1. Threadless.com
Creating profit through an online design community
Team C
Lalit Chopra, EliranDrucker, Geoff Gibson, BenniLickfett,
Josh Mischel, Verity Noble, Daniel Santamaria, AlessioTixi

2. Introduction
Hi Jeffrey – Video from 2007

3. What does threadless do?
Designs Designers
150,000+ / year 100,000+
Design
Vote for faves community
participates
Community for
Threadless.com
(“Crowd”) recognition
~10 shirts / wk
Sales Buyers
$30MM+ / yr 4MM+
Source: dailycrowdsource.com
Community Contribution Direct threadless contribution

4. Analysis
Strengths Weaknesses
• Crowd sourcing • Shipping costs
• Immediate feedback • Fickle nature of crowds
S W
Internal
• Cheap price of content acquisition • Lack of content control
• Only print buzzworthymerch, Reprints • Cost of blank tees/raw materials
• Social network - Meetups (376 int'l &
domestic communities)
• Speed for new mediums ex. Twitter
Opportunities Threats
• Product Variety • Intellectual property rights (China)
• Customer Segmentation • Launch of similar business model
External
• Concentrate on International Market • Alienating the crowd
• Japan, South America as potential • Become too mainstream, lose their soul
growth targetsO T
• Attrition from main contributors
• Retail Store Expansion • Limited expansion opportunities

5. Pillars of Crowdsourcing
Community Retaining
Participation
Building Power Users

6. Participation
• Score
• Submit designs
• Share (pics, media)
• Purchase tees
• Recommend
• Comment
• Interact with
threadless team

7. Community Building
Meetups
Blog & Street Thread-
Apps (online to
Forums Team spotting
offline)
Accessibility

8. Attracting & Retaining
Power Users
New Incentives
(scholarships, grand
prizes)
Recognition
User feedback
Challenges
Meetup groups

9. Limitations & Risks of crowdsourcing
Key Issue Mitigation
SIZE KEEP ENGAGEMENT HIGH
Critical mass needed • Invest in community & culture
but not always appreciated • Offer meaningful Incentives
by core users • Support and engage power users
QUALITY MANAGEMENT
QUALITY •Strictly monitor satisfaction and
You are presenting the user, culture
need to meet expectations •Only promise things you can deliver
•Focus on constant feedback
DIFFERENTIATE PRODUCTS
LEGITIMACY
•Launch sub-brands.
Why are we the right community to
•Define limits and purpose
present the user
•Stay focused
CENSORSHIP BE TRANSPARENT
Manage the community without •Communicate your rules
taking power from the people •Use communal editing when possible

11. 8 Factors for Success
Right Purpose: Call to the crowd for insight you will act on
Right Call: Tell the crowd what you want from them
Right Crowd: Crowd needs to be diverse and qualified
Right Incentives: Glory, ego, altruism, greed – feed the crowd’s needs
Right Model: Define the output needed from the crowd
Right promotion: Get people in and get them spreading the word
Right Community Management: Nurture crowd participation and know
when to chime in
Right Technology: Features vary, beware one size fits all

12. Successful Crowdsourcing
Amazon's Mechanical Turk
• An on-demand, global scalable workforce
• Mix of crowdsourcing and marketplace
• Workers perfom “Human Intelligence Tasks”
Netflix Prize
• Recommendation engine
• Targeted developer community
• Innovation prize: $1 million for
best algorithm

13. Common Mistakes
• Overlooking daily moderation
• Choosing the wrong first crowdsourcing topic
• Assuming crowd recruitment is easy
• Not identifying/involving power users
• Not investing enough in the right incentives

14. Unsuccessful Example
Pepsi refresh project:
• Donates money to non profits
• Consumers vote for non profits
Problems:
• Cheating in grant process
• False information
Moderation Mistakes:
• Not enough experience in managing community
• Did not attract the right community members
• 3rd party assesses validity of leader board

15. What should be next for threadless?
• Keep focusing and expanding design focused
products and add design services
• Atrium, Platform for charity design
campaigns
• Develop social editing platforms
What should not be next for threadless?
“There was no good reason for us to open • Opening a 1700 sq ft store…. Too late
a store” – Jake Nickell
• Going Big Box, compromising community
• Produce non-design products
• Going beyond production capabilities

16. Conclusions
It’s an amazing tool…. but not for everyone
• Identify a relevant community
• Listen to the people, understand their motives
• Identify right crowd-sourcing model
• Realize limitations and need for management
It won’t go away…
• Empowered users won’t want to switch back
• Expect to see more and more in
government, science, funding, forecasting
…and crime
• Companies will need to shift from reactive to
pro-active mind-set

17. Questions?