I know that Twitter twordplay has had its hype, but we’ve had the Twordrobe series running for a while now and we all know not to change tworses in midstream. But you can make the horse better! We’ve decided to improve upon the Twordrobe idea, namely with more shirts and products which already exist in our apparel range. All together we are offering 8 products up for testing.

For the gentlemen:
- Summer Shirt from Continental Clothing
- Organic T-Shirt from Continental Clothing
- Henley Shirt from American Apparel
- Recycled T-Shirt from Anvil

For the ladies:
- Scoop Neck T-Shirt from Bella
- Summer T-Shirt from Continental Clothing
- Organic T-Shirt from Continental Clothing
- Sleeveless Shirt from Continental Clothing

And here’s how it tworks (ok, I’ll stop):

1. Write a Tweet applying to test out your favourite product from the Twarbrobe shirts listed above. Simply reply or retweet with @spreadshirt and #twardrobe in your tweet. We’d be even happier if you referenced this blogpost, e.g. use this link: http://bit.ly/twardrobe (so your followers know what this twardrobe is about).
2. We will select the winners on 21st October 2009. If you win, you will receive a voucher for the product you chose.
3. Create the t-shirt in our T-Shirt designer with your favourite design, redeem your voucher during checkout and complete the order.
4. When the shirt arrives, try it on!
5. Send us a photo and your feedback/thoughts/review of the product.

Let’s review that again: apply, order, wear and review.

Your feedback will then be published in the blog. So get tweeting, the deadline for applications is in 2 days (21st October)!

Today is Blog Action Day, a world-wide annual event where blogs focus on one specific issue to increase discussion about it within the community. This year’s Blog Action Day (with more than 8,000 participants) focuses on climate change, an issue which will affect us all, if it hasn’t started affecting us already.

Every product which is produced has an effect on the environment. T-shirts, and especially the cotton they are made from, are undeniably one of the many, many products contributing to climate change. This can be seen in the short video “Rebel with a Cause”, which I posted back in September. 200 grams of cotton can use up to 5 tons of resources throughout its life. That’s not what you normally think about every day when you put on your shirt. These resources are what we need to start considering when we consume just about anything.

1. Buy Organic Cotton T-Shirts
Our organic apparel assortment has grown to more than 10% of our entire product range. Buying organic means that less resources and chemicals are used in the production of the cotton. Companies like Continental with their EarthPositive products take this even an extra step further providing “wholly ethical” textiles: 100% organic, fair trade, low carbon during production, environmentally friendly materials, low water footprint and low carbon footprint (reduced by 90%).

2. Recycle Shirts
Every product has a life cycle and shirts are no exception. Your favorite shirt will get a hole, the print can fade (but, not flex or flock! ) or you simply don’t wear the shirt anymore. You don’t have to throw it away. Create a shirt blanket, shirtain, shirt seat, frame it or one of these 50 other t-shirt recycling ideas. Donate the shirt. Use it as a rag. Just don’t throw it away – it’s not good for your karma and not good for the environment.

3. Use less chemicals / Wear shirts more than once continue reading ‘5 Ways T-Shirts Can Fight Climate Change: Blog Action Day 2009′

For those of you who peruse Spreadshirt’s home page daily might have come across a new tab in our navigation named “Featured Shops”. We thought that it would be a good idea to have a selection of shops which shows the unlimited possibilities, directions, niches and ways Spreadshirt partners use their shops to sell t-shirts. It’s a start – and we hope you like it!

If any of you had a chance to visit your shop today, you might have noticed something different in the link which appears in your browser. The replacement of top-level domains (i.e. .de, .fr, .co.uk, etc.) as well as the change to the link went live today. Here’s a little breakdown for you:

Top-Level Domains:
You can select under which top-level domain your shop(s) should be accessible. Simply see under “Languages and Currency” and select the corresponding locations for each shop. If you would like to continue to have your shop accessible under .net, simply select “EU”.

Link Structure:
Changes in this area will enable an improved searchability of your shop, for example through Google searches, as well as a shortened general link structure (which looks much better!). To illustrate, let us look for example at the design page of your shop:
Old structure: shopname.spreadshirt.net/en/GB/Shop/Designs/index
New structure: shopname.spreadshirt.co.uk/shop/designs

Some important notes:

• Old links will still work! Basically all existing links will be redirected to the new URL structure (for the Nerds among us: with redirect 301).
• Please be aware that if you use tracking tools (i.e. Google Analytics) and have chosen to change your top-level domain, we also recommend that you also change the corresponding code. Simply check that you have changed the link to your shop from the original “.net/en/GB/Index/index”.
• The easiest way to create links to your standard shop is to simply copy the URL which now appears from the browser’s address field.

