Feedmarker Blog

Just wanted to throw a pointer out to a great web application/clothing shop I came across the other day: www.spreadshirt.com.

Spreadshirt takes an idea that is not new (selling customized t-shirts) and does it better than anyone has done it before. I think that’s a strong business model. It worked for Basecamp.

When you get to Spreadshirt’s site, you’re immediately presented with the option to create a t-shirt (it’s the largest text on the home page). Maybe this is another win for big text. Anyway, you don’t have to create an account, sign in, or jump through any hoops; it just lets you start designing your shirt immediately.

And the interface for doing that is excellent. With other customized clothing sites, you uploaded a graphic, waited for a while, and maybe (if you were lucky), got to see a preview of how the shirt would look. With Spreadshirt you design directly on the shirt. You choose a graphic (or upload your own), and drag it around on the shirt (you can put it wherever you want within certain boundaries). You can add text, change the colors, change shirt styles or colors. The interface frees you to design what you want.

And that’s why I think they’re going to be sucessful; they’ve made it so easy to design a shirt, you almost can’t help yourself. And as soon as you start playing with it, you realize you would actually want to buy a shirt you designed yourself.

By lowering the barrier and making things easy, Spreadshirt has made designing a custom shirt so fun and fast, you wonder why you’d ever buy a graphic t-shirt you didn’t design yourself.

Or you could buy this shirt, designed by me…