In December I noted that using a Flash interface allowed a little known custom casino chip maker called thechiplab to offer far more powerful schwag design tools than the heavily funded Zazzle and CafePress.
My post didn’t serve as much of a wakeup call – those guys still have design tools stuck in the 90’s (although to their credit Cafepress has been busy rolling out it’s new developers network).
But Goodstorm, another schwag company we’ve written about in the past, has grabbed the bull by the horns and has jumped onto the Flash bandwagon with enthusiasm. The company launched catering primarily to nonprofits, giving charities a way to inexpensively sell custom designed tshirts at a very low wholesale price. The company also launched a widget product last summer.
The new product allows visitors to quickly design their own Tshirt using uploaded or stock images, text and special characters. If you like you can buy just one – a men’s standard Tshirt, designed to your specifications, costs $15.
Store owners can also create their own version of the design tool, with pre-uploaded images and custom pricing. We’ve created one – see the TechCrunch Tshirt store here. Upload your own images and have at it – any proceeds we receive from sales of Tshirts will go to charity.
Well, that does not really seem to be something new.
http://www.spreadshirt.com has more powerful design tools, too.
And they have been on the market for quite a while.
This is one very power full for online T-shirt design and user store creation.
http://www.prod...ign-tool-v3.php
hmmm.. not that innovative. spreadshirt offers a flash-editor since quite some time now: http://www.spreadshirt.com
as a t-shirt seller, I can say that spreadshirt has been around while, BUT, the big difference here, as far as I can tell from Goodstorm’s site (I don’t use spreadshirt or goodstorm) is that their base prices are far lower. Most of the shirts I see selling on spreadshirt sites are $20 – $25 bucks, and from the research I’ve done most of that goes to spreadshirt. I’ve heard of Goodstorm before, and their prices have always been the lowest and they’ve always given the biggest peice of the profit pie to sellers. So that’s good news – that they’ve finally released a flash editor to better compete with those bigger sites is even better. If this thing works, goodbye cafepress. Does anyone know if this flash wizard can be installed on custom urls? that’s another thing you can’t do with spreadshirt and would be a cool feature.
I found it fun to play with but all the teashirt companies I have used online to create tshirts have ended up sending me a crap tshirt. The print is blurry and fades real quick and one has white dots all over it now.
can anyone let me know what the quality is like for these shirts?
Good point Darren,
The deciding factor on any of these types of products is customer satisfaction, The first site that is transparent with that will get the orders [price not being so relevant if the customers say the quality is excellent].
I wonder if Ebay would allow for this type of tool to be added to their service as that would spike up the sales for the T-Shirt printer if he was compliant and produced the quality.
Blogshirt.com was a way better Site.
It is down now the domain is parked may be fore sale soon.
I LOVE THIS!!! Wow, I’ll be installing this on my web site. I noticed, when you click on the GoodStorm link below the TechCrunch creator, it allows you to sign up and get your own store. They even have several styles and color templates for stores to choose from.
I have been doing research on setting up a store and their prices for web site owners are soooooo looooow compared to Cafe Priss (I tried these guys and their prices are sh*&^%$!!!) and Zazle (…most expensive!!!). Compared with spreadshirt, their prices and profit sharing model are much better too! I have been researching doing a shirt site for a while and Goodstorm is the cheapest (so I can make the most profit with GoodStorm) but I agree with Darren that we should check out the quality of the tshirts. I will be ordering one then report back to the TechCrunch community.
he i would be really happy, if you already got the files for me cause the download is disabled pls help ..
thanks
Soon people can have innovative e-Stores in addition to Brick and Mortar model.
http://www.tekn...ld.blogspot.com
Just came back from surfing the Goodstorm experience (I heart TechCrunch) and yes, they exist in a crowded space (read somewhere on the site that there is more to come though, that will set them apart…when? WHEN?) but the bottom line: they seem to give away the most money to the seller. They have an elegant tee shirt creator as well. But fact is fact: they give away the most cash. AND they seem to be in the game for more altruistic and socially positive reasons as well.
This might be good as long as there’s some competitive advantage over Cafepress.
Did you guys see all the work mike put into the techcrunch designs
pure genius!!!!!!!
http://www.rank...ne-from-scratch
Ah, that’s a good point, Darren! I too wonder about the actual quality of the printing and tshirts. No less, I think this is a good idea. I think the tshirt market is saturated but it’s always very good to see companies in tech making moves in apparel/shopping/fashion – they’re big niches online driving a lot of commerce.
Very cool.
Another t-shirt design site: stagr.com.
…and how can we put tags and conform the site to the google seach requirements??
Reading between the lines on Spreadshirt’s forums, opening a shop is easy; selling a t-shirt is damn near impossible.
good point, debbie – selling is hard work, which i guess makes earning more per shirt sold that much more important. there’s probably a formula for this already somewhere, but if you could sell a shirt for $15 (vs $25 on zazzle or cp) and still make decent bank, you’d sell a heck of a lot more of them, right? sounds good to me. as for quality – i’ve ordered shirts from digital printers in the past and it can be hit or miss – 1 shirt’s been washed 40 times and still looks great – another just a few times and it’s starting to fade.
i like that this is flash, though – does that mean I can install it on my MySpace site?
Full disclosure, I am with GoodStorm.com.
Anyone can have one of these TShirt Wizards by going to: https://tshirts...ister?affiliate In 5 – 10 minutes, you get a tshirt wizard then have the code to cut and paste on your own site and you’ve now got your own tshirt wizard!
Another site is: http://www.crai...oundation_Store
Of course we have it running on our site: https://tshirts...torm.com/wizard
Click on the “create your own custom craigslist t-shirt” and have fun and support thousands of non-profits through the Craigslist Foundation.
