This would be interesting if you had done it about lafraise.fr which is a French website which started doing exactly this several years ago. Threadless does not show innovation, it shows that size and conditioning of the market and level of technological uptake are the real drivers of success and story here - not so much the idea that Threadless is somehow a unique and innovative idea. Seems to me it is a French idea that has been transported to the US.

The traditional HBR American-centric view of the world has once again distorted your definition of innovation. I am a big fan of your magazine but could you try and be a little less parochial in your research into the origins of business models. thanks.

What do you think of what lafriase did as part of this story?

So what if the idea was "transported" to the U.S. The fact remains that it is brilliant and I am glad to have learned more about it.

richard

lafraise.fr is just a clone of threadless

threadless has been around for 8+ years

Yea...

Richard, laFraise started in '04, I started Threadless in November of '00. Also, the owner of laFraise used to make it very clear on their website, and also mentioned in most of the press that they received, that he was inspired by Threadless in creating laFraise. It seems that since they were purchased by Spreadshirt that has been removed though.

what intrigues me about this co. is that it creates community and gives individuals to the masses a voice. It creates the connection we crave and as we know emotion sells product.There are opportunities to educate and learn. It is inspired and exciting and who created it first is a non issue to me!

You are too close the camera. Can you move a little far? Then we will talk of designing.
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla MBA PhD
P.O.Box 6044
Dar-Es-Salaam
Tanzania
East Africa

Thanks for this video, threadless is amazing. I think your spot on with the whole idea of bringing in your customer base to actually participate in making some of the design/manufacturing decisions. (for us, it's which new mannequin head we design/manufacure).

Of note too is that skinnycorp, who owns threadless, specializes in "creating communities". the power is probably in their ability to create the community...which might be more of a learned skill that I initially thought.

Cheers, thnx again, Ryan.

Cool Vlog post, Bill on Threadless' "crowdsourcing" biz model. It's part of the wider crowdsourcing (online post and vote competitions) trend for doing market-led innovation.

Muji (muji.net) run online design competitions using this crowdsourcing model; site visitors post and vote ideas - winner gets prize and product manufactured, but the neat bit is that voters put in pre-orders, taking risk out of R&D. Recent winner in user poll - a beanbag generated 50x average category sales.

Canadian goldmining company Goldcorp - ran an online "find our gold" competition $575K prize - entrants downloaded geological maps and submitted entries. $3bn gold found.

IBM run crowdsourcing competitions called ideajam http://ideajam.net - partners, experts and clients post ideas - and a jury vote, and IBM invests $100 million into most promising ideas

Starbucks are jumping on the trend - www.mystarbucksidea.com as is Dell with www.dellideastorm.com. More examples at www.clickadvisor.com

Ok ok, maybe I'm NOT the coolest guy on earth, but, I'm qualified enough to say this is DEFINITELY a cool idea. The whole idea of getting people to submit their designs didn't really astound me. What made me really sit up and pay notice is the brilliant execution and business model of maximizing the use of what Social Media and Web 2.0 is all about. That is, they are able to use such an appealing market as the internet communities, forums, blogs, and interaction online to generate a wildly profitable business.

Having Photoshop tutorials, cafees where people sit through and explain and teach each other how to design their own art is absolutely brilliant!

Web 2.0 has been such a big talk, but when it comes down to it, very few businesses have been able to implement those strategies successfully. It's refreshing to hear about companies like threadless who were able to capitalize on this not-so-new market.

This gets my two thumbs up!