The majority of the t-shirts from my most wanted list are from Camiseteria (the Brazilian Threadless). No doubt like anything in life I want it most because I can’t have it. I chatted to Fabio one of its founders about when that would change and the history of Camiseteria.
Interview in Full Post
Part 1
Me: Who are Camiseteria?
Fabio: Camiseteria is a Brazilian tshirt project. It was created by 3 guys how loves tshirts. We are Fabio Seixas, the tech guy, Rodrigo David, the designer and Tiago Teixera, the tshirt creation guy.
Me: How did it start?
Fabio: Camiseteria started to born in late 2004 when Rodrigo David saw that would be great to bring to Brazil a business model like Threadless. We started to build the site in January and 8 months later we launched it with great response from the market.
Me: How may different designs have you printed since then?
Fabio: In the first year we printed more than 50 different designs. And we had more then 6k designs submitted to our competition.
Me: Is camiseteria a full time project for you guys? How many people work to support it?
Fabio: Camiseteria is a full time projetct and now we have 4 people working on the business.
Me: Where are you guys based?
Fabio: We are based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, land of pretty women and beautiful beaches.
Me: I’d probably swap those two around but where do I sign? I hear you’ve just had your first birthday, congratulations. Has the site been more or less successful than you hoped?
Fabio: It was much more successful than we can ever imagine. Since the first month we had much more attention and sales than our initial projections.
T- Break
Part 2
Me: How has the response been in your native country?
Fabio: We had great response from Brazilian people. Many users simple loves Camiseteria.com and use the site in on a daily basis. Many of them are great tshirt evangelists.
Me: Any other sites with similar models in that country?
Fabio: No. We’ve done a great job establishing our brand within the Brazilian internet users.
Me: What do you think the future of the design contest format is?
Fabio: We think that the whole fashion business will have to change their business model incorporating some co-creation in the product creation process. We think that many things can be built using the Internet, things like design co-creation between individuals for example.
Me: What makes Camiseteria different to its competitors?
Fabio: The basic difference is our product creation model. None of our tshirt competitors have anything similar to that. This almost guarantees that our products are great products for our consumers.
Me: What is your favourite design that you’ve printed and why?
Fabio: We had one design that extrapolated any sales expectancy. It´s called “Chá com Mario Bros” wish translate to “Tea with Mario Bros”
This is a great product since it use a subliminal message and people seem to like that.
Me: What is your favourite t-shirt design company other than Camiseteria?
Fabio: We love tshirts and some brands have a special place in our hearts. Some of then are Auslander , Obra and NKD
Me: what do you have planned for the site in the future?
Fabio: We are working on an international version of our store and planning a distributor in Portugal. In the Brazilian operation we have some great ideas coming.
Me: From what I can decipher through babelfish there seems to be a close knit community within Camiseteria, how many members do you have?
- How important is the community in the success of camiseteria?
Fabio: The community is the business itself. Camiseteria is the people that make it happen. So, these people are the most important thing we have. We treat them like they are our friends. And many of them really become “off-line” friends.
Me: How have you attracted members to camiseteria?
Fabio: Most by our users word-of-mouth. Here in Brazil, we lack some really cool web projects, Camiseteria filled a gap for a cool Brazilian web 2.0 concept. And people like to talk about it.
There you are, no specific date on when we can get some Camiseteria action for ourselves but the ball is definitely rolling. Thanks to Fabio for taking the time to speak to me.
