On Monday night I went to the Threadless in Conversation shindig in Melbourne.
In truth I expected a bit more on the business side, and little less on the design fan boy love.
In the spirit of creating value I have written below some quotes I took from Ross which are in blue, and my thoughts are underneath which are in black.
‘We’d rather just have a conversation’
– Still largely one way. We listen, but to those who deserve to be heard.
‘Started in 2000’
– Another example of overnight success taking nearly 10 years.
‘We saw the idea for threadless and said what if we just did it?’
– Again ideas are free, ideas are everywhere, doing creates winning.
‘I saw a tiny little ad for it in a magazine & just submitted a design & got hooked’
– Action….
‘My interview was in an Irish pub on St Patrick’s day drinking green beer’
– Pretty cool, why do people sit in stupid rooms to conduct interviews, maybe alcohol should be at all job interviews?
‘My title (Art Director) doesn’t really represent what I do. I do all kinds of different stuff’
– Job titles are an outdated idea from the Industrial Era.
‘ Our prints are not selling well…’
– Even successful businesses have flops.
‘Interacting with the community is the first part of my job’
– They all say that. But I wouldn’t know as I prefer Neighborhoodies.
‘My eduction didn’t prepare me for it. It was on the job I learned.’
– Education is just a ticket to the ball game.
‘People want to win, so they tell their friends’
– Viral stuff is about them, it’s never about us.
‘We’re going back to American Apparel. Custom is too hard’
– They create the Illusion of customisation.
‘We’re good friends with the guys at Twitter’
– Collaboration and relationships win in business. Who you know matters.
‘They opened a store because it was a cool idea and people asked’
– Sounds like a diworsification to me.
‘Whenever we have a sale volume goes up like a 100%’
– Even cool brands have price sensitive customers.
‘We email voters to remind them when a shirt they voted on is printed’
– Sounds like a little like spam, er sorry, bacn, but it must work.
‘The oldest person in our company is like 35’
– Is culture age dependent? I’m really curious. Comment if you have the answer.
‘We had a CFO who was like 50 or something and he just didn’t fit in’
– hmm, Did you let him?
‘Our team at threadless has 32 people’
– Sounds like a reasonably tight organisation. We don’t need huge numbers of people to get stuff done.
