Our path to $1M in sales
wiwillia.com
wiwillia.com
1) The author is humble. Which is very important, especially in a world where people get away selling clumsy photo filters for a billion and think it's something revolutionary.
2) VALID Advice. Everyone wants to tell you the happy part of their story - How they got rich, how those riches let them buy the stuff they wanted to buy and how successful they were. How all this happened in less than 'x' months, etc. They just want to make success sound so easy.
But this author takes the pain and effort to tell you the truth - That hard work is the only key to success. Anything else is as temporary as it sounds. This author tells you that success isn't easy, which is VERY important.
3) Success without PR and the funding. When was the last time on Hackernews that you got to read someone being successful without getting PR and funding? There have been a couple maybe, but not much. And everyone of them only wants to share with you how much success they've had getting funded by some VC firm 'X' or even being a part of something like 500 Startups or YC, being an 'ex-product manager' from Google, Facebook, etc with all their fancy getting featured INSTANTLY on Techcrunch strategies, etc. Ofcourse, they did get featured on TC, but doesn't mean, they got it instantly - They worked for it.
What teespring has written there is most likely going to be the case for the ordinary you and me, and that's why this is very important and ofcourse, it also gives you a lot of perspective.
This author deserves nothing short of an applause, thank you so much!
On the question of 'what happened in august', I don't know of course but I find that there is a definite lag between launching, and being "real" in the eyes of the readership. We are so overwhelmed with marketing buzz and hype in our daily lives that it becomes noise, and what falls out are things that just keep moving forward and moving forward. When someone encounters your brand for the second, third, or fourth time over the course of 6 months to a year it seems to move you from 'idea' to 'actual company'.
Congratulations again, next up $10M ! :-)
For clarification, back in my day if the only funding you got was from founders and maybe an individual or two who believed in your idea [1], and consequently made it all the way to profitability, that was 'bootstrapping' the company.
Now get off my lawn sonny! :-)
That's something we hope to change in the near future though.
Always happy to talk strategy with you if you're interested, my email is walker@teespring.com.
OkC doesn't do those blogs anymore, but you can read their old entries at blog.okcupid.com.
What a great quote; this should be on my wall. Thank you.
Featured and Exciting Campaigns were the only ones. Is there a complete list of active ones?
We also didn't have a huge amount of cool campaigns at any one time (up until recently) - which would have made for a pretty poor browsing experience!
Any thoughts/feedback on this? I'd love to understand why that feature isn't there already.
As we've grown that has definitely changed, and we're in the midst of a redesign that adds a discovery portion to our website!
Here's an early WIP mockup showing the new discover functionality: http://i.imgur.com/2Khj2A6.jpg
Suggestions:
Now that you have some money, hire a designer or three and have them produce a couple of dozen designs for you under various themes. Now you have something to browse. And promote.
Another thought: Hold a contest of some sort. $10K to the design that pulls in the most sales over a period of time.
The best Obama t-shirt contest?
The nerdiest t-shirt contest?
The funniest t-shirt contest?
All of the above?
For example, you might want to state that the reward will be paid in three monthly chunks starting thirty days after the contest closes.
Why? Someone can easily put $3,000 on a credit card to win and then reverse the charges on you five days later. The installment payment approach will not prevent all fraud, it's just one idea to at least filter out some of it. Check with credit card companies/PayPal before you do anything.
It might be intelligent to install other limits as well. Again, take your time to think it through.
So loving watching Teespring's efforts - onwards and upwards and thanks for sharing all the info!
[EDIT] I see why they wrote their own editor -- it's very nice!
The svg environment has some limitations and we compensate with canvas whenever it makes sense.
Post was a great read, so thanks for sharing. Gives us some good inspiration over at OpenRent.
Have to agree that remembering to celebrate the little wins is really important when you are constantly looking to hit that 40% growth. Without celebrating your successes you'll find it hard to keep pushing the following month - even when you are doing well.
Keep it up!
Off topic:
Whoever has the money and connections to do this but for sneakers (Supra material, Nike material, Converse material, all types-- I will pay 10 extra dollars to put my own logo on my sneakers), I will bow down and I will buy sneakers from you all the time as if you were a virtual post-modern Zumiez. When I take my sneakers off to socially meditate among other all black sneakers a good sneaker tag like the Supra ones, including a logo in the back of the sneakers would save me 10 seconds every day!
As soon as you print over 10 t-shirts screen printing becomes both lower cost (a t-shirt that starts at $15 on Spreadshirt can be $6 on Teespring) and higher quality (digital printing produces less vibrant colors and washes out much quicker).
Short version: Teespring allows you to produce higher quality products at a lower price point. We also add the benefit of game mechanics and make the experience more social.
http://www.spreadshirt.com/us/US/-/--1328/categoryId/9/artic...
Not all that money goes to us - in December alone we paid out over $90,000 to campaign organizers.