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′

Yup, these days there seems to be a holiday for just about anything. There’s International Bacon Day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day and Towel Day (my personal favorite).

National Punctuation Day on September 24th, however, takes the cake and underlines the importance of correct punctuation and grammar. Punctuation something that people take very seriously (and I’m not just talking about your 8th grade English teacher). It’s a great thing, not to be underestimated, overused or misused; it certainly comes in handy making a text understandable.

What do punctuation and t-shirts have to do with each other, you ask? We asked ourselves the same question and took a look at how our customers use punctuation. We were curious what the most often used punctuation mark was on a shirt and a couple of Spreaders placed bets on the exclamation point! We were wrong! People aren’t yelling much with shirts, they’re rather making points – with periods.

Here are the top five most commonly used punctuation marks on Spreadshirt products: period, apostrophe, exclamation mark, dash and comma. Unfortunately, the interrobang (my favorite punctuation mark) didn’t make the cut – but that doesn’t mean you can’t get one on a shirt. Here are some punctuation shirts I’ve found:

Happy National Punctuation Day!!

As some of you might have read on laFraise’s blog, the winner of one of the largest online design competition prizes ever awarded was announced yesterday. As you can see from the 12 finalists, there was some tough competition to rake in the €15,000.

Can you take the suspense?

You’ll find the winner after the click (drum-roll please, trumpets blare):
continue reading ‘laFraise Unveils 15K Contest Winner’

“Spread-X” is an internal training series which we run here at Spreadshirt where our employees spread their specialized knowledge to their fellow colleagues.

These events occur about once a month where the theme covered and participation is completely voluntary. Our fellow Spreaders in offices in Berlin, Paris, Boston and Greensburg can join in on the Spread-Xs via video conference.

Tomorrow at 11 a.m. EDT we will be having a Spread-X about the topic “Social Media” led by fellow blogger Tobias Huber who will be talking about how you can use Social Media to strengthen your brand.

We would therefore like to invite you to join in on this event and watch Tobias’ presentation as we stream it live on Twitcam. The link for the stream (where you can also comment via Twitter) will show up on www.twitter.com/spreadshirt shortly before the presentation starts. (That is, if it all works like we’ve imagined it to :-))

The presentation will cover the following topics:

• What is Social Media (about)?
• How does Social Media impact communication?
• Why is Spreadshirt using Social Media?
• How is Spreadshirt using Social Media?
• What do you have to do with it?
• What else do you want to know?

See you tomorrow!

So we tried to plan T-shirt Day around the first day of summer with the hope of sunny, blue skies - we had rain, we had wind but that didn’t stop us from celebrating the T-shirt!

We had a great turn out for International T-shirt Day last week at the Daily Catch in Boston, MA.  A big thank you to Max and Maria for rolling out the hot chocolate to keep everyone warm!

Check out the slide show below of these great photos from the party and check out some photos from t-shirt day celebrations around the world!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Just a quick reminder that T-shirt Day is almost here!  We have some great events planned for Boston and Berlin and there a bunch of t-shirt day parties that are being planned acorss the globe.

• Boston
  • RSVP on Facebook
• Berlin
  • RSVP on Facebook
• Everywhere else - check out this google map of t-shirt parties across the globe

As many of you know we called out to the t-shirt world to organize their own t-shirt celebrations and register on the T-Shirt Day website. We promised to equip 10 of these parties with sets of 10 t-shirts – and we shall follow through with that promise. The winners hail from 6 different countries and, depending on where you might find yourself on June 21st, you could join in on one of these events or one of the many others registered on the T-Shirt Day site. Here they are, in no particular order: continue reading ‘Winning T-Shirt Parties - Where will you be on T-Shirt Day?’

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 Boston where any t-shirt designer/lover/wearer can present their favorite 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 honor your favorite tees with, say, a T-bone steak barbecue. 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.

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 “Favorite 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 Favorite Shirt” which includes:

• A picture of you in your favorite 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 favorite 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 one of my favorite Spreadshirts: one with a design from LA Lewis. If I had pictures of me in one of my many other favorites, I most likely would have linked to Amorphia Apparel, blend apparel, laFraise, Glarkware, Loukotka or The Tee Party. But, I hope that you guys are able to cover these and many more platforms and designers. Show us and your blog readers what great tees you’ve got!

Just a last minute reminder about Podcamp Pittsburgh which happens this weekend!  Spreadshirt has been attending Podcamp PGH since the beginning.  We have some friends that have become shop partners with great shirts that we met at previous podcamps - hello WearPittsburgh!

Podcamp is a free unconference that happens in cities all across the US (even Hawaii).

Check out some of these posts from past Podcamp Pittsburgh events 2006 and 2007.  I will be there on Saturday afternoon and might host a session about merchandising.  If you are in Western, PA - I hope to see you there!