Again our goal is not just to make tshirt stores. We want folks to make meaningful monies. We also want to encourage individual and group entrepreneurship.
In a few weeks, we’ll be releasing a much bigger product set with even lower prices and better services.
Let’s all do some good for each other!
Peace,
Y
I like GoodStorm because it is the cheapest one.
Does GoodStorm offer poker chips like TheChipLab.com? Unfortunately, TheChipLab.com doesn’t have such a program like GoodStorm.
Does anyone know whether there is a company like GoodStorm which offers poker chips, cds and business cards?
Another important question:
GoodStorm is based in USA. Many website owners have users from all over the world. How do you make it possible for them to purchase your products at the same price as far as shipping is concerned?
Thanks.
Well I don’t think anybody should necessarily want to enter the tshirt market from a business standpoint – it’s so incredibly oversaturated, you have to compete with so many companies – and then of course, the stores themselves, like Urban Outfitters, etc. But I think sites like this are great for non profits, school sales, etc.
Great work GoodStorm! I love the service (bought a few shirts from them in the past) and I’m exicted to see this new tool. Their prices can’t be beat.
I am also with GoodStorm, but wanted to chime in here. No need to worry about ruining your shirt. You can layout your designs in whatever way is easiest for you (photoshop), and upload it as a custom graphic – allowing you plenty of control over what winds up on your t-shirt. (300 dpi transparent .png).
The t-shirt printing very high-quality and durable; comparable to that of silkscreen printing. The shirts I have ordered have become my favorites, and have been through the wash many times already. I have noticed no loss of quality.
Enjoy!
http://www.innerTee.net has some awesome Art designs & cool Philosophy*
Peace*
French market’s Lafraise.com was a blast a while ago, especially regarding the exceptional quality of the print (made in France
)
Spreadshirt bought it 6 months ago, USD 4M or so. Check it out !
So why would anyone use CafePress or any of the other sites when their prices are so high. Also I have ordered shirts from Goodstorm and their quality is very good. Zazzle was so expensive, it not even worth opening a store with them. I suspect that since Zazzle and CafePress took VC money and expanded their SKUs (therefore bought a ton of capex) they have to make their margins on the back of storeowners who still do not know goodstorm. Life should be more than making money… we need more goodstorms.
We really believe in the quality of our printing and the advanced functionality available in our store & designer systems.
We have an active partner community which seem to agree and are building their own independent brands using our system. I encourage anyone to check out our service and see how it compares.
Adam
Spreadshirt
I was disappointed with the narrow range of fairly conservative shirt styles currently on Goodstorm, not a patch on Spreadshirt, InnerTee or Stagr. Maybe that’s a reflection of the newness of the business and that’ll improve in time. Spreadshirt ships internationally, while Goodstorm does not. My audience is international, so the greater profit share I might get from Goodstorm is probably negated by only being able to sell with the 48 contiguous. People outside the US may dress funny, but they still dress…
Fletch or Adam,
I would love to go uise your service. Can SS drop it’s prices by 20% to 50% in some cases. It seems to me that goodstorm slams all of their other competitors as far as prices go. Their base prices are by far the very best from the POV of the storeowner/partner. I suspect their selection is narrow to keep prices low and that’s fine by me. I run a store at goodstorm and I make $6 – $13 on still modestly priced shirts. I would like to move to spreadshirt if you drop your prices to at least match goodstorm. BTW goodstorm has US Union-made shirts. Does SS have union-made shirts? Thanks to all.
For artists, try this site
http://artlifecollective.com/
http://www.clickshirt is another flash designer for Shirts. The shirts get fulfilled by CafePress.com.
Clickshirt integrates with CafePress.com via their content APIs. More information about CafePress’s APIs is available at their developers network site at Cafepressdn.com
have a great day!
Sorry the URL is http://www.click-shirt.com also available at
http://www.cafe....com/clickshirt
Hi Roger,
I’ll take your feedback on board, particularly regarding the union made shirts. I work in EU HQ but will talk to the US guys and see what we offer on that front, I suspect we do but arent promoting it. We review prices continously and while we might not offer the cheapest base price I think overall we offer a very competitive range of tools/options to help you sell more, get repeat business and actually build your own brand.
Feel free to send me a mail and we can talk some more about this at adf(at)spreadshirt.net
Thanks,
Adam
re: clickpress: the very problem with clickpress is that it is printed by cafepress, which is known for junky print quality.
as for spreadshirt – it all comes down to the dollars. How many $25 shirts can a person really sell?
How do you feel about e~shirt.com?
I’m very dissapointed with goodstorm. I can’t believe it takes them so incredibly long to be able to ship worldwide. It’s unbelievable. Every T-shirt company is able to do this, why can’t they? Not only that, if you don’t live in the us you can’t even register cause you need an us tax number. People have been complaing about this for over a half year now, and still no change. Now they are saying late spring/early summer it should be available for Canada and western Europe, that’s another half year! They should make this there immediate priority, cause there canadian and overseas customers are getting pretty frusturated with this.
‘Tell the world about GoodStorm and we’ll be GoodPartners in your success’ a quote from their site. Dear Goodstorm, now that the world knows and is interested, how come it’s not possible for you to be Goodpartners in our supposidly succes.
i think I gonna use it for my new company!
The links in this article no longer work. Goodstorm has been acquired by cafepress. Its a shame because alot of people would love what Goodstorm did.
Looks like GoodStorm have been acquired by CafePress. Its a real shame because plenty of people love their technology.
Goodstrom really have to work on their flash designer a little bit more…
Im interested in this t-shirt maker business. How do i start up. How do you deal with customers?
Im not in the USA, in Europe.
hi,
on the backend , what format do you get the design after the clinet do it ? is it vector
http://www.tshirtprince.com/ another best t shirt printing site ……..