Temptation from our sponsors...
Temptation from our sponsors...
To kick start UK week I have an interview with Paul from Teetonic, the excellent scottish based design contest site. I’m always impressed with the high quality of the designs that win their competition, some examples of which I’ve handily littered throughout the interview. I also like that a royalty is paid per sale on top of a cash prize for winning designs. I’d like to thank Paul for an excellent interview with some interesting insights about the role of community in teetonic.
How many designs have been submitted now in total?
Almost 2,000 but not all of them make it onto the site. Some of the designs we get are blatant rip-offs – that’s not what Teetonic is about, we try to prevent this from happening but often the Teetonic community polices itself. There was one instance where a designer appeared to just copy and paste a design from Threadless – it slipped past us but they got flamed big time in the comments section. We debated whether to remove the design or not, in the end we left it up there because the ‘designer’ who submitted would hopefully learn more from the abuse they got than simply having the design rejected. We also try to maintain a level of quality to the designs – this causes most of the debate in the Teetonic Team. We don’t agree with censorship or anything but our members would get bored just flicking through crap designs all the time. Good quality designs makes others think more about their own submissions.
What is your favourite design to date?
That is a hard one. I really like Fork N T-Shirt (https://www.teetonic.com/shop/fork/) because it makes great use of the
tee itself.
Fork ‘n’ Tee by peteman
I’m also a big fan of Si Clark’s work and was chuffed when we made Robot Invasion:
Robot Invasion by Si
There are a few others that are bubbling under that are looking good too.
Apart from teetonic what is your favourite online t-shirt company and why?
You have to admire Threadless because they started it all. I also think the quality of designs over at La Fraise is usually amongst the best on the web.
I read in your ideasfactory article that “There’s been various instances where designers take comments onboard and apply them to their next design… It’s just an endless thread so it is like a forum in that sense. It just allows people to chat, get feedback and make the odd cheeky comment.” How important do you think it is to Teetonics success that a virtual community forms around the brand? How do you think you’ve helped this and would it be a focus for the future?
I think the community is the life-blood of Teetonic and many internet ventures for that matter. At Teetonic the common goal is good design. I find it fascinating that we have created a site where a guy from Argentina can be chatting to a guy from Switzerland about a design of giraffe watching TV – it’s all a bit bizarre but sums up the Net I guess. Our virtual community is on the up and we have more features planned to develop this and encourage even more interaction.I heard that teetonic was part funded by a new business grant, can you tell us more about that?
We had already set up the business when we heard about an innovation award. We pitched to a panel – a bit like dragon’s den – and the loved the idea. Many has seen ‘t-shirt companies’ come and go but the added dimension of throwing the final say back the public really struck a chord. They loved the idea that the site does it’s own market research, i.e. we only make tees the the public tell us they love. High Street retailers would love to have that confidence when taking new products /
ranges to market.
Was it difficult to pitch a t-shirt design contest as a potentially viable business?
Not difficult at all. We’re always enthusiastic about our business and people love the business model behind it. I think sites that actually harness the power and scope of the Internet always appeal. Its down to us to prove how viable we can make it.
Has the response to the business been overwhelmingly positive from?
a) the press
We’ve not really had a lot of offline press as we’ve tended to aim for a pure online market. Some of the guys we speak to are just design or t-shirt enthusiasts and love to write about us and what we’re up to
next.
b) consumers
We’ve had a fantastic response from our consumers. It has genuinely surprised us the amount of people who have emailed us and thanked us for our great service or urging us to keep up the good work. We made a conscious decision from the outset to use good quality t-shirts, ones that were going to last more than a summer and I think longer term we’ll benefit from that. It places us a wee bit more expensive than our closest competitors but we have a 100% satisfied customer base and that is priceless. We get many customers coming back time and time again which is a great position to be in.
c) competitors
We’ve not had any interaction with anyone we would class as competitors so I guess you’d have to ask them. There’s quite a few good ones out there who we respect massively. Our view is that we’re all offering a diverse range of designs and ideas to the customer and giving them a greater choice – which is a good thing!
Do you think the design contest business model is becoming saturated now?
I don’t think it’s reached saturation point just yet. What does annoy me is when I see sites that completely rip-off other sites look and feel as well as the idea. The cream will rise to the top though like in any business / market.
Where do you see the format going in the future?
We have our own ideas on that ; )
How much of a hinderance is the strong pound on international sales of teetonic designs?
I’m not sure to be honest, we’ve been trading for under a year so don’t have much to compare with. On the flip side we are about to increase our standard prize value to around £270, which at present equates to $500 or Eur400 so I guess that makes it quite an attractive competition to US or European designers.
What % of your sales are in the UK?
Less than 40%. Again this has surprised us (because of the strong pound) but we ship all over the world. The US is reasonably big market for us despite the strong pound and delivery – we do not charge tax for US purchasers so there is a saving to be made on the label price of £20.
What do you think Teetonic does that gives it the edge over its rivals?
Our intention was to provide a strong alternative for the UK market. Some other sites we felt were a bit too guns and blood so we liked the idea of attracting European designers with different ideas and viewpoints. As it happens designs come from everywhere and the range of ideas is incredible. We feel our site is clean and easy to use, not overly complicated. And we have a strong focus on customer service – we’re proud of each and every tee that leaves our shelves and we always put the customer first. I should also mention that the winning designers have potentially unlimited earnings because we pay a royalty of 50 pence for every tee that we sell – thats on top of their prize money.
Can you talk about some of the features you will looking to add to the site in the future?
We’re looking to expand on the community aspects and will be adding a blog in the near future – isn’t everyone! We’re also about to roll-out our very own affiliate scheme, Freetonic, where our members can earn points that go towards free t-shirts – you heard it here first. We’re always working on attracting sponsors to the site and offering great prizes for our competitions. The next competition we have coming up has a video iPod up for grabs. Thats about all I can disclose at the moment but needless to say there’s a lot going on!
Making Love by
Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it!
No problem, and remember Teetonic loves you!
