It’s taken a while to get this part ready to be posted, but here is part 3 of my interview with Stagr. As Nick and I talked through parts 1 & 2 I can see a lot of similarities between stagr’s business model and innertee. Both aim to offer advanced customisation but within the confines of a brand, utilising community to create design elements for users to purchase in their creations, mini-mass-customisation I call it, for no logical reason. Miles and I have talked t-shirts several times online so I introduced them both and this is what followed, how interesting it is for anyone but me, nick and miles I’m not too sure.
Adam@spreadshirt says: do you know the innertee guys? they have a similar business model.
nick@stagr.com says: don’t know them. just pulled up their site, looks cool. not sure how long they’ve been around but hopefully consumers will embrace both sites.
Adam@spreadshirt says: they havent launched yet either, they been around since may. i think they are a week or so a way
nick@stagr.com says: cool. we better launch today then and say they copied us
Adam@spreadshirt says: if your up for it miles the innertee founder is online, we could do a three way interview about your models and you guys could meet? its cool if not…
Adam@spreadshirt says: “he who said it first, did it first”
nick@stagr.com says: cool with me.
Miles has been added to the conversation.
Adam@spreadshirt says: miles of innertee, meet nick of stagr.
nick@stagr.com says: hey miles
miles@innertee.com says: hows it going
nick@stagr.com says: good. sounds like you have a good idea.
miles@innertee.com says: thanks man
Adam@spreadshirt says: I’ve just been having a play with the stagr configurator its slick. Miles hasn’t let me see the innertee one yet because of the spreadshirt thing…
miles@innertee.com says: lol, looks pretty sweet in the video
nick@stagr.com says: don’t show him the stagr one either! you said i could trust you about spreadshirt, i’m giving you the benefit of the doubt because you’re english
Adam@spreadshirt says: dont get more trustworthy than an englishman!
miles@innertee.com says: ha
Adam@spreadshirt says: you’re even close geographically, you gys should pool resources.
Adam@spreadshirt says: you might need them when i set my sites on U.S. domination with spreadshirt 
nick@stagr.com says: right now we could combine our sites and have two sites that haven’t launched
Adam says: lol
miles@innertee.com says: Nick this sounds like a setup
Adam@spreadshirt says: web 2.0s all about the beta, if you’ve launched your old news.
nick@stagr.com says: adam and i go wayback, he would never trick me.
miles@innertee.com says: lol
Adam@spreadshirt says: 10mins back, with miles its like 15.
nick@stagr.com says: looking forward to seeing your site though, hopefully can compare notes in the future
miles@innertee.com says: hey were you guys at Pool or Magic? Seems like I’ve seen the logo before
nick@stagr.com says: we were at pool. had a booth to get feedback on the configurator.
nick@stagr.com says: cool, and we can each dress like the characters on each others homepage
miles@innertee.com says: lol
nick@stagr.com says: when do you guys launch?
Adam@spreadshirt says: the million $ question
miles@innertee.com says: hey adam’s the one with the big checkbook now – he should fly us over for a ‘meeting’
Adam@spreadshirt says: 2008 aint it miles?
Adam says: I’ll hoping to be heading to the states to meet the spreadshirt team at somepoint so I’m sure we could swing something
nick@stagr.com says: adam, do you see innertee and stagr as being direct competition to spreadshirt?
Adam@spreadshirt says: yep
miles@innertee.com says: why are we talking to him again???
nick@stagr.com says: is cafepress direct competition to spreadshirt?
Adam@spreadshirt says: yeah, did you see the snakes on a plane thing?
nick@stagr.com says: we’re talking to him so we can go to sleep each night knowing we’re smarter than the big guy
miles@innertee.com says: lol
Adam@spreadshirt says: hey, that hurts my feelings.
nick@stagr.com says: saw that, was kind of cool, curious how many sold vs just made for fun
miles@innertee.com says: so Nick who are you guys targeting? If I may ask
Adam@spreadshirt says: cafepress have some work to do and their not aimed at early adopter consumers like spread, inner or stagr but they offer a great service
Adam@spreadshirt says: do you guys consider yourselves in competition to spreadshirt?
miles@innertee.com says: well Lukasz seems to think we are!
