# So I ordered from Threadless



## guest5779 (Aug 8, 2006)

My curiousity finally got the best of me. Here is the transaction from start to finish:

Oct. 24th - Place order for t-shirt during $10 sale. Order comes to $16... $6 for USPS shipping.

Nov. 1st - Check Threadless order... still hasn't shipped

Nov. 6th - Order arrives.

Contents:
1 USPS Tyvek Bag
1 Shirt
1 Postcard
1 Sticker Sheet
1 Invoice / Return Form








Here are my questions / thoughts:

1. The original manufacturer tag was cut out. Is this legal? I'm 99% sure it was a FOTL 50/50 blend.
2. I liked how the design / artist info was printed in the neckline.
3. The shirt was very wrinkled, but this should be expected I guess. Do wholesalers ship the shirts ironed / tumbled? Or is that something that must be done by the purchaser (us)?
4. The postcard and stickers were a nice touch.
5. They use Tyvek envelopes like many of us... go figure.
6. It took them 8 days to ship my shirt, that's a bit absurd. Especially when they charged an extra $2 -- that's not a good business move, at least IMHO.
7. I'd purchase from them again, but only when the shirts are on sale.

Hopefully this post will answer and questions others have about Threadless's transaction process. It's smooth, but is not without its hiccups.


----------



## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

empyre_01d2 said:


> 1. The original manufacturer tag was cut out. Is this legal? I'm 99% sure it was a Hanes 50/50 blend.


It's legal, and it's Fruit Of The Loom 50/50 Best, not Hanes.

For quite a while Threadless' printed tags were not legally compliant, but I believe they are now.



empyre_01d2 said:


> 3. The shirt was very wrinkled, but this should be expected I guess. Do wholesalers ship the shirts ironed / tumbled? Or is that something that must be done by the purchaser (us)?


Occasionally people will ship the shirts cleanly pressed, but usually not. It's not uncommon to take more care than Threadless do though 



empyre_01d2 said:


> 5. They use Tyvek envelopes like many of us... go figure.


There's a lot that Threadless do like the smaller stores. They're big and successful, but that doesn't mean they're never sloppy. They run their business as a compromise between making a good impression, and making money - just like everybody else.



empyre_01d2 said:


> 6. It took them 8 days to ship my shirt, that's a bit absurd.


That's what happens when you order during a sale that probably saw the turn over of tens of thousands of shirts. They often warn customers about the delays during sales, but sometimes they don't change over the when it ships information until afterwards.

Personally I think it's a reasonable amount of time under the circumstances - if I was paying full price I'd be annoyed, but given that they're running a decent sale it doesn't seem unreasonable.



empyre_01d2 said:


> 7. I'd purchase from them again, but only when the shirts are on sale.


Fortunately that's pretty frequent 

Personally I have a real love/hate relationship with Threadless. There's a lot they do wrong, but they're as big as they are for a reason.


----------



## guest5779 (Aug 8, 2006)

FOTL... opps, that's what I meant. I've got Hanes on the mind obviously. It seems to be a nice t-shirt for what it is.


----------



## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

empyre_01d2 said:


> FOTL... opps, that's what I meant. I've got Hanes on the mind obviously.


In that case, accurately spotted 



empyre_01d2 said:


> It seems to be a nice t-shirt for what it is.


I like them (above a lot of others in fact); "nice for what it is" is probably fair all around though.


----------



## TheJunkyard (Jan 26, 2006)

Usually shipping isn't that long. I placed an order during that same time and it took forever....but I understand they were in the middle of moving. Usually shipping is much faster.


----------



## Vtec44 (Apr 24, 2006)

THey're big and in demand, so they don't really care about all the little details. Thanks for posting that up. I was going to purchase one from them to see how it goes.


----------



## csquared (Sep 8, 2006)

Thanks for the post emp its nice to see how other companies package there product. I also print my own tag in the shirt and you have to include information like washing instructions.


----------



## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

empyre_01d2 said:


> Contents:
> 1 USPS Tyvek Bag
> 1 Shirt
> 1 Postcard
> ...


I didn't get a sticker or a postcard when I ordered from Threadless! I feel so ripped 




empyre_01d2 said:


> 1. The original manufacturer tag was cut out. Is this legal? I'm 99% sure it was a FOTL 50/50 blend.


As far as the act of removing the label itself goes - this is quite common and perfectly legal. The legality issues arrise when you look at the tag requirements as far as material, country of origin, etc.

