Melih (33) has a goal: “We communicate Islam in a language young people can understand, without sacrificing our values in the process.” The shirts in his shop, StyleIslam, focus on the Muslim faith - not in the way you would find in brochures, but with style and character from the point of view of a designer who has taken a good look at the graffiti in his city. A portion of the online sales from his shop is donated to AIDS orphans in Africa. Our interview with Melih:
continue reading ‘Interview with StyleIslam’

Last week I set up a March Madness pool over on IheartPGH.com - I was really excited to see over 30 people sign up and make their bracket picks and I had a great time watching basketball last weekend.  So I thought we should bring the fun to the t-shirt community.  I have used the website PoolTracker.com (I checked out some of the other pool websites - this one seems the easiest to set up) to set up the Shirt 16 Pool.

Joining is easy..

• Click this link, enter your email address, create a screen name and click submit.
• Next, you will go to a screen that says print this page, click the link to continue to the pool home page
• On the pool home page, click the link for make your picks and set up your bracket

HURRY - you need to pick your teams before the games start on Thursday morning!

Click here to join the Shirt 16 Pool

Leave a comment here (if you are a shop partner - include the link to your shop) so we know you entered and we can link to your shop when we post the standings!

Our colleagues at Spreadshirt.net have been having a great time with testing and Twitter these days. They have come up with the Twardrobe project. I like the way that Andreas summarizes our testing process - we pretest harder than you party. We got some great feedback about the tests we did on the American Apparel t-shirts and how much they shrink after a trip through the dryer.

We are reaching out to you, our faithful Spreadshirt users to help us test some of the new items that we will be launching in the coming weeks.  We will be giving away some of these new items on Twitter in the next few days.  Here is how the Twardrobe works:

1. Follow Spreadshirtcom on Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/Spreadshirtcom
2. Check our Tweets - watch for an announcement about Twardrobe
3. When you see a tweet about Twardrobe - reply to @spreadshirtcom with the word “absolutely”
4. We will select one of the replies and send you one of the new apparel items for you to test
5. Wear it, Share it, Wash It - and send us your feedback!

Check it out! Spreadshirt was featured on MyFoxBoston this morning. Spreadshirt CEO Jana Eggers shows off Spreadshirt and some custom t-shirts on the Morning News.

Today’s TeeCycle blog has a link to Defunkd Vintage T-shirt, which is an online shop that specializes in vintage t-shirts. They are serious about vintage t-shirts and have a seriously cool website and blog - I love that the search box in the blog says “Ye Olde Search Bar…”

Today, I am wearing one of my old favorite t-shirts today, light blue poly cotton t-shirt from Covered Bridge Pizza in North Kingsville, Oh - I “borrowed” this shirt from a friend years ago - I have never been to the Covered Bridge but I know that it is the pizza shop near Calvary Camp - where we spend a few summers and she worked as a counselor. (By the way the Calvary Camp website has a really nice photo of the week page, it is interesting to see the camp in the winter).

Anyhow, I am worried about my covered bridge t-shirt - getting a few stains and may be time for retirement. Fortunately - Defunkd has a great post on t-shirt stain removal - with some super serious suggestions for getting the stains out of your favorite shirts.

Of the list of 11 stain fighting weapons my favorite are

• white vinegar - old stand by
• the blow out gun - i want one of these!
• hair spray - who knew that it worked on ink stains!

I also appreciate the suggestion of making peace with your stain…

If all the previous methods fail you, we highly suggest learning to cope with your stain. Try putting some effort into your relationship. Eventually you’ll find your stain is a great listener and you just might warm up to it.

If your favorite t-shirt is from Spreadshirt you can always come back to Spreadshirt.com and make a new one continue reading ‘Stain Fighting Power’

Check out this Spreadshirt shop partner whose Apartment Apparel t-shirts have been generating some buzz.  Jason Solarek of Solarek Studio set up shop for all of other people trying to find or rent an apartment.
I really like the font an colors he has selected for the Apartment Apparel shop.
The shop has been a big hit in New York. Check out some of the coverage of the Apartment Apparel shop:
- The Real Deal Magazine
- CityFile New
- YorkCurbed.com.

As we mentioned in the blog and forum a few weeks ago, we are working to better optimize your t-shirt shops so they are placed towards the top of organic search results.

The first part went online yesterday (yeah!). The title, description and keyword meta tags will now be semi-automatically generated for your t-shirt shops.

