June 2008
Case
HBS Case Collection

Threadless: The Business of Community

Format:Multimedia
| Pages:1

Abstract

Threadless.com, the online, Chicago-based t-shirt company, was not your typical fashion apparel company. The company, run by Jake Nickell, Jacob DeHart, and Jeffrey Kalmikoff, turned the fashion business on its head by enabling anyone to submit designs for t-shirts and asking its community of more than 500,000 members to help select winning designs. Threadless encouraged community members to actively participate by critiquing submitted designs, blogging about their daily lives, posting songs and videos inspired by the designs, and, most important, purchasing t-shirts that have won the weekly design competitions. In 2007, Threadless was well on its way to selling more than a million and a half t-shirts. The success of Threadless has garnered significant media attention, the New York Times and USA's National Public Radio highlighting its unique community-based business model and has piqued the interest of large traditional retailers. Nickell, DeHart, and Kalmikoff were now faced with making a decision about a potentially lucrative offer from a major retailer offering to carry large volumes of select Threadless t-shirts in its retail stores. Should they accept?