Supposedly the fact that they still have their RN# printed on the tee makes it acceptable. I don't know if this is entirely accurate; it's possible that they're still supposed to have the country of origin, etc. on there, but I can't say for sure.



empyre_01d2 said:


> 6. It took them 8 days to ship my shirt, that's a bit absurd. Especially when they charged an extra $2 -- that's not a good business move, at least IMHO.


That doesn't seem that long to me. I guess I just care about a speedy delivery less than a lot of people; I probably need to speed up my own delivery to my customers, actually ;O



empyre_01d2 said:


> Hopefully this post will answer and questions others have about Threadless's transaction process. It's smooth, but is not without its hiccups.


Well, if you want to be wowed, I've heard Oddica is quite impressive in that department =)


----------



## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Thanks for the breakdown and photos of the package contents. I should have done that for my oddica purchase.


----------



## guest5779 (Aug 8, 2006)

No problem guys.

If anyone purchases from another reputable source, please post up something similar if you will. It's a great resource to learn from / adapt.


----------



## m26gil (Jul 21, 2006)

Anyone outiside US have bought a tee from Threadless??? Just curious.


----------



## Vtec44 (Apr 24, 2006)

One cool thing about this thread is that although my company is small, we kick Threadless' butt in packaging and presentation!


----------



## csquared (Sep 8, 2006)

James post some pics I would love to see how you guys package your shirts. Maybe we could start a thread just for people to show how they package shirts


----------



## guest5779 (Aug 8, 2006)

To be honest, I was surprised to find no hang-tags, poly bags, or anything of that nature. The postcard and stickers were a nice touch, but I expected more from the "top dog".

CSQUARED, great idea!


----------



## Vtec44 (Apr 24, 2006)

Chris, we still very much lag behind Oddica so we have nothing to show. But like Empyre said, I was expecting much more from them. But yeah, a "package" thread is a great idea. I'll definitely post some pix in there


----------



## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

Twinge said:


> Supposedly the fact that they still have their RN# printed on the tee makes it acceptable. I don't know if this is entirely accurate; it's possible that they're still supposed to have the country of origin, etc. on there, but I can't say for sure.


The country of origin is required; an RN is not a way around this. If Threadless still don't have a country of origin (I haven't checked lately), their tags are still not legally compliant (which actually means they pretty much never have been).

Unfortunately Threadless are not a model to base what's legal and what's not on (their copyright track record isn't very good either). Don't base customer service on them either.

Like I said... love/hate relationship  (nice shirts though, sometimes...)


----------



## guest5779 (Aug 8, 2006)

I just checked, and no, they don't have a country of origin. Only "Made in the U.S.A." -- but I'm pretty sure their just referring to the end-product.


----------



## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

empyre_01d2 said:


> I just checked, and no, they don't have a country of origin. Only "Made in the U.S.A." -- but I'm pretty sure their just referring to the end-product.


Depends on which shirt you bought.

If that's on one of their AA shirts (all their women's shirts and Threadless Select for example), that is the country of origin and is fine.

If it's on one of the Fruit of the Loom shirts (all of the standard men's line as far as I know), it's illegal (and I believe falsely mislabelling things "Made in the USA" is one of the things the FTC takes more seriously).


----------



## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

I just checked one of mine, and it also has Made in USA.

Either they've changed shirts without mentioning it/changing their faq (highly unlikely), or they're liable for large fines from the FTC if anyone cared to report them.


----------



## guest5779 (Aug 8, 2006)

I just compared the shirt to one of my AA's (which honestly I don't particularly care for), and there is ABSOLUTELY no way it's an AA -- or anything similar for that matter. I'm fairly certain it's one of their standard FOTL 50/50's (which I like, I believe I'll use either them or the Hanes 50/50 or Heavyweight).

Tisk, tisk.


----------



## Jasonda (Aug 16, 2006)

Solmu said:


> Either they've changed shirts without mentioning it/changing their faq (highly unlikely), or they're liable for large fines from the FTC if anyone cared to report them.


If this is true, it's very disheartening news. I'm starting to like them less and less!


----------



## jarzium (Apr 9, 2006)

i like the designs they have in threadless, but i live in Singapore and shipping cost is a *****. i do order from threadless now and then, but im pretty disappointed in the quality of the tshirts. the packaging could be improve as well.


----------



## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

Jasonda said:


> If this is true, it's very disheartening news. I'm starting to like them less and less!


