Today marks the 100th celebration of International Women’s Day. It has grown from its socialist party roots to inspire women across the world and celebrate their past, present and future achievements.

You might find some who give the women in their lives flowers, chocolates or a small gift, which to me seems like a warm-up for mother’s day (more on that later). I am a bad man for not doing so? What is really behind International Women’s Day? Wikipedia helps you get started. Its roots lie in the fight for equality and voting rights for women. If you take a closer look at the news from around the world, this fight is far from over. Perhaps that is why this day is getting much more traction and coverage in countries which have largely ignored it in the past.

I would certainly point you to Nicholas Kristof’s article in the New York Times, where he provides three steps to advancing the world’s women and asks you to add to his ideas.

Inspiration is a big part of this day. I’d like to dust off an interview with our CEO Jana Eggers from two years ago as we marked that year’s Women’s Day. Jana often has words of inspiration on her shirts (you can see some here in her What is Jana Wearing series) - I wonder what she is wearing today?

Put your own words of inspiration on a shirt to celebrate International Women’s Day. Mother’s Day is also right around the corner, too (hint, hint)! We’ve set up a little voucher code for you for £5 off the Women’s Classic T-Shirt. Use the code WOMENSDAY2010 to create your own inspiring tee - offer valid until tomorrow, 9 March, at 11:59 pm.

Yes, you read correctly, I want you to make your shirt sparkle, glitter and shine. Have you ever thought about how stylish your shirt would be, if your individual designs got even more attention from others because of its shine, sparkle or glimmer? I think that would be totally awesome! If we assume that some products in this category are made with sequins, strass stones or skulls, don’t you agree that it would be easy to do something similar to these? You can wear your own individual and unique sparkle style, by creating it yourself! That’s exactly what our special flex foils are there for! continue reading ‘Bling Bling Shirts: All that Glitters Isn’t Gold - It’s also Fashion’

Our Designs Service team goes through thousands of designs a week, making sure that your submissions meet our design requirements. They’re checking your lines down to the millimetre, counting your anchor points and colours, and since they’re human, they also take note of designs they like.

Above are a few designs which for one reason or another landed in their like pile. The cat got the most votes in a our internal Spreadshirt poll - which one is your favourite?

P.S. We are also searching for the best shirts EVER. Check out the submissions so far, and post yours in the Spreadshirt forum.

What are customers looking for? What do they need? Despite the healthy amount of 65,000 designs in our T-Shirt Designer, the need becomes clear when you look at how many searches leave the customer with no results. Let’s take a look at the designs found in the T-Shirt Designer and how people are searching on Spreadshirt.

One of the problems that you find when searching is the limited diversity for some search results. A search for bird comes up with 707 designs – I imagine a customer will never get to the 707th design. Ravens, crows, owls and eagles come up with less hits, making your chances of being found that much better. Dodos come in with just two hits (hint, hint). And if you are an ornithologist or simply a fan of wagtails, you are going to come up empty handed.

Searched for, but not found

I am not saying that you should all go out there and design random birds, but you should always keep the Long Tail in mind. You should also be aware of how you tag for this Long Tail. Let’s be honest, very few people are able to distinguish between a design for a buzzard or a falcon. Just make sure that the design is relevant to the search and keywords. Here is an updated list of searches that had no results on Spreadshirt in 2010: continue reading ‘Tips for T-Shirt Designers – Quench Customers’ Search Thirst’

You can now find all current coupons, vouchers and promotions on our brand-new Spreadshirt Coupon page.

Have you ever ordered something, only to later come across a coupon somewhere in the far reaches of the Internet which would have come in handy minutes before? Not sure if the voucher code you found on the thousands of coupon pages is still valid? Does that coupon site look a little shady?

Well, we would like to save you a little time wading through Google – simply check out the current Spreadshirt Coupon and Voucher Codes to find discounts and their codes before you place your next order.

You might also find our Spreadshirt SALE page to be visit-worthy. As Anne has explained, we are making room for some of our spring apparel additions. Maybe you will come across a great find at a nice price! Enjoy the savings!

Here are the winning designs of the St. Patrick’s Day Design Contest. The winning designs will be prominently featured throughout Spreadshirt.com homepage and the Spreadshirt Designer. The designers will also receive a voucher for one free shirt ($35 value - see previous post about rules and prizes).

