The Exclusive Line is here and we kick off our series here in the Blog with Barking Irons from New York. Founded by Daniel and Michael Casarella in 2003, the brand with the pistols (barking irons is an old fashioned term for pistol) is all about bringing a touch of american mythology to fashion. They say, each of their items is based on a character or a story, most probably from the 18th or 19th century.
In our Exclusive Line you’ll find 4 products (two shirts, one hoodie and one zipper), and we also have some more background information about the Barking Irons: Check out their blog, the New York Times article on “Brand Underground”, or the video featuring the Casarella brothers. We also did a short interview and asked Michael Casarella a few questions.

What is the barking irons brand about (one sentence)?

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Line Spotlight #1: Barking Irons from New York’

We have mentioned before that suddenly it’s all about Christmas - and see what happened: the tie and the elk got some sisters and brothers, for example the shirt for biiig dogs!

Besides the dog-shirts, we added more colours for aprons and aprons for kids (in case grandma doesn’t want to have a lonesome cookie-session). Also, we are pretty sure we’ll meet them again this year: a range of people wearing (funny) christmas hats, no matter how much you try to avoid them (in Germany this fashion got a little overdone, especially on the christmas markets that traditionally take station in the city centres).

For the other end of our apparel, we have added some more special, limited items in our Exclusive Line. Continue reading ‘New and exclusively for Christmas Shopping’

Christmas is, as we know by experience, every year coming all at once and particularly when we are not prepared at all. This year’s Christmas Season was heralded at Spreadshirt with a dedicated brainstorming in the end of August (!) so that we are early enough thinking of some cool gift ideas for you. Meanwhile a lot has happened behind the curtains …

Our list of products has been extended, we are now offering typical Christmas accessories like the tie or the cuddly moose. Some more (and exclusive) will follow, more to be revealed soon. Moreover we have prepared special landinpage for individual christmas gifts  which points out some selected products from the marketplace. Besides there is the “Early Bird”-campaign for Shop Partners until November 20th which we traditionally use to motivate customers to order early. Not to forget a special section for Shoppartners to help you with marketing and offer material for downloads.

Especially our Photo Team was confronted with some interesting challenges: Starting with the question on where to get a tolerable Christmas tree from (simple answer: out of the wood of course!), over the choice of the models (and dogs as well) to the decoration of the scenery (what about a flokati, maybe?) there was a lot to organize. Continue reading ‘… and suddenly, it’s Christmas’

We finally have launched the new marketplace and we wanted to give you a quick update about the most important changes: Continue reading ‘The new marketplace is live’

Just to remember: Our move is already history but what is a move without an appropriate house warming party? Right… A snail without its shell - possible but not the best solution.

Last Thursday, October 2nd, our new cafeteria and conference room in Leipzig, Germany, for one night lost their usual purpose and turned into a party place. And I must say: Not that bad change. As if the people reconstructing the building had only one thing in mind…

To explain the pictures below: Before Jana, Matthias and Michael opened the party with a speech and hence the buffet some of us used the possibility to press their own shirt during a production session. One - but not the only - advantage of having production and HQ located in the same building now. Besides really danceable music from DJ Ole as well as from Alex (yes, our IT-Alex!) and friend, good vibrations came from the drummers of Samba Pintada. Who wasn’t keen on dancing found some other distraction in playing Wii, table tennis, kicker or American Gladiator.

A special thanks should go to our IT barkeepers for sponsoring the bar and mixing 200 cocktails! And last but not least I (that´s Manuela, normally responsible for internal communications btw :-)) want to thank Anne for taking all the pictures from which you can see a little selection below. It was definitely fun partying with you!

Having been here for a few days now, I´d like to share some impressions from Spreadshirt moving out of the former HQ - the “Garage” - to the new one which is located in Leipzig, Germany, as well and just a 5-minute walk away from the former bulding:

And here´s some pictures from the brandnew offices:

We have been waiting for this quite a long time: After solving final issues with the local authorities (such as TüV - which is an institution that checks the machine and worker’s safety) we yesterday kicked off Digital Direct Printing in Europe with a soft launch. Soft launch means: to minimize communication efforts and trouble shooting (if there is some ;)) we start in our own German T-Shirt designer first, with limited apparel only (currently the white Comfort Tee).  This gives us the time to react to any contingencies. Once we know it works fine, we will scale up and enable Digital Direct for more products and partners as well. If you are interested in the status and the progress of the soft launch, take a look at the Forum thread.

It’s been a while since we asked for designs to decorate our new building. Last week we decided to postpone our move until mid of September (and we eventually have entrance doors), so now we even have a little more time: If you have any designs that you would like put on our new office outside walls, just drop me a note (ami AT spreadshirt . net) or leave a comment here. This is what it looks like so far.

Time’s on speeeeeed, honestly! Just yesterday or so our new Headquarter would look like this. Only a few moments later all the little dwarfs (Heinzelmännchen is what we call them in Germany) throw their scoops aside, and today it looks like this:

And in a few more weeks we will be moving in completely to our new Headquarter in Leipzig Plagwitz. Of course we spent a couple of thoughts on how we show from the outside that Spreadshirt is located here.
This is our idea: outside the building we will mount plates that look like T-Shirts in different sizes, shapes and colors (and as if they were “stuck” to the building). Therefore, we need your help!

To make these shirts not only huge T-Shirts, but SPREADshirts, we kindly ask for your support: Give us your favourite 3 designs that we should put on the shirts outside the building! In the end, we will put up 10 shirts with your designs!
Continue reading ‘Call for Designs - Your Design, our new HQ’

Quite a while ago, when switching our blog platform from Nucleus to Wordpress, we went on a little “Blog Safari”. Now that The International T-Shirt Day is getting closer and closer, we´re off on Safari again.

And this is how it works: 20 bloggers who

• use the tag “tshirtday08″
• when writing about the first International T-Shirt-Day (which will be celebrated on June 21st in Europe),
• link to www.t-shirtday.com and
• comment on this post or simply post a trackback,

will get the brand new Zeixs book on t-shirt design or laFraise vouchers. If more than 20 bloggers take part, the winners will be drawn at random.

In addition, the best story in regards to a favourite t-shirt, which is posted before the 21st of June, will be awarded with a Samsung NV24D Digital Camera.

Continue reading ‘The T-Shirt Day Blog Safari’