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– Job titles are an outdated idea from the Industrial Era.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.
and Cameron finished it off with this 140 characters…
Which to be honest is probably the sentiments of most of Coles’ customers.