The Winners

Honorable Mentions

We could only choose 3 winners, but there were many great designs submitted to the contest. Therefore we’ve decided to award 3 Honoroable Mentions in this contest. For each design we will award a $35 voucher to each honorably mentioned designer.

Do you think a t-shirt is just something you throw on while lounging around or going to the gym in? Well if paired with the right pieces a t-shirt can bring a whole look together in a very fashionable way. The t-shirt has come a long way, during the Great Depression t-shirts were worn mainly to do labor jobs and other “dirty” work and in the 1950’s and 1960’s as a mere undershirt for more formal shirts.

Nowadays t-shirts come in an array of colors, fabrics, and styles and are a common staple to most people’s wardrobes. However there are many that tend to refrain from wearing their tee out on a night on the town or to a special social function thinking it’s just not dressy enough. This is something that can however be easily fixed by just finding the right pieces to create a fashionable yet polished look.

If your shirt has a design or print on it try matching up some of the ascent colors in the design with accessories as we did below with the Female American Apparel Slim Fit Tee by raumwolle and this neon yellow link watch by NineWest. Also try thinking out of the box by pairing a fitted blazer, printed or embellished skirt and colored pumps to compliment your tee.

Men can also look chic and cool in t-shirt by choosing a fitted style like this one from Barking Irons and pairing it with some slim fit jeans by Diesel and a fedora hat from the Gap. With t-shirts in abundance in many of our closets the possibilities of the perfect pairing can be endless.

I am always a big fan of introducing new products and colours. We’re always adapting and adding to our apparel range to follow current trends and expand on what is selling well. This month is no different! We have decided to add a new product for the ladies, the Women’s Classic-T-Shirt, the sister product of the Men’s Classic T-Shirt, as they are both from B&C.

We’ve released this t-shirt in 4 standard colours: white, black, navy and red. But we didn’t stop there! The Women’s Classic T-Shirt is also available in 4 very special and very funky colours: diva blue, noble brown, golden orange and ruby red. I really like the brown colour. It has a kind of grey sheen and can be worn dressed-up or in a more casual style.

We also added 3 of these special colours to our Men’s Classic T-Shirt: noble brown, diva blue and golden orange. Now couples, twins and best co-ed friends can sport the same colours and styles of the classic shirt ;-). Oh, and not to be forgotten: the Women’s Classic Shirt is also available for Digital Direct printing! continue reading ‘Hot New Styles and Colours Added to Spreadshirt’

Personalised t-shirts are almost always dying to tell a story. Since most shirts can’t write, we have asked our customers to tell us the stories behind their shirts. We’ve gathered a few stories from our German customers with some funny, inspiring and moving stories about their t-shirts.

Do you have a story behind a shirt you bought, received or gave as a gift? If you do have a special story or experience with your Spreadshirt order, tell us about it and inspire others: submit your t-shirt story here. We will thank the story tellers who are published with a £15 coupon. Now onto the great t-shirt stories we’ve received:

Christoph sent us this story about how he came up with a t-shirt idea about how to come up with … an idea. He goes through the creative process and tells us how he used it in his art school application.

The next story comes from AvivarWhite and isn’t necessarily a t-shirt story – we don’t only do t-shirts. She ordered a pair of personalized underwear with glow-in-the-dark flex and wanted to give her boyfriend a “personalised, heartfelt gift with a certain ‘wow’ effect.”

Steffen’s girlfriend went off to New Zealand and he made a personalised shirt with the text “I love my girlfriend even if she’s in New Zealand”. His glow-in-the-dark text got a lot of attention in discos and festivals and inspired him to make one for his girlfriend to wear.

Twitter. We tweet, you (may not) tweet. We all hear a whole lot of conversation about Twitter, THE micro blogging platform. When you are wrapped up in all of this, you could easily forget how many people aren’t on Twitter. They don’t see the point of all of this twee-twittering. And then there’s the perhaps larger group of people who have no clue what it is. Many have doubted its success, but it seems that Twitter is here to stay.

Whether you think twitter is useless or not, that’s not really what we are talking about here. We are pretty convinced that Twitter can be funny and fun, for just about everyone. If you have already placed your foot into the twittersphere, we invite you to follow us @spreadshirt. And if you are out for a little more from Twitter, it’s really best to discover the world of tweets not from the page www.twitter.com. Rather, the trick is in the use of one the many (free) twitter tools. So, we’ve gathered 20 of them that we use ourselves, or at least have tested at some point:

1. Twitter Clients continue reading ‘20 Twitter Tools & A Short Intro’