Yeah, but exponential growth is what capitalism is all about.

big fuckin deal

Check out page 54 of the 10th anniversary book and you'll probably delete this blog.

^ Yup.

They did it once and said it didnt work, same with the magazine ads.

The internet obviously works then.

Threadless is a business and most businesses need to advertise in some way or another. With the amount of money threadless gives to winning subs it needs to make a shit load of money everyday to survive - so for me the advertising is good.

But threadless built its business around word of mouth rather than actual advertising, which is why up until very recently they never printed a tee that didn't sell out, dont get me wrong, I'm happy with twitter and the fan page because its used to engage with its audience but I dont really see the point of the other ads.

I mean the reason they show up is because I've searched for related terms, which more than likely was threadless, I'm already a part of the audience so its a waste of time advertising to me.

I'd be really interested to see if the ads were actually working.

As for the argument that they give out a lot of prizes, they didnt get where they were today by spending more money than they were taking in, the prize money is built into the cost.

Say they do a limited run of 3000 tees, and they cost around $3 to print (that figure comes from the book crowdsourcing that wrote heavily about threadless), it costs them $9000 to print and $2500 in prizes (just to make it simple, I know $500 doesnt count), their total costs are $11,500.

The average tee is going for $20, which is $60000, thats still a $48,500 profit per run of tees.

That doesnt include stuff like utilities, building rental or staff but its still a hell of a profit margin.

anyone here remember that harvard school of business study they did on threadless? about being one of the largest online companies EVER without using ANY advertising?

yeah, well those days are the past.

Threadless is/was such a big deal because it was the first company to use crowdsourcing to build a massive business from scratch, threadless was doing crowdsourcing BEFORE the term had been coined. There such a big deal that almost every book that studies the internet talks about them.

Thats something to be proud of but it doesn't change the fact the advertisements bug me.

Does it really put you out of your day to see their advertisements in the sidebar? I never notice any ads unless they're blinking or yelling at me.

I dont know, I guess I'm feeling nostalgic I remember back in the day where knowing about threadless felt like you were in this awesome secret club, people used to get fairly defensive about it and wouldnt tell people where they bought their tees.

I never went that far but still, threadless doesnt feel like that to me anymore.

I almost never see banner ads on the internet, including Facebook, because of the marvelous invention of Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox.

Blissfully unaware of the magnitude of advertising, and never again will I be asked to guess the celebrity or find my Credit Score by shooting a duck.

hipster problems

Bio-bot 9000 on Oct 25 '11 at 7:20pm
I almost never see banner ads on the internet, including Facebook, because of the marvelous invention of Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox.
Blissfully unaware of the magnitude of advertising, and never again will I be asked to guess the celebrity or find my Credit Score by shooting a duck.

Exactly

ADVERTISERS PAY BUSINESSES

BUSINESS MAKE MONEY

ADVERTISERS MAKE MONEY ALSO TOO AS WELL

BUSINESSES MAKE MORE MONEY

EVERYBODY IS HAPPY

NOTHING HAS TO CHANGE

EVER

Hey man, half of those ads feature me.

i'm ok with those ones

I'm nostalgic for that too and all, but ultimately Threadless (Skinnycorp) has shareholders who've made an investment and want to see growth. When you're just in business for yourself, it's OK to be that cool thing that only a few people know about if a smaller return is cool for you. But when other people are relying on you, you've got to get the word out and make sales.

Frankly I'd rather they did it through advertising which maintains the "cred" of the original idea but gets the message out to more people than through spec work for Disney in the Atrium which is "selling out."

Bio-bot 9000 on Oct 25 '11 at 7:20pm
I almost never see banner ads on the internet, including Facebook, because of the marvelous invention of Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox.

Blissfully unaware of the magnitude of advertising, and never again will I be asked to guess the celebrity or find my Credit Score by shooting a duck.

I love me some Adblock Plus. Best invention on top of the best search engine (TM) ever! But threadless ads rarely bother me, Threadless has never really done any obtrusive forms of advertising, and it's still exciting to me when I see a threadless ad during a program either online or on television (mostly wearing the tees) that I wouldn't expect them to infiltrate.

I'm most nostalgic for Threadless making a themed contest that was based on originality and an amazing topic. Many of the Atrium contests are for very worthy cuases, but there's also an equal number of "make something with muppets in them! Or some other property with a movie coming out next month!", as well as the current "make a shirt you'd wanna wear every day" kind of contests. I miss the Mae "Singularity" themes or where they took a line from a song like the Submarines contest and you had to extrapolate from that an image.

i like seeing threadless ads because people we know and love are featured in those ads and i can look over and go "oh hey whatup man".

Whoa what timing as I just ran into Threadless banners on ebay and a malaysian tour site o.O

I don't mind it, having met and being cool with people part of the staff and knowing that they're totally nice people and are worth giving my moneys to.

Those ads are for Threadless?
I thought it was for Alvin.

also, dick in ya hooday

You can buy me for the low, low price of ketchup.

"Buy one half of Alvin, and I'll throw in the other half... for FREE."

- Billy Mays

Too soon, Mike. Too soon.

Dang, Alvin rest in peace.

some of my best friends were rats.

He loved to laugh.

He loved life

Oh I wasnt even in on the joke, then I said it wrong. I'm so fuck, shit, fuck man... Oh god damnit, fuckdick, man. Godfuck

Secretsurprise I'm not a dead.

I like seeing Alvin and ads and all, but sometimes I just wanna see the Snorg girl with the massive boobs, or the Snorg girl in her underpants.

i don't see threadless ads because they don't appear on threadless or flickr or fffound and i don't go anywhere else.

HULK SMASH

Advertising is a poison that demeans even love – and we're hooked on it

Adblock, right. I should install that.

I think I remember Threadless ads on ffffound, but maybe I'm just thinking of Emptees because the ads are the same small size. Emptees was definitely one of the first places I saw them.

Awesome Article tesco!! Meanwhile, the world keeps spinning!

How dare they advertise their products! MURDER! BLOOD!

They bug the crap out of me, too. But so does Zappos or any other site that I click just once and then it follows me everywhere until I delete my cookies again.

Good read, eh? Especially the Edward Bernays stuff. The Think Of Me As Evil? pdf is also worth a read if you're interested in the psychology behind it.

i have never seen a threadless ad before- didn't even know they had them.

Wow, in others words, Taryn hates me.

They did TV ads on Comedy Central or something didn't they?

Adapt or die.

are you in the ads, alwin??
wow, u r liek, famous

The dumb thing is, because they are mostly all targeted Google ads based on browsing history and search criteria, it is probably us as regular Threadusers that get the most exposure to them - so they appear to us with much greater frequency. Kind of ironic. Amirite?

I just went to the home page of my football team and Craig's face was at the top of the page. I thought we might have signed him.