Adam@spreadshirt says: they had a massive response to their snakes on a plane campaign.
nick@stagr.com says: hopefully a lot of people, but in general i’d say we’ll steer more towards people with design sensibilities but not interested in creating their own graphics per se
Adam@spreadshirt says: thats the same as your thinking miles?
nick@stagr says: copycat
Adam@spreadshirt says: where do you guys see differences in your models?
miles@innertee.com says: well, ours is on the site – I don’t know anything about Stagr
nick@stagr.com says: When we started zappos we would go for beers with founder of shoebuy. i don’t see anyone of us selling to every tshirt customer in the world
nick@stagr.com says: they look pretty close. hopefully people will enjoy both sites.
miles@innertee.com says: just look at threadless
Adam@spreadshirt says: yeah I think the days of needing to be defensive and viewing everyone as competition have passed now. I enjoy takling to miles and now you about strategy and ideas. its a huge market that no-one can dominate.
miles@innertee.com says: so what printing tech are you guys using?
miles@innertee.com says: spreadshirt is cadcut right?
nick@stagr.com says: we’re not smart enough to figure out cadcut.
miles@innertee.com says: lol
Adam@spreadshirt says: I don’t know, I’ve not seen their production facilities or talked to anyone about it (and thats the truth)
adam@spreadshirt says: Is stagr well funded?
nick@stagr.com says: That’s what i like about the tshirt space the more i read about it. creativity and enthusiasm seems to win and we want to follow the same formula. we laugh when we hear people say that stagr has deep pockets, but on a serious note, also find the perception troubling because don’t want to be positioned as the big money mean competitor, especially without the big money or mean part!
nick@stagr.com says: the tshirt community seems quite tight knit and we hope we can become a part of that
adam@spreadshirt: i’m sure you can, your going about it all the right way, chatting to lowly blogs like mine. you seem to have tried to keep stagr low profile, is that a fair comment?
nick@stagr.com says: yeah, for one, we don’t have a web site so hard not to keep low profile. second, we haven’t accomplished anything yet, don’t want to pump ourselves up and then have everyone say we suck
nick@stagr.com says: how many at innertee? it sounded from the blog like more than us?
miles: 5 total
nick@stagr.com says: we plan to launch our beta on aug 17. crap, we missed it! hopefully should have beta up early next week. full site later when we’ve gotten enough feedback and feel good about quality of site
miles: we had beta launch today actually
adam@spreadshirt: so why did you step aside from zappo’s then nick?
nick@stagr.com says: i’d been discussing stepping aside since middle of 2005. zappos is in great hands and i had the itch to get back to starting something fun and exciting. at zappos i would read about 3 person startups and be jealous. the fun part is creating something that wasn’t there the day before.
adam@spreadshirt: that sounds so true, its the aspiring to the dream rather than the having
nick@stagr.com: yeah, it’s definitely the fun part.
adam@spreadshirt: did you always want to be an entrepreneur?
nick@stagr.com: i worked for the san diego padres for a year after getting out of college because i always wanted to work in sports (i had a business selling sports art during college). it was fun, but i realized the only way to advance for me was to put in a million years and hope. when i joined autoweb i couldn’t believe how young and excited everyone was, they all seemed to be so excited about their future.
nick@stagr.com: the founder was my age and so i figured why am i working here instead of doing what he’s doing. i was very lucky to stumble upon shoes, and also to get turned down by every vc.
nick@stagr.com: I’ve got to head off now.
Adam@spreadshirt: Thanks for the time to talk to me guys, it’ll make an interesting feature. I’ll be following innertee and stagr closely
