Threadless: From clicks to bricks 19 Nov 2007

Everyone's favourite t-shirt vendor - Threadless - just opened its first offline store. There's a nice write-up about it in BusinessWeek this month. What we found most interesting in the article however, was the way in which the company built buzz around their website via a paid form of crowdsourcing:

"To build buzz about the site, the two deployed 'street armies' to talk up the T-shirts. 'Soldiers' earned store credit for spreading the word about Threadless. Upload a photo of yourself wearing a Threadless shirt, and you would get a credit of $1.50. Refer a friend who buys a T-shirt, and you'd earn $3. The top soldier ended up with $33,384 in credit.

"A year later, [founders] De Hart and Nickell quit their ad jobs and started hiring employees. Sales went from $600,000 in 2003 to $1.5 million in 2004. In 2006 they sold a minority stake to Insight Venture Partners in Chicago and this year added five employees to work in the new store. Threadless plans to open outlets in Boulder, Colo., and San Francisco. A store called Threadless Kids will follow in Chicago. The pair expects to hit $15 million by the end of 2007."