Friday Inspiration: Jen Stark

I'm so drawn to these colorful paper sculptures by the talented Jen Stark. More can be found at her website.

T-Shirt Spotlight: Beautiful Decay

Beautiful Decay's Indie Merch Store has a line of independent artist-designed tees and their collection continues to grow this month with more new designs.

Their Indie Merch Store is worth bookmarking if you're into watching design trends as they emerge, from underground, "undiscovered" artists.



And if you haven't checked out Beautiful Decay's magazine, it's a source of design inspiration like no other. The magazine is unique in that they bring together fine art, design, fashion, graffiti and other art forms into one place. The zine's design and content is irreverent and bold, sometimes disturbing, but always fresh and authentic. Read more about Beautiful Decay's story here.

A Bright Future for Online Clothing Retailers

Thanks to Mary for posting this article on Great Gear last night. The headline really caught my attention:

"Internet clothing sales now more lucrative than computer sales"

According to the article, internet clothing sales outnumbered computer hardware sales by over a billion dollars last year and is only expected to increase.

This is sure good news for those of us selling our designs on T-shirts and clothing. But, if you've been selling T-shirts online for more than a few years, you probably already had a good feeling about the industry. I'm hopeful it's only going to get better.

Sell your creative work with Mintd

Looking for an alternative to Etsy? Check out Mintd, an online space for creative people to sell their work and have access to an online community of buyers and sellers.

Create a "Look Book" with them to share your picks. You can even earn commission on photos of yourself wearing Mintd goods when your posted photo leads to a sale. Set up is free to sell and Mintd take a small commission (about 7.5%) on each sale made.

It's a well-organized site, has lot of products, and is just plain fun to browse. If you're into jewelry, you'll find plenty. There seems to be a lot of talent on there.

Shirt City Club T-Shirt Design Contest: Win $500

ShirtCity.com is looking for great T-shirt designs. All you have to do is sign up, submit a design, and let the community vote on it (Threadless style). The deadline is June 1st, 2007 for submissions.

The grand prize winner receives a one-time royalty payment of $500, but all submitted designs have a chance to be selected and printed/sold through a licensing agreement. Designers who's designs are selected this way will earn royalty on any sales of that design.

Might be worth a shot.

Thank you for your votes!

The votes have been tallied and Cafepress has officially announced it's Cafepress Voice council members and I'm excited to be among them.

Here are your representatives:

Shop Management Voice
Holly “Scarebaby”
Heidi Panelli
Shannon “Hazeleyes7” Steffen
Audrie “peonproductions” Quick
Kelly Murphy

Merchandise Voice
Kim “Kiwi” Smith
Mary Ogle
Goatlady
Kim Hall
Jean Roth

Quality Voice
Carl Bryant
Kristen “foxvox” Fox
Catherine
Nicole Kohair
Jennifer “Lekker” Fuderburk

Thanks again to everyone who voted, for supporters in the forums and in Great Gear. And congrats to all the winners!
If you have any issues regarding shop management you want to pass along to me, feel free to contact me anytime.
My contact form is here in the sidebar and on most of my websites.

T-Shirt Spotlight: Chop Shop Store

Some fresh, quirky designs from the new ChopShopStore.com

According to their about page, ChopShop is "A one stop shop for all like minded individuals, looking for the latest in clothing that satisfies your nerdly cravings without you having to say it. We put it on a shirt, you put it on your chest and it does the speaking. From obscure sci fi references to clever type designs, we'll do what it takes to make you unsettlingly proud of your garb."

So there you go. Now go get your nerd on & make a stop at the Chop Shop!

Video: Start to finish, how T-shirts are printed by Spreadshirt.com

Sure you have to keep some things secret, or your competitors may use it against you. But I was impressed to see Spreadshirt sharing a look at their facility and the process of creating T-shirts when ordered through Spreadshirt.com. Thanks to tcritic.com for posting this.

There's been a lot of talk in the Cafepress community lately about transparency. Shopkeepers want to "see" more of what's going on behind Cafepress' doors. With the formation of a community council, they hope to achieve that. But maybe this type of video campaign, if done by Cafepress, would also help the shopkeeper (and shopper!) community get to know them better.

Enjoy the video. It's well done, short, sweet, interesting and a great PR move by Spreadshirt.

Another great resource for Cafepress shopkeepers

Jean from Rotem Gear sent over this great resource for anyone interested in setting up shop with Cafepress. Jean not only runs her own Cafepress business, but has taught courses on how to set up shop with Cafepress and is also running in the Cafepress Voice election.

I'll add the link to my links list, but be sure to check it out. It's packed with great resources.

Voting Begins: Cafepress Voice Community Council

Elections have begun!

If you're a Cafepress shopkeeper, be sure to stop by this week and do three things:

1. Learn about what Cafepress Voice (community council) is all about.

You can get more information on that here: Meet the Nominees


2. Read up on all the candidates, check out their stores, and decide on who you want to represent you in each category.

Blurbs about each nominee with links to their shops: Nominee page on Cafepress

Full length interviews: Nominee interviews

My (somewhat cheesy) interview: Heidi Panelli's interview


3. Vote!

Once you've made your choices for each seat and category, be sure to cast your vote.

Vote here: CafePressVoice Election Polls
Click on the "vote" button to start.

Best of luck to all the candidates! And if you're a shopkeeper and have any questions, feel free to contact me or post on the official CP Voice forum.

---UPDATE 5/4/07---

The Cafepress Voice election will be restarted. Unfortunately, due to poor set-up of the polls, non-shopkeepers were allowed to cast votes. Since this is a shopkeeper-only election, the ballot form is being updated to ensure voters are, in fact, shopkeepers. We're all learning a lot from this election so far and hopefully next time around things will go a little smoother.

Webby Awards update: Cafepress is People's Voice Winner, Retail; Lonelygirl15 wins achievement award

I first want to give a shout out a congrats to Cafepress for winning the Retail category's People's Voice Award, just announced today.



Secondly, I want to congratulate Lonelygirl15. I got the announcement email, and visited the Webby Awards site to see the winners and noticed a familiar name come up (besides Cafepress): it was Lonelygirl15, who I had blogged about back in Aug. 2006. She has won the Webby Film & Video Awards for Best Actress. And her name is Jessica Lee Rose.

If you're not familiar with Lonelygirl15, she was the actress in well-orchestrated video blog hoax...or teen drama series, depending on how you look at it, that took place over several weeks on YouTube and her MySpace page.

Lonelygirl15, known as "Bree" in her video diary, claimed to be a home-schooled teen who's parents were super strict and rarely let her out of the house. Her innocent (no really, they were entirely decent and innocent!), silly videos, usually of her and sometimes her friend Daniel talking in her room, drew in hundreds of thousands of viewers, fans and critics. It was quite a spectacle to watch at the time. People were analyzing the lighting, editing techniques and background props in her videos, trying to expose her as a hoax. Some people were even making their own knock-off satire videos.

I couldn't help but get wrapped up in it myself. Because I had heard of her through one of the Intelligence Group's Trend Central trend forecasting emails, I thought that maybe they were in on it. Others thought maybe a studio was doing this as an intro to an upcoming television series. But real or fake, she drew us all in, waiting for more.

So what does this have to do with your cafepress store?

Well, we can not only create some Lonelygirl15 T-shirt designs at Cafepress, but we can also all learn from how powerful a smart viral maketing campaign can be when done right. Hats off to the Lonelygirl15 team & congrats on your award.