It’s day three and we are close to the finals. Today we are taking care of a healthy living, and you know: sometimes, this is the hardest part. Right at the start we found ourselves in the kitchen not sipping oily hot coffee with fat milk as usual, but green tea without sugar and some strange greek mountain herbs.

Back to the office - and in a lucky moment, Tobi caught Eike right before she wanted to shut the windows - today these windows stay open, freezing in fresh air is preferred to choking in the computer heated office.

Over to lunch: Instead of a 5 class menu or some quick rolls at the corner bakery we chose to go for the Gandine, a nice little location not far away - but far enough for a little running tour. Here we picked some salads and even the dessert can be described as “semi-healthy”: icecream made of olive oil, parmesan cheese or carrots.

To pick up some energy in the early afternoon, we tried the organic gummy bears stars with real costa rica cola. Afterwards, Michel decided to do a little “smoker’s yoga” on the terrace. And yes, we have to admit that some of our team couldn’t resist to join the cake session, but what’s good for the mood can’t be bad for the body?

Let’s see with what the laFraisians come up with - and who will win the gold medal in the end. Actually this reminds me: we haven’t decided on the prizes or even how we pick the winner, but the last three days were really fun and insightful anyway, so stay tuned for the big winner’s ceremony next week.

Yesterday saw the close of Day 2 of the ecOlympics.

Saving energy is normally Michel´s self appointed task within our department. He´s the one switching all the screens from standby to off when leaving the office. Of course, he also did that all day yesterday as well.

On top of that, Ami was a particularly strong performer. He wore not a regular, but a watch that you can recharge through body-movements, left his mobile off the whole day and worked all day on a “power-saving Apple machine”. And if that wasn´t enough, he came into the office wearing bright sun-tee from laFraise. Big up!

The rest of the zoo got points for coming to work by bike and not using the elevator.

laFraise guys, it doesn´t look good for you ;-)!

Earth Day is behind us and the future is ahead. Since we don’t only want to take action close to Earth Day, but act in a more sustainable manner, we thought it would be nice to keep improving and training our ecological mindset. That’s why we challenged the guys over at laFraise to do a fun competition, we called it the “ecolympics”. It will last for three days and the teams are the Spreadshirt Bloggers vs. the laFraisians. Here are the disciplines:

Wednesday: Avoid Spam, umm, I mean waste
Thursday: Save Energy and Water
Friday: Healthy food and living (no macaroni Friday in the BIC cantina it seems)

Well, here is the first episode: Talking of waste. How can we avoid waste - which sounds pretty simple, since we just have to reuse stuff. For example water bottles, mugs, green tea bags, chewing gums (umm, wait on this). The second big part is to avoid paper and just not printing this email, separate plastic wrap material and bio-waste (a great sports here in Germany).

See how we did and check our gallery:

I think we are well prepared and a hot candidate for the gold medal in this discipline. We are very curious to see how the laFraise Team wants to beat the Tupperware towel recycled bottle champs!

To get extra points, we seeded a little “T-Shirt shape” outside HQ and inserted funny postcards and sunflowerseeds at every order yesterday.

© Utopia

A post by Anne Henneken, editor for Utopia, a German platform for “strategic consumption”. She´s also a columnist for jetzt.de which is a part of the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” network.

D: Nice shirt!
U: Thanks. Can you hand me over the juice, please?
D: Here you go.
U: Thanks… ahh, sh**. Who makes up these stupid openings? That will never come out again…

In all of us, there´s a latent juice-on-the-pants-tilter, red-wine-spiller and coffee-fiddler. Creating stains is something everybody can do easily, fast and in almost every situation. People like Jackson Pollock even make art from it - but usually the spiller causes only anger and sometimes even insurance cases.

What are stains? Cleaning pros divide stains based on the elements which cause them. For example fat (Nutella, butter, shoe creme), proteins (blood, milk, garlic gravy) or pigments (juice). The hardest to remove stain are those which are made from a combination of these elements. A cacao-stain, therefore is a stain for semi-pros as it contains protein alongside dark color pigments and fat.

You can find a whole arsenal of stain removers in any given drug store. However, from an eco perspective, these aren´t very “clean”, as they often contain aggressive chemicals for bleaching and dissolving. These not only attack the fabrics but also pollute the environment. At the same time, there´s a fabric- and eco-friendly instrument to remove almost every stain out there. And it doesn´t hurt to know some of them:

Continue reading ‘Move and go away! Ways to get rid of stains the gentle way’

Our Business is driven by people who are putting their ideas and opinions on shirts and express themselves. In the last couple of days we faced an enormous boost of T-Shirts regarding the Tibet conflict. We discussed if and how we address and pick up this issue.

On the one hand, we are a platform for self expression, which includes all matters and opinions (besides hate and copyright infringements) - that’s why you still find any design about Tibet, China, Olympic Games from pro or contra in our marketplace and in Partnershops. On the other hand, we felt we have to take a position - as a company and in terms of CSR.

We do know the world isn’t flat, and the Tibet conflict has more than just one side. There was a lot of discussions here in Germany about how the media reported. But fact is: currently, many people want to wear their views regarding Tibet (even without us pushing it). Also, China is in the spotlight not only because of the Tibet conflict and the Olympic Games, but because of Human Rights and Freedom of Speech.

This is why we decided to put five “Free Tibet” designs from our community in a newsletter. As a sign of support for Human Rights and Freedom of Expression, from us and our community, we will donate 5 EUR/£3 to Amnesty International from every shirt (or bag, hat, etc.) purchased, between now and May 31st, 2008, with one of the five designs.

Today is the International Noise Awareness Day.
Be quiet. Just talk with the help of your shirt(s).

Spreadshirt introduces a new pricing structure - clearer; more transparent and also a lot cheaper.

All our foils, including those that sparkle; glitter or glow in the dark, will have one standard price from May, 6th. This is also true for printing complex designs. All designs will cost the same - regardless of their complexity. Last but not least, the extra cost for additional lines of text (which stood at an added 30p per line) is being abolished. You can therefore sport up to five lines of text on your chest at the fixed price of just £2!

‘It is time we spring cleaned our prices’, says market-researcher Tobias. ‘As Spreadshirt has continually added new features and products over the last five years, the pricing has become more and more complex. The new approach will make it easier for both shop-owners and customers alike – and also considerably cheaper.’

PS: Due to the fact that we have to update several hundred thousand products, it might be that it take up to 48 h until the prices in your shop are reduced.

A meeting on our balcony: Jonas and Henning are discussing the marketplace.

Jonas owns some Spreadshirt Shops and did the wonderful inofficial Marketplace Search “Spreadtags”. “I just thought the other day - this can’t be too complicated. So I sat down and did the whole thing in just one night. Okay, maybe it was a little “brute force” for your servers, but the Spreadtags Search was ready to go.” With his Search requests he indeed created some issues for our IT (and the servers) - but in the end we found a solution to support his project (which is, btw. also very popular amongst Spreadshirt employees).
In the meantime Spreadtags offers over 160.000 tags in the European Marketplace, and is also available for the US Marketplace.

Continue reading ‘Jonas vs. Henning - searching the marketplace’

cc

The shirt rallye is on! Just as a reminder: if you manage to attract three new customers within the next two weeks you will receive one shirt coupon at 15 pounds. Possibly up to five coupons per person! Also, the best marketing ideas – how to promote and spread your shop - will be richly rewarded. But how? Among the prizes we would like your vote on there are a Wacom Board, Google Adwords credits, photo shooting for your shop and…

Continue reading ‘1 2 3 Rallye - additional prizes’