Taddict – T Addict – T-Shirt Blog

Another T-Shirt Design Contest (2)

Published on November 17th, 2008. By The Taddict, under T-Shirt Design Contests.

Only the market will tell us at what point the internet will reach saturation on websites based on t-shirt design contests. One that I came across today and was unaware of, is a company called Itself. The problem with a lot of these new sites is that they take an already existing concept (crowdsourcing t-shirt production) and get dollar signs in their eyes. What I mean by this is, the execution isn’t so great, because the plan was conceived with a motivation other than passion. Itself doesn’t seem to suffer from that problem.

Here Itself - T-Shirt Design Contest

The thing that they are doing that appears to be a step in the right direction is following through with what they say they’re going to do. The simple premise behind their site is to pay winning designers and to create t-shirts out of those designs. I have seen a few sites lately that are making these claims, but you just aren’t seeing any new t-shirts in their shop. To me, that is the biggest community killer you could do. Itself has a few new shirts up, but they also back it up with their blog, showcasing the new winners.

The most interesting thing I saw with their business model is they are producing their own t-shirts. I know you might be thinking that is an obvious decision considering Threadless does it, but they don’t have the Threadless bankroll or volume at this stage in the game. I guess only time will tell, but so far so good….