I suppose if I'm essentially accusing a company of breaking the law I should link up 

Here's some photos of their tags:
Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3

(the RN is for Skinnycorp, Threadless' parent company)

You can see on this page that the normal guy's shirts (such as the ones the above tags are from) are printed on Fruit of the Loom 50/50 Best:
http://www.threadless.com/sizechart

The 50/50 Best shirt I have to hand was manufactured in El Salvador of USA fabric; I can take a photo of a tag if need be, but I think it's fair to say that's common knowledge. Hard to find much said specifically about their country of origin online, but I did find one t-shirt wholesaler who said of Fruit of the Loom:



> Made in the Caribbean & Central America including El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras & Mexico. Unfortunately we can not differentiate whether their products are NAFTA compliant. Recently they have also started manufacturing in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (Asia).


As for the legality of labelling something "Made in USA" that isn't, the FTC don't leave much room for interpretation:



FTC said:


> A label may say “Made in U.S.A.” only if the product is made *completely* in the U.S.[source]


There's a list of some of the fines the FTC have handed out (most for "Fail[ing] to have [a] reasonable basis for care instructions") available here:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/textile/carelblcases.htm

The fines on that list range from $4,000 to $300,000.

So unless I'm overlooking something (which to be honest, I seriously doubt), their tags are not compliant.

Prior to this their labels also didn't have valid care instructions ("Take off shirt when dirty, crumple in ball, hand to mom" and "Don't wash, buy new at Threadless", are hilarious - but not legal), prior to _that_ they didn't have anything: they removed the manufacturer and care tag and replaced it with a woven label that had nothing but the brand name and a slogan on it.

This is just one of the byproducts of the company being started by two guys who wanted to make t-shirts, not learn about the textiles business. If you pay close attention there are a lot of little half-assed details like this in the way Threadless do business: they still haven't (in my opinion) recovered from the fact that they were started by people who didn't know what they were doing (plenty of companies aren't - the hope is that by the time they're turning over millions of dollars that will have changed).

None of this actually bothers me anywhere near as much as the way they've handled some of their past copyright infringements, or the fact that some of the people that represent them in the community forums make me look reasonable and level headed 

I do think they've got as big as they have for a reason, and that they have a lot to offer - but people should stop looking to them for inspiration on the little details, and just enjoy the tale of meteoric rise due to a new business model.


----------



## kentphoto (Jan 16, 2006)

> I do think they've got as big as they have for a reason, and that they have a lot to offer - but people should stop looking to them for inspiration on the little details, and just enjoy the tale of meteoric rise due to a new business model.


I agree. Threadless is a great example of the crowd sourcing model, and they hit on a good thing at the right time. La Fraise did the same thing, and that guy did well when he sold it to Spreadshirt. 

But Threadless is so mainstream now. They sell ~ 9800 shirts a month. To me, they're a great success story, and a "one-in-a- million" story. Much like Johnny Cupcakes. 

The only inspiration, or examples we can use from these two comanies is strong marketing/branding. I still haven't got it down, but I still maintain that you could sell a million "be-jewelled" kitten shirts. - You just have to tap into that market of consumer, have a tight brand, and stick with it. 

It's like being in a rock band. Some slog and slog for years, and never get anywhere. And a few... hit on something, make it big very fast, and everyone is amazed.


----------



## guest5779 (Aug 8, 2006)

kentphoto said:


> I agree. Threadless is a great example of the crowd sourcing model, and they hit on a good thing at the right time. La Fraise did the same thing, and that guy did well when he sold it to Spreadshirt.
> 
> But Threadless is so mainstream now. They sell ~ 9800 shirts a month. To me, they're a great success story, and a "one-in-a- million" story. Much like Johnny Cupcakes.
> 
> ...


Yeah, crowdsourcing is definitely an interesting phenomonenon.

To be honest, I never saw it with Johnny Cupcakes. But good for him either way!


----------



## kentphoto (Jan 16, 2006)

empyre_01d2 said:


> To be honest, I never saw it with Johnny Cupcakes. But good for him either way!


To me, the Johnny Cupcakes shirts look better on a computer screen than they do in person. Marketing is King.

Anyone ever read "The Tipping Point" by Malcom Gladwell ? 

Everyone wanting to market and sell anything should read this book. 
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/stories/2003/01/01/tippingPointNetVersion.html


----------



## Q. (Nov 30, 2007)

Vtec44 said:


> THey're big and in demand, so they don't really care about all the little details.  Thanks for posting that up. I was going to purchase one from them to see how it goes.


Man, that is just sad!


----------

