I really loved Threadless back in the day and this was an interesting read. While it did a good job of covering what changes Threadless made that ultimately changed the culture around it and led to its fall, it didn't cover the why.

Was their model no longer profitable? Were they facing outside competition (and what was that competition doing better?). Did they take money and have to grow big / fast and therefore started selling to big box stores to increase revenues?

I don't see any reason why Threadless couldn't still be a profitable business (god forbid a lifestyle business) even today if they had maintained their cachet but maybe I'm missing something.