Great article on threadless.....they have a compelling story and have done very well selling user generated art to consumers:
Jake Nickell and
Jacob DeHart didn't realize it at the time, but when they created
Threadless.com, a Chicago-based online community for the design and purchase
of T-shirts, they became part of one of the hottest trends in Web 2.0: crowdsourcing. Their business model works like this: People
submit designs for weekly T-shirt competitions. The winner receives a cash prize
and some free T-shirts. In return, Threadless sells the winning T-shirt to a
community that now numbers more than 30,000. By turning the design of their
apparel over to the fans of their site, Nickell and DeHart have not only proven
that crowdsourcing works, they've managed to build a thriving business that
sells more than 100,000 T-shirts a month.
Nickell: "About six
years ago, we were both members of an online art community called Dreamless.
They held a T-shirt design competition in London, which we both submitted a design for. I
won. I met Jacob on the forum and we talked about how we could build something
on our own like that competition. We decided to make Threadless to give back to
the community."
DeHart: "For the
first year, we just ran the site on the side and outsourced all the shipping and
printing. We both had fulltime jobs as Web designers. But as the number of
people using the site continued to grow, we saw that there was an opportunity to
do something even bigger. We started by forming skinnyCorp in 2003, which was our Web-development company. For
a while, we continued to do some Web development on the side to make some
money."
Nickell: "The real kickoff was when we fired our Web-development
clients in January 2004 to focus entirely on Threadless. We started storing
shirts in my apartment in big, blue Tupperware containers, and then walking down
to the post office to ship them. We've moved our offices almost every year since
because we need more and more space."
DeHart: "In the beginning, we
didn't really think of ourselves as businessmen. Looking back, we're very proud
of what we built. We created a whole fulfillment system including a warehouse
and shipping system all by ourselves. In the beginning, we would even charge
each customer's credit card over the phone individually. Now, everything is
automated."
Nickell: "We continue to plan for what will happen when we
hit our next level, when we need to ship 10,000 shirts a day. We actually just
sold our millionth shirt in October. As the business has grown, the back end has
continued to take more and time. We've brought in experienced people to help us
because we're most interested in building the community."
DeHart: "We've
also been building other communities. Naked and Angry is the most similar to
Threadless in that people submit patterns for ties, shirts, or bedspreads. We
also have Extra Tasty, where people submit ingredients to use in a variety of
drink recipes."
Nickell: "It's amazing, the positive reaction we have
received for our sites. People are excited about sharing their time and skills
for free. If they win, we create a real product, unlike a lot of other
crowdsourcing sites like Wikipedia. We're one of the only companies that's using
a community to create real products."