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– Job titles are an outdated idea from the Industrial Era.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.
I love their model:
1) Get people to send in designs for free.
2) Let customers tell them what they want to buy.
3) Compensate the best artists.
4) Print tees that people have already told them they want to buy.
5) Make cash.
I’m surprised you expected more business insights Steve. Surely the point of such meet-and-greets is for them to build stronger community ties and cultivate their tribe of fans? Any proselytising of their business model is only of interest to a small bunch of us…
I also disagree with your “diworsification” call regarding their one store. There is no harm done in engaging in a physical sphere with some of those folks who haven’t encountered the tees on-line (or are doubtful about e-commerce).
Also, it allows for a “pilgrimage” for those hardcore fans you mentioend above…
I can’t imagine it costs them a great deal to make this move. Staying singularly is greta in theory, but sometimes it just aint that much fun, and might be missing a untapped market…
that last bit should say “Staying singularly focussed is great in theory, but sometimes it just aint that much fun, and might be missing a untapped market…
I was thinking of going but after your comments, I’m glad I didn’t. I’m not surprised about what happened to their CFO. I bet they replaced him with a person fresh out of Uni who doesn’t know the first thing of how to account for such a business.
As for whether culture is age dependent, I think age impacts on what kind of culture there is in the business. I’m currently working at a youth service provider where the average age of management is around 43. As a consequence, they have banned the use of facebook and no one has been encouraged to keep a blog. There is basically no accessible record of the work they do with young people.
Nice write-up, Steve. You might like an interview I did with Ross while he was in Brisbane that week: http://andrewmcmillen.com/2009/06/04/a-conversation-with-ross-zietz-threadless-art-director/