It is hard to ignore how the situation in Iran has moved many. Politics, democracy, alleged rigged voting and a vast collection of opinions stand at the centre of it all, most loudly heard with the question “Where is my vote?” As we so often see in political movements, opinions make a very fast move to the t-shirt and here specifically green shirts.

Spreadshirt shop partners have also taken on this topic. The shops Iran’s Vote and Green Revolution give those who want to express their opinion the ability to wear their point of view across their chest in support of the movement in Iran.

Shirts have also made their way into the Spreadshirt Marketplace and we would like to support this movement and the spreading of opinions on shirts with a special discount. From now until July 6, we will donate £2 to Amnesty International for every order at Spreadshirt which contains at least one green product. Here’s how it works:

• Have at least one green product in your basket
• Enter the voucher code IRANSHIRT when going through checkout

We give away this nice Timbuk2 Blogger Bag which is part of our new Exclusive Line. Since we made some fotos with it, I wouldn’t say it’s really brand new - but as you probably can spot from the foto our model treated it well. The nice thing is: we have already preprinted a beautiful design on it. If you’d buy it in our T-Shirt Designer, it costs GBP 70.51. Also make sure to watch the interviews Jana (our CEO) did with Kevin McSpadden (CMO of Timbuk2).

What’s the deal to win it? Fairly simple: All you have to do is blog. Anything. Whether it’s about the Election in Iran. Or the Berlin Wall and Internet Censorship. About the new iPhone. Or about the T-Shirt Day. Fairly anything that comes to mind, shows the power of the blogs, and tells us you simply need this Blogger bag.

Participation ends next Wednesday (June 24th, 2009, 11:59 PM) - please leave a trackback to this blogpost so we can see you’re joining in. The winner will be revealed on Friday (June 26th).

With T-Shirt Day just around the corner we thought we would put together an interesting list of facts and numbers we’ve discovered lurking amongst the world of Spreadshirt. We unearthed some surprising and at times perplexing figures.

With all of that in mind, our number crunching market researchers have an open invitation to you all to make requests for more stats if the ones below haven’t satisfied your craving. As you might guess we sometimes can’t get around the fact of not naming some figures. Unless you are a professional football player, you wouldn’t want your monthly wages published out in the open either.

Spreadshirt’s world in numbers:

- The average number of people who handle a Spreadshirt product before it lands in the customer’s mailbox: 16

- The average number of hours it took a Spreadshirt product from the time of order to shipment in 2008 (including weekends and holidays): 36 continue reading ‘T-Shirt Statistics from the World of Spreadshirt’

Once again, I must tip my hat to our community. A twitter message fluttered into our account over the weekend

SOAP shop software for the rest of the world http://spreadshop.cute-monstr.de

Second nature and curiosity about what Bejamin Vetter had in store preceded the click and the result was very satisfying. Benjamin claims to have been able to really make your Spreadshirt shop all yours – the template:

• does not need iFrames
• is completely customisable for your website
• is based on the programming language Ruby
• can be expanded upon and
• is offered for free under the GNU General Public License.

We think this is fantastic and are planning to ask Benjamin a few questions about his work. So if you have any questions you would like to ask him, post them here by 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

Some of you might then be wondering about our new API and this year’s eventual switch from SOAP to REST. I don’t have any updates for you, but can definitely recommend signing up for the newsletter at developer.spreadshirt.net. But don’t let that keep you from trying out this new software - Benjamin has already mentioned that an update would be provided when this change occurs.

So for those who would like to give the software a try, go to spreadshop.cute-monster.de and download the source package. Enjoy and props to Benjamin!

P.S. Please be fair and acknowledge Benjamin if you end up using the template for your shop.

International T-Shirt Day is just a lucky 13 days away. What are you doing on June 21st?

As many of you might have already heard, we are celebrating the T-Shirt Day together with laFraise by putting on an “Open Runway” in Berlin where any t-shirt designer/lover/wearer can present their favourite tees to the world.

What you might have missed would be that you can also celebrate T-Shirt Day from the comfort of your own home. Rouse up your friends, family, neighbors and colleagues to honour your favourite tees with, say, a T-bone steak barbeque. Perhaps you could gather some of those shirts that you might not wear too often to give away to those who aren’t as well-off. Decorate your street with clotheslines filled with t-shirts. Maybe show off your t-style, regardless of the weather, with a short-sleeved jaunt through your town or city.

Celebrate T-Shirt Day in your own way by hosting an event and register the festivities on the website so others can perhaps join in.

Events have already been registered in the U.S., Norway, India, and Germany and we’re hoping that you’ll join in on the worldwide party.

