Spreadu-what? Spreaducation is a new area on our site where we have gathered information for shop partners about setting up shop, creating products and marketing your shop. Some of you might recognise parts of the texts from our marketing special last December, but we’ve refined, revamped, renovated and relocated it all.

Where might I find this fantastic stuff? It has moved out of the user area and can be found under the tab “Sell”, open to all. You will also find our new edition “Shop Partner Stories” with testimonials from some of our shop partners.

What’s in it for me? We think there is something for everyone in these pages. Beginners can find tips on how to set-up your shop and find your target group. Those who already have a shop and some ideas but are stuck at the designing phase can pick up some info on creating products. Experienced users can take a look at our marketing tips or see what other partners have done by reading the Shop Partner Stories.

Enjoy and happy learning!

But wait, dear Shop Partners, that’s not all …
There is also a brand new addition to our webinar series – Spreadshirt Vectors 101! If you have participated in our Bootcamp Webinar series, this would be your next logical step towards your doctorate in Spreadshirt.  Vectors 101 will provide you with live and interactive instruction on how to create and use vector designs for a Spreadshirt shop. Sign up for one of the webinars and brush up on your vector skills!

P.S. For all of those English-savvy Europeans out there checking in on the UK blog - don’t worry! Your version of Spreaducation will be coming soon. That shouldn’t stop you from previewing the pages now. See this as a great opportunity to test your English.

Setting up a t-shirt shop can sometimes be a little overwhelming. Wouldn’t the world be a perfect place if someone spent half an hour showing you the ropes, walking you step by step through the most important steps in creating a Spreadshirt shop?

Well, those t-shirt shop newbies out there are in luck! We’ve started the Spreadshirt Webinar Series and are kicking it off with an introductory webinar for new users: the Spreadshirt Bootcamp.

The Spreadshirt Bootcamp provides live instruction from one of our employees on how to:

• customise your shop
• create new products
• upload designs
• use the Marketplace and the Design Gallery

Click here to learn more about the upcoming Bootcamp Webinars. You will find links to register for one of the convenient afternoon and evening times. For the more seasoned users amongst us, we will be providing more webinar topics in the future, so stay tuned. Happy learning!

One of the goals we’ve set for this year is to optimise our website and your shops for search engines.
We want to make it easier for the well-known search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN,…) to find your shop. You would then start to get free and first-rate visitors from the search engines who are (hopefully) there to buy your shirts. To make this all work like it should, a little effort also needs to be put in on your side.

Part 1 – Meta Element Changes
Shop meta tags will be the first change which will be undertaken (planned for mid-March, but could also be delayed by a few days).
In the future, we will automatically generate the meta tags (title, description, keywords) for your shop from information which you have provided in the user area.
Here’s how the meta tags will look in the future on a product detail page:

continue reading ‘Search Engine Optimisation for your Shops: Meta Tag Changes’

© 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’

Here is another post addressing the Marketplace. Its a follow up from the aptly title “Marketplace pt.1”. I’ll try and answer some of the questions that have been popping up here, in the forums and directly to service@spreadshirt.net

Including:

“I’m new here, whats the marketplace again?”

“Commission. Thats bitching, tell me more.”

“Whats the difference between a product and design?”

“If I submit a design where can it go?”

“I found a great design and I want to totally ruin it by adding a tacky pun. What customisation options do I have?”

continue reading ‘Introducing the Marketplace pt.2′

Content shamelessly “borrowed” from the US blog. Doesn’t affect the quality of the tutorial though

“For anyone who is interested in t-shirt design, check out this nice tutorial from the Layers Magazine website. T-shirt designer Jeff Finely takes you through creating a t-shirt design using vector graphics in Illustrator.
This gives a pretty nice, not too complex overview of turning a photo into a vector graphics for t-shirts. The t-shirt used as as the example is a bit too complex for Spreadshirt´s print types.

Since Christmas I have been on the hunt for a way to turn a photograph into a vector graphic. This tutorial is a good overview of that. If you are going to use your vector for a Spreadshirt design, make sure it meets the minimum requirements so that it is possible to turn your design into a design on the shirt. For more information on the specifics of preparing vector graphics for Spreadshirt visit the shop partner admin. “