Hi everyone! Jeffrey here. I know everyone has been very patiently and anxiously awaiting news of what's going on with Threadless making our own tees. Last November, I posted this blog. In it I said that we'd be using our own brand of tees by January 2007 and the rest would come soon after. Jeesh, that certainly didn't happen, huh?! So, I'd like to tell you guys what happened with that, as well as give you the full update about what's to come...

Let's get up to speed...

To begin with, there has been no point in the last year that we haven't been working our little patoots off trying to get this project done. As I said in the last news about this, we were working with a manufacturer in LA who was making our kids stuff, longsleeves, and hoodies. We weren't able to have them make our Girly and Guys tees domestically because the cost was just out of this world. The plan was to use that manufacturer's international facility (in Honduras) to produce all the Girly and Guys tees, and have them ready to go by early 2007. We went back and forth a LOT on the cut, fabric, etc (if anyone has ever made custom garments with no experience, you'll know this is a SSLLOOWW process). Once we decided on a garment we were happy with, we were ready to pull the trigger with the Honduras production. Long story short, the picture painted for us by our LA manufacturer wasn't as pretty as he had us believe, and we weren't able to use them to make tees overseas. Talk about having the rug pulled out from under us!

This happened this past April. It was so incredibly disappointing for us mostly because we had made promises about when the tees would come out that we couldn't keep. Then to add insult to injury, we found out that we were being lied to about the overall capabilities of who we had put so much time into working with. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however. The rep who we were using to maintain the relationship between us and our LA manufacturer brought another manufacturer to the table within one day of the fallout. As it turned out, this new company (based on the East Coast) is bigger, better, and generally kick-ass in every way imaginable. It took us about 2 weeks to decide to work with them after seeing what they can do. This took care of our overseas manufacturing. The issue at that point was that we no longer wanted to work with our LA manufacturer because there now existed a pretty major trust issue. Our beloved printer, SOB, brought an incredible domestic manufacturer to the table who we decided to use. So, within 6 weeks of the bad news, we're back on track with 2 amazing companies. So like I said, a blessing in disguise.

Ok, so what now?

Here's where we're at today - Wednesday June 6th 2007. We have a finalized spec of custom-made girly tees, guys tees, longsleeves, kids tees, onesies, hoodies, kids-sized hoodies (yep, kids-sized hoodies!), and a brand-new-ultra-awesome new kids' product that we're keeping a secret for right now. Not only that, but our tees and longsleeves will come in 22 colors. And what's better, the Guys and Girly products will come out in the same colors! FINALLY! One other amazing new thing we'll be able to offer, is with our domestic manufacturer, we'll be able to offer CUSTOM COLOR SHORT SLEEVE TEES for our Select program. OMG! So, a Select designer can tell us what Pantone color to match the tee color to for his or her design. INSANE!

What's really cool is the way we're going to be doing our tagging as well. We're still going to be using the printed designer/design information tag on the inside, but that will now be located at the lower right-side of the tee. In the neck, we'll have custom-made Threadless tags. We did this primarily because we had to. In order to legally import goods from outside of the US, there had to be information clearly visible to the inspectors. That information is brand, size, material and origin. Here's a mock-up of what the tags will look like...



So, tell me about where everything is being made...

The Guys and Girls short-sleeve tees are being made in Bangladesh. Our manufacturer works in partnership with the owner of this facility. It's a $100 million facility that was built in 1996. The owner of the facility was nice enough to fly all the way to our office for a meeting. He's an incredibly well-respected manufacturer. We were pretty concerned at first about the conditions of the factory, how they treat their workers etc. We were assured that everything about this facility is 100% legit by American standards. One way to know he's being honest is that he produces a HUGE amount of product for Disney. By industry standards, Disney has the most stringent standards of any company in the world. Their reputation depends on it. Can you imagine if Disney used a facility that treated their workers unfairly to make Mickey Mouse tees for kids?! I was also invited to Bangladesh in August to tour the facility. I'm yet undecided if I'll go, due to time constraints, but our manufacter will be there, so he'll take pics which we'll post here when he gets back.

The Longsleeves, Kids tees, Onesies and Hoodies will be made domestically on the East Coast.

Ok, ok, but when do we get 'em!?

Here's our timeline. By September, we'll be using our new tees for all Threadless Select designs. We'll also be doing a special design on the new tees which will only be available at our retail store (which opens in July/August) and at our warehouse. Right after the new year, 2008, we'll be in full production of our own tees and will no longer be using AA or FOTL. I know it may seem like there is a big lag between now and when the tees will come out, but our initial production run will take about 120 days to get manufacturerd and delivered by sea. Once it arrives it has to clear customs, get separated, etc etc etc and then it gets delivered to our printers. We'll be making monthly orders, but the first order takes the longest.

I know we said that they'd be here in January of 2007, but sometimes things happen outside of your control. We've already placed a test order of about 39,000 shirts on 4 colors (Black, Lt. Blue, Silver & Cream) which our printers will use to make test prints and also to make the tees which will be available in our store. If anyone is REALLY curious about what the tees will be like, please feel free to drop by our office and we'll show you the production samples. They're amazing!

So, I think that just about covers it. We're so excited to get this going you have no idea. Thank you for your incredible patience and support in this. It'll be worth the wait, we promise!!!!!!!

-Jeffrey