Spreadblog meets…. Individualitee

Left: A playful combination of the miracle meat and nigerian scam mails. Right: Looks familiar? But wait….

I chatted with Ben and eM about their experiences of running Individualitee.

How did you find spreadshirt?Ben: We researched a few tshirt printers online to see what was being offered, how much, the quality, convenience, technical aspects and decided on Spreadshirt. I think we may have gone to a tshirt forum and found Spreadshirt from there.How did you come up with the concept for individualitee?Ben: We wanted to do original designs first and foremost, then we both thought of potential names and in Emery’s list was ‘Individualitee’ which kinda stood out amongst all the others we had, plus the .com domain name was available, so we went with that. Spreadshirts Confomat designer was really the major deciding factor in going with Spreadshirt because it allowed people to make their own custom designs and ‘Individualise’ their own tshirts. It fitted together nicely with what we wanted our site to be.Have you found the spreadshirt experience easy to use?Ben: On the whole, yeah. The new updates to the back office have been good and made things easier.eM:. Surprisingly easy!What would you like to see in future version of the service?Ben: I’d like more promotion of stores made by Spreadshirt themselves. There’s the Ubershop, which is a pain to add items too, but it just sits there really. We get no traffic from it. If this was more actively promoted then it would benefit both Spreadshirt and the store owners. There isn’t even a marketplace on the Spreadshirt.net site. More offers such as coupon codes, free shipping, discounts, etc would be good too. If Spreadshirt.com and Spreadshirt.net were merged into one management system it would also make our lives a lot easier. Google Checkout and PayPal payment methods would be tasty too. Having Google Base valid export option for products. The Spreadshirt logo redesign caused some buzz and frenzied activity, more of this community type activity would be good, maybe in conjunction with a more active marketplace/Ubershop.eM: Definitely more alignment between the US & UK systems its a pain having to double up on the design entries and go through the process twice. There should be a middle ground where EU & US store owners can submit designs for approval.Whats the most effective way you’ve found for generating sales? And advertising the shop?Ben: Submitting our site and designs to tshirt blogs has been the single most effective method. Emery has also submitted designs to Threadless with our domain name in his profile and that generates decent traffic too.eM: Friends & work colleagues - the people who buy & wear our stuff are our best advertisements!Whats your favourite spreadshirt shop other than individualitee? And non-spreadshirt tshirt site?

Ben: I like this Spreadshirt store - http://www.domestica.spreadshirt.net/ - real nice original designs and a good looking site. http://www.digitalgravel.com has some really good designs from a bunch of different designers/stores.

eM: There’s so many great T-sites out there both SS & Non SS. But I guess some stand outs for me would be http://www.burodestruct.net that uses SS well & I think more design studios will start to do the same in the near future. For non-SS I can’t go past http://www.threadless.com/ not only do they have the largest and best collections with something for everyone they also have the best community platform and the way they operate is genius! Other worthy mentions would be http://beautifuldecay.com/ & http://www.grnappletree.com
What tools do you use to create the designs on individualitee?

eM: Mainly illustrator & photoshop. Most designs will start life as a pencil sketch and get worked up from there whether through illustrators live trace or re-drawn on a tablet. Apart from software I’m a long time apple user although I now own a PC as well but haven’t brought myself to use it for designing yet.

How do you come up with the design ideas?

Ben: eM does all the designing, but I do send half-baked design ideas to him. I get those from books, magazines, the news and just keeping my eyes open whilst walking around.

eM: Ideas come from everywhere, it could be a throw away comment during the course of the day or a combination of events or images. Others I’ve had stored in my sketch books for years waiting to get out so individualitee has given me a good outlet for some of these designs to at least see the light of day. I guess thats the really great thing about teez as a medium anything goes regarding content.

How long has the shop been running?

Ben: June 2006 is when we launched the website online, so about 9 months now.

eM: A very healthy baby!

Are you happy with sales so far?

Ben: No
eM: Will we ever?

What plans do you have for the future?

Ben: Get more sales! Add more designs, more products and enable more community activity on the site.

eM: Retire early & spend the rest of my life wearing individualiteez!