I placed my first threadless order for this one just a few minutes ago.

Employees of Time Warner Trade Publishing Inc. and affiliated companies and members of those employees' immediate families are not eligible.



All employees and immediate family members of Head2Head Sports, their sponsors, advertising, production, and fulfillment agencies are not eligible for prizes.



Employees or agents of Newcap radio stations or any entity associated with the Contest, as well as members of the same household of any such employee or agent, may not participate.



Employees, representatives, agents, shareholders officers and directors and the advertising or promotional agencies of ATI Technologies Inc. (the “Sponsor”), and those with whom the above are domiciled, are not eligible to enter.



The Contest is not open to employees and representatives of the Contest Sponsor, including their subsidiaries, sponsors, advertising and promotional agencies and members of the immediate families of such employees or representatives and persons with whom such employees and representatives are domiciled.



Restrictions on participation should also avoid exclusions that could expose the sponsor to charges of unlawful discrimination.



And the list goes on and on…. I don’t understand why your employees are eligible for your “contest” Ross Zietz gets another employee bonus and perk.



How about all the other people that submit designs? He seems to have an unfair “advantage”

I posted this response in the other thread where you wrote this, may as well post it here too:



Those contests that you are referencing are a lot different then ours, they are mostly, if not all, random drawings. This contest is based on design talent and does not give ross an unfair advantage at all. His designs are voted on by the public and given a score just like everyone else. It is not our policty to deny our employees the right to showcase their design talent through Threadless.



It'd be like members of Congress not being able to run for president because they are employees of the government.



Also, Ross has been submitting and winning the contest for years before we hired him.



Don't be hatin'!

Aw, leave Ross alone! Dude's got rare talent and deserves every reward he gets based on it. That and they have him dressin like The Gimp every Friday...

But ultimately you, the people at Threadless, are the judges, you choose what prints, despite the score or the votes which often have no bearing whatsoever on the likelihood that a shirt 'wins'. Many, many shirts that haven't scored well have been printed.



And despite the fact that Ross's shirts score well, and maybe deserve to be printed, I think it'd be the kosher thing to make him inelgible for the contests. What if he creates a so-so design, one that doesn't score well (again, because low scoring shirts are often printed), and you print it. Might that raise some questions among your customers? Is it fair that an employee of threadlesss, the people who judge what shirts make it to print, can have his/her own shirt printed?



If you want to print his designs, separate his shirts from the contest. Have a new label for shirts that are printed but not part of the contest. Like special 'designer' shirts.



"It'd be like members of Congress not being able to run for president because they are employees of the government."



Not at all comparable. The president is voted in, its all about the votes. There's no third party that subjectively decides the president after the votes are in. But it's not all about the votes here, that were true, we'd see the top scoring shirts printed, and only the top scoring. And don't say 'Well, we print based not only on scores, but on whether people click 'buy it''. As there obviously is a direct correlation between a shirts score, and how many people click 'buy it'. The higher the score, the more 'I'd buy it's', it only makes sense. Some shirt that scores a 1.8 isn't going to have some disproportionately high number of 'buy it' votes.



And I'm not hatin', I'm just voicing my opinion in the name of fairness. Nor am I just 'jealous', I had a shirt picked once, and am still proud of that fact.

Well said cubfan. I completely agree. No disrespect to Ross, I love the majority of your designs, it's just that it seems like a conflict of interest. Either base what shirts get printed solely on votes or don't allow Threadless employees into the contest.

Print yer own damn shirts if you're not happy. If Saddam Hussein was still in power, he'd closed Threadless a long time ago - even the name Threadless is obscene!

Also, I'd like to see more designers getting a chance. Yes, Ross and Glennz are both great designers but they've got like 37 shirts printed each, it would be nice to see some other people have a chance. And as good as their designs are there a plenty of designs that are as good or better by other designers.



Note that I'm not saying this cause I want to get my shirts printed, I haven't submitted any designs and don't intend to, I'd just like to see more variety.

and it's not just "random drawing" contest.... all contest, even those involving a skill that is judged, should not give individuals an uncertain advantage. That is what the Federal Trade commission regulates.



I'm not hating either. I own and wear a number of threadless designs. I'm just pointing flaws that exist within your contest that you should address.

I totally understand why it is upsetting to some of you, but we are completely fair about how we choose what designs to print. We have always allowed employees to submit and many have, I have, Jeffrey has, Craig has, Jacob has... Ross is just the first to have actually won. We do not give his designs any special attention.