More information about these changes can be found in the Spreadshirt Forum.

Here they are:

1. The white bathrobe for him & her in one size fits most.
2. Bandanas in white, black and red. The dogs can get their paws on one too: dog bandanas in white, black, red, pink and camouflage
3. The laptop sleeve in black and grey.
4. For comfortable evenings on the couch: the sweatshirt blanket in red, grey and black
5. Last but not least the wine tote in cream and black for any and every occasion.

And here’s your special chance: we are preparing our new holiday landing page which highlights these products, among other things. So if you would like to be a part of it, put some of your designs on the products above and add them on the marketplace for the chance to be featured!

Have fun!

After Andy from HYA listed 50 great ways to recycle your old shirts with some awesome examples of other uses of the tee, we thought we’d take the camera around the office to see what we’ve experimented with. Here is a collection of our ideas on the extensive possibilities a shirt offers, other than, of course, wearing it. Now with that “Holiday-Which-Must-Not-Yet-Be-Named” soon approaching, you might want to impress with some nifty shirt-recycling gift ideas.

A)Wall Shirt Print continue reading ‘Do it Yourself: A Different Take on Shirt Customisation’

It’s a little early to make the “Best of 2009″ list, but in case you want to shuffle and update your assortment for the upcoming weeks here are our bestsellers from January until end of September 2009:

1. Mens Classic Shirt

2. Women’s Classic Girlie Shirt

3. Men’s Slim Fit

4. Men’s Hooded Sweatshirt

5. Men’s AA Shirt

6. Men’s Contrast T

7. Men’s Retro Shirt

8. The Cooking Apron

9. Women’s Spaghetti Top

10. Men’s Summer Shirt

In regards of the colours: usually the most popular colours are black, white, blue and red. Of course what you offer always also depends on your niche, your target group - and your designs. But I hope this list is helpful to you in terms of which products to add.

There I am, striking the most posh Hefner pose I can muster (I don’t think the garden gnome helped), modeling off one of our new products. None were so creative enough as the Germans to guess at what I was throwing up in the air last week: their ideas ranged from a camel hair blanket to a massage pillow, but of course, in hindsight, it was a bathrobe. Sexy!

But, hold your horses! This gem is first hitting our range in the next round of apparel additions arriving in the coming weeks (along with a couple of other surprises!). It’s a great uni-size piece, both for him and for her, is very comfortable and light, and optimal for wandering around the house (or office) for the early morning trip to the coffee machine.

Moving along then to the apparel which you can already start designing for your shop’s (or your own personalised) autumn collection.

We have four nifty newbies for you:

1. Children’s Sweatpants from Fruit of the Loom are available in black and navy.

2. Women’s V-Neck Hooddie from B&C, available in black & white as the best solution for cool and sunny days.

3. Men and Women will be happy to get the gold striped track jacket from Continental Clothing in black or white.

4. Men’s and women’s soft shell hooded jackets. The women can warm their style in red or black, while the men suit up in navy, black or white.

So put on your designing caps and have at ‘em!

Every so often we have customers who ask us if we can help them create a design or if we can provide them with some tips on visualisation. They have specific ideas in their heads which they don’t really know how to implement. This is basically where the Marketplace and T-Shirt Designer searches provide boat loads of designs and products for every imaginable occasion.

Nevertheless – sometimes the exact product they want isn’t there to be found. So, we would like to make it a little more “personal”: if you have an idea which hasn’t found its way onto the Marketplace yet, either because you don’t trust your designing skills or don’t really know how to implement the idea, then tell us about it! We would like to lend a helping hand to those who can’t find exactly what they are looking for. From all of the suggestions we receive, we will select 3 ideas which we will design and then send those selected a shirt with that very idea on it.

As there might be a few Marketplace designers reading out there, here is a little inspiration for you. The search terms below were entered a number of times into our search bar in the last few months – without success. Perhaps you have an idea how to visualise one of these ideas on a shirt. (This doesn’t mean you have to use one of these terms for your shirt idea.)

• s
• netball
• heartagram
• cougar
• edelweiss
• rollercoaster
• rhodesia
• fanny (ahem, not sure what they were looking for )
• obamanos
• miata

It’s October! It’s time for a new round of show and not-tell, and for the first preparations for the holiday season. Kristina already gave us a sneak peek at two of the upcoming holiday products, but this time we are going to make you work a little harder to figure out what this is. Above is a close-up, and below I threw it up in the air to see how it would fly. Gravity prevailed. Andreas made me promise to show you it for real next week if one of you can come up with the right answer. A tiny part of me hopes you don’t come up with it … (but, I keep my promises!) Follow the click to see the product in the air. continue reading ‘Huh, what’s that‽’