names mentioned :p) out there is definitely the big boy of the industry - but I’ve always considered them more of an industry forum than a designer forum. When I was working in the screen printing industry, they were my first stop for technical questions…. not so much for design questions. They are definitely grumpy! I think that with all the people who are participating in sites like emptees and threadless there’s a whole new set of people who are interested in t-shirts, but coming from an entirely different direction. They’re the people who are design cool stuff, not t-shirts for schools and churches.”

I couldn’t agree more with Liz and hopefully you are also in agreement, we need to step up the evolution in the world of t-shirts and reflect the massive developments in our industry, it’s true that since the emergence of sites like Threadless.com there has been a noticeable key change in the attitude and culture of both designers and consumers of the beloved tee. Read more

Time Travelling T-Shirt

Yes I’m not the greatest fan of slogan tees…

but come on, if you are going to buy a slogan t-shirt, at least make sure it’s so whacked out and beyond the pale that even the freakiest trendsetters out there will stop, stare and drop their jaws in reluctant respect.

If you’re so far ahead of the latest trends and fashions that either: Read more

Chill out with Threadless in Iceland!

Threadless.com’s business timing couldn’t be better, sure it may just be the grizzled old cynic in me that can’t resist pointing this one out, but have you heard about the state of Icelandic’s economy these days? On average their prices for everything from hotels to food to shopping and bars are down around 40% compared to last year. So even if you don’t win their latest competition, it shouldn’t break the bank if you fancy popping over there for a while. Still it’s always nice to get a freebie, and with the latest theme of ‘Threadless Loves Travel’ you’ll have a pretty wide remit as far as design briefs go.

I’ve just got back from Morocco so the wild and frenzied culture of North Africa is still spinning through my mind, but to be honest you could choose anywhere and anything, be it the Great Pyramids of Egypt or the Great Wall of China, an Amazonian adventure, a flight into space, I’m not sure if time travel would count (although I’d be game - would be handy for the lottery numbers).

Whatever you fancy creating for the contest make sure you submit your work by their deadline for entries on October 22, 2008. Their contest is sponsored by Icelandair, action sports accessories company Dakine, IES Abroad (Institute for the International Education of Students), and even the band Calexico, are each making it possible for the best design to take to the skies in style. The creator of the winning design will receive a bounty of travel goodies including two round-trip tickets to Iceland on Icelandair, a $1k credit to a travel site of his or her choosing, courtesy of IES, a Dakine Split Roller 90 Travel Bag, and a personalized song, written by Calexico, inspired by the winning design.

Cameesa.com - Crowdfunding Fashion.

Here’s a new crowdsourcing t-shirt site to add to the fold (the more the better) called Cameesa.com - however there seems to be one distinct advantage for Cameesa supporters (aka customers) compared to other grander operations like Threadless and DesignByHumans and that’s the fact that they actually reward them for their efforts.

Essentially for the first time fans and artists can be in business together. Each artist issues 50 ‘parts’ (shares) per design, parts cost $20 each which totals $1000 per t-shirt. Together, the artist’s supporters have to raise $1,000 to get the design of their choice fully supported. Each part earns the supporter 3 cents per sale, and each supporter receives a free limited edition t-shirt as part of the package.

The artist earns $500 for each fully-supported design, plus a free t-shirt and a whopping $2 per sale to top it off. Read more

Shirt City - Want Your Videos Now!

If you’ve ever fancied yourself as a filmmaker, this may be your chance to make it big… in the t-shirt world :p ShirtCity.com/Scribtee.com are offering a whopping $1000 and a big heap of t-shirts to the winners, so get your cameras out now and start filming anything to do with tees! How about painting a large bucket like a teacup and filling it with t-shirts, call the video ‘Nice cup of tee’ and you should have a stab at winning. Then again you could try getting a load of bare chested friends to paint t-shirts on each other, if you feature SC’s designs you’ll probably get in their good books too. If you design t-shirts there’s always animation to consider, who knows, Teezilla attacks Tokyo? As stated at their blog they’re looking for short clips, fake ads, stop motion animation, mini dramas, experimental movies, flash animation … anything goes as long it’s cool, creative and features T-shirtsWhatever you decide, I’m sure your creative juices are already bubbling at the thought of all that lovely money. Read more

Tee Fury - Tee Today Gone Tomorrow!

Hell hath no fury like a t-shirt scorned. If you want what TeeFury.com have on offer you had better hurry, they offer a unique ‘one day only ’service, selling some truly incredible tees from a diverse stock of the highest quality t-shirt designers.

They offer a new screen-printed limited-edition tee every 24 hours for $9 however you can only buy a maximum of 3. They print on high-quality “regular-fit” tees that are made of 100% ringspun cotton. They pay each artist $1 per shirt sold AND the artist keeps full rights to their design. After a design’s 24 hour stint at Tee Fury the artist can sell the design anywhere they like. They charge $2 US and $7 Worldwide shipping. Read more

Divine Tees at Bad as Hell Clothing

Charles Wu of BadAsHellClothing.com sent me a mail recently introducing his new site, I’m pretty well known for my love/hate (love winning / hate losing) relationship with Threadless and a gamut of similar stores out there, I’ve written a comprehensive list of the top sites in a recent article, but you can never get enough of a good thing, and I have to concede this BAHC are certainly off to a great start! Excellent designs and a generous cash prize certainly grabbed my attention and look to have a great future in the market.

Apart from the cool logo the first thing to hit me was the high standard of design at BAHC, Charles obviously feels the same as he’s picked six winners for his first month’s trading and every one of them is a real cracker. The top prize is a generous $600 ($500 cash and $100 vouchers), plus residuals that can amount to $1000 if they sell 550 or more of your design, or $1 per t-shirt if they sell 150. So well worth submitting your latest tees if you’re after some cash and kudos.

By the way check out the crazy logo, Charles can certainly practice what he preaches as BAHC so be sure you submit your very best works to get a crack at the top prize! Anyway on with the current winners at Bad As Hell… Read more

My t-shirts suck (according to Threadless.com)

Is it the transatlantic cultural gap? Could it be that the British sense of humour doesn’t translate in the USA or perhaps more simply my t-shirt designs suck. I’ve had a lot of trouble with Threadless.com up to this point, call me a glutton for punishment, but I am still fascinated by the Threadless mindset.

Some of the junk I’ve seen their grabbing the votes for days on end makes me wonder what the hell is going on? There doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule except one, don’t crack jokes, don’t make puns, and more than likely don’t admit your British. So much for the special relationship lol. Whilst I’m at it if I’d been running the country I’d have told Bush where to stick it rather than dive headlong after them into the Iraq War. Read more

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