We've also had many guest designers in the past that did not even have their designs go through the scoring/voting process. We haven't done that in a while but that's not to say we won't again in the future.



We are not going to be changing that policy any time soon, but please trust us that we are being fair and are not giving any special attention to Ross just because he is an employee.



Think of the competition as more of a presentation of your work to be sold. If people visiting the site like it, and we like it, we'll buy it from you. The money you receive isn't a prize, it's payment for your design that we are licensing. That's the way the site works legally. Making it a competition is just a fun way to present it.

For example... how can we not print his Loch Ness Imposter... it got a 3.77 and 479 I'd Buy It's

whoa.... what have I unleashed here? I, definitely, wasn't given any disrespect to Ross, he's got to be one of my favorite designers on the site. This design was submitted a long time before he got hired at SkinnyCorp and us mortals loved it and scored it into the top 50 highest scoring designs.



I was only asking about the prize money as a joke, in my book whatever Ross gets, Ross deserves.

and look... I didn't even make any mention of prize money in the first place.



So what's all the fuss about?

Rock, I don't even think you mentioned anything about prize money at all.

it was spowag1's post that sparked this conversation

Threadless is trying to run and operate a business here. Businesses are here for the money. If Ross Zietz happens to be an employee and has made some great designs for shirts that would ultimately make threadless money, why the hell not print his work? You guys have to stop thinking that Threadless is selling t-shirts just for the shits-and-giggles from the consumers...they are here for money and to run their business.

have you bothered to read any of these posts? please don't post otherwise.

So REALLY.. this isn't a competition or a contest at all.



you said it here..



" as more of a presentation of your work to be sold. If people visiting the site like it, and we like it, we'll buy it from you. The money you receive isn't a prize, it's payment for your design that we are licensing."



so now i feel as if you are falsely advertising it as a competitive/contest and it's NOT.

I just think you guys need to be TRUE to everyone about what's going on..

and $1000 to sell your designs to threadless.. still isn't enough money compared to what you guys make off the t-shirts.

I think I clicked on the wrong post...I meant to do the news one...

then don't submit...



besides, it's not about the prize money it's about having your design worn all over the world. It's about getting valuable feedback on your work by an audience of hundreds of people. It's about really cool shirts made by the people - for the people.



But most of all, it's about the children...

Whoa, there spowag1. Anyone who's been on here for more than a week can see this isn't a contest. Sure, it is presented as such, but at no time do the threadless guys say anything other than exactly what happens...we vote, and a design MIGHT be printed. The judges have the final rule, even though the crowd has its favorite. And $750 cash, some more in store cred and major free advertising that'd look killer on a resumé/portfolio is much more than most illustrators get for similar work, especially given the print runs. It doesn't matter how much threadless makes off of the design, that's part of the bargain you agree to when you submit.

spowag1,



it is a competition, it just helps to think of the end result as selling the rights to your design to us - as that's what we do with winners, so that they can still retain the copyright on their design. it's not just a cut and dry prize as we are making an exchange of the winning work in the end.



and $1,000 is an extremely generous amount of money for purchasing a tee shirt design. the going rate right now for a commissioned tee shirt design is about $300. that's what companies like quicksilver, billabong, bc ethic, etc. pay their 3rd party designers (we actually internally did 100 designs for xm radio and were payed only $150 a piece) and those are huge companies



we give as much money as we possibly can to the designers. you have to realize the extremely large costs in running a business. we have 12 employees salaries, printing costs, space leased, marketing costs, and endless other expenses to deal with. nobody designs threadless tee shirts as their full time jobs - it's just a great way to pass some time and possibly win some cash in the end.

spowag1 - oh weird, i didn't realize you are the same guy as cubfan! that's really strange that you would sign up with 2 accounts and post as two different people backing yourself up.



anyway, we are sincere about our intentions with threadless and i truly believe we have done a great thing to help many designer's careers. it really makes me sad that you can not see that. anyway, i wish you luck with white frog, your democracy design was great!

i'm not spowag1, sorry.

Hey Rock Deputy! Sad your blog got derailed - good that you have some drama to read and entertain you :)



I want to say both Sara and I love your 12 month club shirt. Unfortunately, we couldn't use our working at Threadless privileges to get us some. Sad :(

honestly.

FYI, I spoke with cubfan via email and I retract my statement that cubfan is the same person as spowag1. Sorry for the error, it looks like they're just friends and ordered with the same information once.

thanks!