Threadless - Case Study

1) Is Threadless a success or failure?

- Threadless, an internet-based well established crowd-sourcing design company opened its door in the year 2000 and is based in Chicago. The t-shirt company has expanded into a full lineup of apparel, accessories, home decor and now into footwear canvases. The USP of Threadless is that anyone could submit a design, and all designs would receive scores from registered users. After the review done by staffs, the winning design would receive the honor of getting their designed printed and sold.

This concept of building a community of artists that submit their designs to contests, participate in the brand's social network, and promote the company to their friends helped Threadless to reach out to a wider audience. The company sold 60,000 t-shirts a month in a year, with a profit margin of 35% and was forwarding to gross $18M with just employing fewer than 20 people in the initial years.

A company that has been in the business for over two decades alongside hosting a series of contests with their army of 2,20,000 talented community members to create designs using Disney's treasure trove of IP, this internet-based, custom-clothing company definitely is a success according to me, despite having quite a few drawbacks.

2) How does today's digital world impact (both positively and negatively) Threadless' co-creation strategy?

- Digital world, like any other platform, comes with its own pros and cons. To continue focusing on the positives and trying to improve the negatives into positives is where a company truly wins. Threadless too, had to face a similar condition.

i) Positive Impact

- Around 59% of the global population are active internet users. As a matter of fact, the world now revolves around innovation and digitization. This change made it easier for Threadless as more people are on the internet and hence the market for Threadless has increased tremendously.

- Over the years, the world has been moving towards the digital era with numerous applications and software's being developed which makes it easier for people to contribute without having any prior technical knowledge.

- Social media also plays a vital role by helping in increasing the awareness and popularity of the t-shirt designs.

ii) Negative Impact

- As much as digitization has brought in positive results, there comes another side to it as well. With the social media sites helping in gaining popularity of these designs, it paves way for easily replicable designs and business models of Threadless.

- There is always threat from e-commerce giants like Amazon which results in more competition and disturbance in the market. Monopoly isn't an option in this case.

- Companies like Zazzle, Red Bubble, etc with similar platforms come in the way of competition.

3) How could Threadless improve its co-creation strategy? What tactics or tools could they use to enhance their success?

- A company that's been surviving for over 20 years in the market cannot certainly move forward using the old-school business strategies. To stay relevant, one has to improve, implement and come up with better tactics to stay alive and provide seamless service to the customers.

A few tactics/tools that would come into use would be as follows :

- providing a brainstorming session to its registered users on a monthly basis using a Skype call.

- deciding on a particular theme for a week based on the viewers preferences.

- improving the quality of the print so that it doesn't flake off after a few washes.

- put up stalls in flea markets to attract more people.

- provide better rewards for the selected person's design.

- to not limit the selection of just one design from 1000 designs that people send in.

...................................................................................................................................................................

References 

Website - https://www.threadless.com/

Reading - https://www.racked.com/2017/11/6/16551468/threadless-t-shirts-ecommerce

Video - https://www.threadless.com/how-it-works/