It’s T-Rex Time on this edition of the Weekly Spread.  This week, our Tyrannosaurus Rexes  hate boxing, play the drums, and destroy Fred Flinestone’s car.

Henry shows us how much T-Rex really hates boxing.  T-Rex joins a rock band in this Amorphia design.  And this design from Jerkass reveals how dangerous T-Rex could be if given the proper tools!

Fringe Focus gives us a useful chart for dinosaur butchers everywhere while Crocktees goes Yabba Dabba Darwin.

Congratulations to all our designers featured above!  Stay tuned for the next Weekly Spread!

Developing a tag line is fundamental to building a good brand identity.  We discussed earlier that you should always be mindful of your audience, their demands and needs.  Knowing your audience is only half the battle, though, they have to know you too! There’s several ways you do this and in this blog post we will discuss one of the simpler methods: developing a tag line.

First you must understand one thing: Your tag line has to be simple and it has to showcase what you do. It should be no more than a few words and it has to be directly related to what you do. If you’re a funny t-shirt company, perhaps something like “Always Funny” or “the funniest t-shirts”. It has to be something directly related to what you do. If it is a non sequitur, then you will be defeating the purpose of your tag line. If you are a funny t-shirt company and your tag line is “The Best Apples”, it will just confuse your customers. As with our other tips, the first step is always THINKING.

Think of 3-5 different possibilities and then test them out. See which one bounces the most, which one you and your friends remember best, try it with customers and see which ones they like. Overall, you must remember that very rarely you get things right on the first try. Try different variations and don’t be afraid to play with the wording, even if it may not be 100% grammatically correct. The trick here is to find what grabs people’s attention and sticks with them. They should be able to think of this phrase and know instantly it’s you. It helps if it’s a commonplace phrase you’re co-opting for your own purposes.

This small tip boils down to two points:

1. Research what phrases may work for your company and
2. Test them on friends, family and customers.

Check back here every Tuesday for more marketing tips.

Welcome to another edition of the Weekly Spread.  This week, our featured designs honor mothers across the world.  Don’t forget to wish your mom a Happy Mother’s Day on Sunday!

Matti asks mom where the meatloaf is.  Papy takes some inspiration from the ocean.  And Tattoooo thinks all moms are Supermoms (which they are).

OnCotton’s coffee bean realizes something terrible.  And MuthaCrafter is so crafty she makes people.

Congratulations to all our designers featured above!  Stay tuned for the next Weekly Spread!

Throw off your caps, it’s almost graduation time! With that in mind prepare for scholastic and athletic achievements to be recognized, the endless graduation parties to begin and the start of summer vacation travel. If you’re looking to get the graduate something special and one-of-a kind our new Varsity Sweatshirt Jackets for both men and women make for a great gift. These are a fresh spin on the classic wool and leather versions at half  the price and the sweatshirt fabric makes them wearable just about all year round.  Add the graduate’s name, high school mascot or lucky number on to one of these jackets for a personal touch.

If your  family member or friend is going on a vacation trip this summer or away to college in the fall, a roomy  bag also makes for a great gift idea. We’ve recently added two new bags to our collection from the brand Alternative Apparel. The Hogan Weekender Duffel is the perfect go to bag for sport, travel or leisure. The durable, adjustable shoulder strap lugs lots, plus there is one secure inner pocket and one outer pocket available in colors black and red.  If you’re looking for a go-to tote bag that will last you for years, the Everyday Canvas Tote also by Alternative Apparel is the perfect shopping bag, book smuggler and casual purse. Two roomy outer pockets and subtle copper detailing available in black, red and navy. Add the graduate’s name, favorite song lyrics or a special symbol or design on the front or sides of the bags.

And if you’re still stumped for graduation gift ideas, check out some of our top rated and best selling graduation themed designs in our t-shirt and hoodie shop.

Congrats Graduating Class of 2013!

April showers bring logo flowers!  A new heart is brought into bloom, and we realized that there were quite a few things that needed some dusting off.

It all started in our headquarters.  We collected quite a bit of stuff over the years here and the white walls really needed a bit of color. So, we’ve cleaned out some junk, moved furniture around and splashed a bit of color on the walls.  You can see what a difference it makes – our headquarters have been cleaned up and the walls are as colorful as our t-shirts. But I don’t want to waste your time reading about painting and redecorating. There are more important things we’ve been working on. The newly designed logo has given a new and modern shape to the heart, and the slightly different green is as fresh as the spring and our new products. While remaining true to our heart, we have reanimated typeface to breathe new life into our logo.

And whilst we were at it, we reviewed our whole corporate design. Particularly Doreen – one of our great graphic designers – set her hand to the task. Her creative and artistic touch will adorn many of our illustrations and graphic designs in future. But what’s behind all these changes? After ten years of Spreadshirt and five years with our Lovetab logo, the time was just ripe for a fresh breeze. We do not only want to keep our ears on the tracks of time, but also have an eye on quality and creativity. Our new products reflect this idea. And the new logo is only the first of many things that will change at Spreadshirt in the months to come. These changes will also affect remodelling of our homepage as well as the user area for our partners and designers.

Welcome back to the Weekly Spread.  This week, in honor of Star Wars Day celebrated on May 4th, our showcase features 5 Star Wars inspired designs.  May the Fourth be with you!

Lefameux imagines what our favorite robot looks like on the inside.