P.S.  We will be raffling off 10 sets of 10 free t-shirts to 10 different participants who host their own T-Shirt Day event. To qualify, all you have to do is have a Spreadshirt shop and register your party the T-Shirt Day site by June 14th. We will select the winners on June 15th, notify them by e-mail and announce the winning events here in the Spreadshirt blog.

While some of you might have started learning German to understand our original Design Service video, we went and got a voice over for it. Michael from Design Service and Klaus from our Test Lab give us a glimpse at things behind the scenes. We show what happens from the point when your design is submitted to its plotting and weeding.

Michael first introduces us to the two most common reasons for the rejection of a vector graphic and how he checks to see if your designs meet our requirements for vector graphics. Then we head down to the Test Lab in production where Klaus plot designs with lines that are too thin and curves which are not closed just to see what happens! The results are eye-opening and they certainly convinced me that the strict vector design requirements are there for a very good reason.

The official start to summer is just a little less than a month away, well and warmly accompanied by the International T-Shirt Day.

We want to make sure that as many people catch wind of this celebration as possible and are able to plan their own festivities (some ideas which came to mind: Boston Tee Parties, Dry T-Shirt Contests, etc.). So that’s why we are starting off another Blog Safari with the theme “Favourite Shirt”. The idea would be to promote t-shirt designers you might know or expose up-and-coming t-shirt labels and get them some publicity which they might not normally get.

If you aren’t familiar with a Blog Safari, here’s how the whole thing works:

We are calling for all who love t-shirts and want to participate to publish a blog post next Monday (June 1st) with the headline: “My Favourite Shirt” which includes:

• A picture of you in your favourite shirt,
• A link to that shirt’s designer/shirt label/shop where you bought it (if the link is available).
• A reference that the International T-Shirt Day will be celebrated on June 21st 2009.

That means – grab your favourite tee out of the dirty laundry, take a pic with your webcam and if you are better at editing images than typing, go ahead and use the T-Shirt Day Banderole on your image.

It would be really great if you passed along the word so we can cover the widest selection of different shirt designs possible.

P.S. Above you can see me in my favourite Spreadshirt: one with a design from LA Lewis. If I had pictures of me in one of my many other favourites, I most likely would have linked to seen., Design By Humans, laFraise, Looky Looky, Top Dollar, Long Clothing or Rockers NYC. But, I hope that you guys are able to cover these and many more platforms and designers. After the click you will catch a glimpse of the Powley shirt which I am wearing today: continue reading ‘Blog Safari for International T-Shirt Day: My Favourite Shirt’

And we’re off! Spreadshirt’s 1-2-3 Rally is up and running.

Let’s start those engines refresh those memories: for every 3 new customers who buy from your shop within the next two weeks, you will receive 1 £15 voucher.

Every Shop Partner can win up to 5 vouchers and we will also be raffling off an extra five vouchers for a free 6-month premium membership.

The best part is that you don’t even have to register – every Shop Partner is automatically entered for 1-2-3 Rally and will be sent their voucher(s) once the promotion is finished.

So put the pedal to the marketing metal and attract some new customers to your shop. For a few tips on how to market your shop, our Spreaducation marketing area would be a great place to start.

It’s that time of year again – where the warm weather provides many reasons for celebration. 21 June is action-packed this year – not only is it both Father’s Day and the official start of summer, but also International T-Shirt Day. Just like last year we are teaming up with laFraise for a special competition where the winner can rake in a prize of €1,500. The theme of this year’s competition:

Take Social Media to the Streets!

Social Media isn’t exactly something you could normally put your hands on, but rather has become the corners of the net which some call their second home, like:

• Blogs
• Twitter
• Facebook (etc.)
• Flickr (etc.)

We are looking for the best t-shirt design which allows people to communicate their social media presence (nickname, name, URL, status update etc.) on a shirt. Create a design for laFraise and Spreadshirt which best and most concisely conveys social media and its importance for the individual.

Requirements for the design continue reading ‘laFraise and Spreadshirt Team up for T-Shirt Day Competition’

Shop partner Romibello’s question yesterday as to whether our servers were down unfortunately had to be answered with a “yes”. Our provider was faced with a power outage and, more specifically, its aftermath. That’s why we were sitting there with our hands tied behind our back and crossing our fingers hoping they would get the lights back on a.s.a.p. in Cologne.

Our platform was back online in the late afternoon, but there were still certain parts of the site which were having hiccups. As of now, there shouldn’t be any more problems. Since power outages can sometimes bewilder databases, there may be a few odds and ends on our platform which could appear as a result of yesterday’s outage.

If anyone comes across any irregularities – just comment here. We’ll gather them together and forward them to the right people. Thanks for your understanding and, once again, sorry about what happened yesterday.