Case Study On Threadless

Threadless (stylized as threadless) is an online community of artists and an e-commerce website based in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 2000 by Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart. Threadless designs are created by and chosen by an online community. Each week, about 1,000 designs are submitted online and are put to a public vote. After seven days the staff reviews the top-scoring designs.Based on the average score and community feedback, about 10 designs are selected each week, printed on clothing and other products, and sold worldwide through the online store and at their retail store in northside of the Chicago in 2007. Designers whose work is printed receive no cash, but receive 20% royalties based on net profits paid on a monthly basis, and $250 in Threadless gift cards, which can be exchanged for $200 cash. Each time a design is reprinted, the respective artist receives $500 cash (reference missing)

Q) Is Threadless a Sucess or Failure?

     Threadless is a success according to me due to the following reasons

1. Threadless has been successfully functioning over the past two decades.
2. The company had over 2 million registered users on their site, received over 69,211 submissions, and printed designs from 289 artists it has one of the largest designer-user community.

Q) How is digital world impacting it's co creation strategy? 

• Impact of the digital world on threadless

• POSITIVE

• As of April 4.57 billion are on the internet which is 59% of the total population compare that to 5 years ago with 3.6 billion people, more people are on the internet thus the market for threadless has increased tremendously.
• With the world moving more towards the digital era, a lot of free tools are available on the internet for creating amazing designs without having any technical knowledge thus making it easier for people to contribute.
• With the rise of social media, sharing has become easier and simple, more and more people like to share and create new things, this could bring up a positive environment for the companies based on co-creation such as threadless.

• NEGATIVE

• With more people online and easily replicable business model of threadless the competition has also increased significantly.
• With similar platforms such as zazzle, printify, red bubble , etc the top designer of threadless are moving towards them in the seek of new opportunities.
• There is always a threat from giants such as Amazon to enter the competition and disturb the market. (Amazon released its “Merch” service which, similar to its Kindle service, allows independent designers to upload designs and such to Amazon and Amazon will sell and print shirts on demand in return for a cut of the profits)