Dbenton 25 will grill a drumstick in less than 12 parsecs.

Funny Meme Shirts focuses on what some Storm Troopers do during their down time.

Progressive T-Shirts shows that it’s hard to train an Imperial Walker.

Jerkass T-Shirts introduces Han’s brother, Hans.

Congratulations to all our designers featured above!  Stay tuned for the next Weekly Spread!

So, in this series we have gone over how to develop your brand and how to build up an audience. In this article, we will discuss creating content that encourages your visitors to share your content. The first step you must take when creating shareable content is actually making sure you can make it shareable.  If you are running on a popular CMS like Wordpress or Drupal, there are a lot of plugins you can get that make sharing content easier. Look for ways to easily add twitter, Facebook and Google+ buttons to your website. Also make your website available to sites like StumbleUpon as well.  Furthermore, make sure the URL to the content you want to share is easy and understandable. www.example.com/my-content is a lot easier to link to than www.example.com/pageid/928/dir/sub/5938kjdgas.aspx . Remember; try to make linking easy for your customer, not harder. If you cannot fix your URL to something short and simple, use a link shortener like bit.ly.

From here, it is mostly a hit and miss process. You have to build up quality content that people would want to share. You cannot make your content a transparent grab for links nor can you make it uninteresting. A transparent grab for links would be something that is popular but has no relation to you or your website (a picture of a kitten saying a popular meme for example). This, while it may get linked, would be rather transparent and wouldn’t get you the links nor the audience you want. You want to create quality content that directly relates to what you do. Is there a popular meme? Good, does it relate to you in anyway? Good! Now here is where you strike. Create a nice picture or article and push it on your social channels. Make it easy to share and hopefully it will get picked up and shared among your audience.

Overall, it breaks down into two elements: 1^st you have to make it easy for your audience to share your content and 2^nd you have to create great content.

Welcome to the Weekly Spread, showcasing 5 designs from our Marketplace. This week, we’re featuring Boston-inspired designs to honor those affected by the tragic events that occurred during the Boston Marathon last week.

Funks Amazon features a B with Roots back to Beantown.

Design Diva Gifts offers a classic design for a famous Boston tradition: St. Patrick’s Day.

Ghostman Sports created a design from the infamous Pudge Fisk home run during Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.

TD Apparel goes vintage with the Beantown label.

STucc delivers an interesting take on the Boston subway map (known as the T).

Congratulations to all our designers featured above!  And thanks to our community of designers who continue to upload awesome designs.  We will continue to showcase different designs each week every Friday, so stay tuned!

*Special note: these designs are not affiliated with our Boston Strong campaign.  To view those t-shirts please visit here.

So, you have a good shop and an excellent brand identity. You are engaging with your customers and you have a clear idea of what you are about. But you need products to sell and thinking of fresh ideas can be difficult. This is where hot topics research comes in handy. This short article is designed to help you find new ideas to keep your business growing and relevant.

The first step is to not forget your brand identity. Yes orange may be popular right now but your shop is all about blue and if you suddenly switch to orange you can turn off your existing customers, at least you would confuse them. So, whenever you do your hot topics research you have to keep in mind what your shop is about.  Everything we suggest here is going to be simple and easy to implement as this is just an introduction.

First, keep your ears and eyes open. You may notice among your friends and family that certain trends, memes and other things may be suddenly popular. Also keep an eye on the news and on your various social sites. You may catch the next meme just as it is starting if you are observant enough. If you feel this meme or major event applies to your shop, take advantage of it and make designs and products around it. Being first on the scene with the t-shirt that has that new meme may make your year.

Second, we recommend you keep a close eye on your site’s analytics. If you have a separate website we suggest you install Google Analytics upon it. This will let you see how many visitors you have, and more importantly what they are searching for. Keep a very close eye on your search query report as it will let you see what is currently popular and is driving traffic to your site. If you find most of your customers are looking for “blue fish” then maybe it’s time to have some “blue fish” products?

Next, we suggest you keep a close eye on trending topics. Go to major social sites like twitter, Facebook, reddit and others to see what is currently popular or becoming popular.  There are various tools and websites available to show you trending data and there’s websites like knowyourmeme.com that track meme’s as well. Overall, you just want to keep a close eye on trending topics and try to catch the wave. If you keep your ears and eyes open you will find topics that are highly relevant and could potentially make you a lot of money.

The tragic events that happened during the Boston Marathon on April 15 happened close to home for Spreadshirt. Our US Sales and Marketing Headquarters are located in Boston. Boston is our home. 

For those who would like to join us in helping those affected by the events during the Boston Marathon, you can find our Boston Strong and Stand with Boston t-shirts here.

100% of all profits from these shirts will go to the One Fund. The One Fund was created by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to help the people most affected by the tragic events that occurred in Boston.



To our shop partners: If you were thinking about uploading Boston Marathon related designs or products to the Marketplace or your shop, please contact customer service before you do so. Currently, we have not been accepting designs relating to the events that took place at the Boston Marathon. There are so many good people out there doing great things to help, unfortunately there are also people out there whose intentions are not as noble and looking to cash in on people’s good will. We know that some of you have expressed genuine interest in helping those affected by these events by donating your proceeds from specific designs or products. That is why we are asking that before you upload these designs and have them get rejected you contact customer service to make them aware of your plans. Send a quick email over to service@spreadshirt.com.

Stand with Boston!