Speaking of semi-automatic, you will also have to pull your own weight. Trying not to sound parental, this improvement won’t work as planned without a little elbow finger grease. Once again, here are the most important points:

1. Enter the meta data for your t-shirt shop home page. This advice is especially meant for shop partners who had entered their meta data in their own header.
2. Give your t-shirt shops a name (instead of the default 1234567.spreadshirt.com). Both search engines and humans really, really don’t like “naked”, name-less shops.
3. Enter names, descriptions and keywords for t-shirts, hoodies, tank tops, etc. which appear in your shops. This can be done for each product here by clicking on “details” under the product images.
4. If you use your own categories, also give them a description.

More tips and information can be found in our SEO tutorial for t-shirt shop partners.

We’ll keep you up to date on any future changes. Happy optimizing!

It has been awhile since I have watched the Spreadshirt Hands-Per-Piece Video. I just rewatched the video and thought it was time for a repost. I know the video is over there in the sidebar (look on the right side of the screen) but I think it deserves to be a post. This quick 2 minute video, with snappy sound track (from Los Campesinos), gives you a shirts-eye-view of how a shirt is made at Spreadshirt.

Do you know of any other YouTube videos that features Spreadshirt shirts?

Some other interesting YouTube video posts…

• Kickers create user-generated video for ‘Fancy Footwork’ by Chromeo (hangout.altsounds.com)
• Here’s the Most Amazing Mashup Music Video You Are Going to See This Month [Funky Youtube] (i.gizmodo.com)

For the March Shop Partner newsletter Temple’s Tip focused on some updating items for digital direct printing.   Click here to see previous Tips from Temple.

As you may recall, in October, we released several new products to our Digital Direct printing, as well as added some additional colors to products already available. The following products were added to Digital Direct printing in all colors…

• Women’s Heather Jersey Tee
• Women’s Plus Size Wide Strap Tank
• Toddler T-Shirt
• Men’s Hemp Tee
• Unisex Tie Dye T-Shirt
• Unisex Organic Heather Tee 

Also, the following products, which had only been available in white for Digital Direct printing, were made available for printing in all colors…

• Men’s Muscle Tee
• Men’s Organic Jersey Tee
• Men’s Long Sleeve Tee
• Women’s V-Neck T-Shirt
• Women’s Spaghetti Strap Tank
• Women’s Long Sleeve Jersey Tee
• Women’s Maternity Top
• Junior’s Cap Sleeve Tee
• Junior’s Aerobic Top
• Junior’s Organic Jersey T-Shirt

Finally, the Female Longer Length tank was added for Digital Direct printing in white only.

Generally, when new products are released for Digital Direct, the existing products in your accounts are also updated from the Digital Transfer or Digital Transfer Overlay process to the Digital Direct process. However, this did not take effect with the release of products in October.

Instead, we will be updating the above products created in your account that are using the Digital Transfer or Digital Transfer Overlay process tomorrow. Some points to keep in mind for the update…

• You will want to check the pricing and your commission on these products, as Digital Direct print adds $4.50 to the cost of the product, which is $1.50 cheaper than digital images on colored apparel and $1.50 more on white apparel with digital images.
• Digital Direct uses 200 dpi, so your current uploaded digital images may appear smaller when using Digital Direct, as Digital Transfer only requires a dpi of 120. This will be apparent in Designer Shops and depends on the dpi of the original uploaded image.

We are still continuing to test Digital Direct to eventually replace all products with the new technology, so once new products are available for Digital Direct, we will let you know!

On another note…You can now grab designs from your favorite Designers profile page! Under each Marketplace product submission, you can locate the Profile for the designer, by clicking their name. Once on their profile, you can click Designs and grab some of your favorite designs to include in your Designer shop or use in the future for products in your Classic shop!

Happy Creating,
Temple

We have launched a crazy clearance sale on some great products and we have some great stuff at a great price!

We have reduced the base price on 15 items!

• Women’s Wide Strap Tank
• Women’s Hooded Bamboo T-shirt
• Junior’ Contrast Stitch Tee
• Junior’s Baseball Tee
• Junior’s Organic Jersery Tee
• Junior’s AA Sleeveless Hoodie
• Men’s Boxer Shorts
• Baby Blanket
• Toddler Ruffle Tee
• Baby Long Sleeve Sleeper
• Baby Baseball Tee
• Pin Stripe Baseball Cap
• Kitted Cap
• Knitted Mittens
• Sneakers

Super Sneaker Deal - the base price on Sneakers is now $0.99!!!!