Tilteed, unlike a lot of design contest start-ups of 2009, got off to a strong start and never looked back. Although they had to drop their original 72-hour cycle for new designs in order to catch up with printing and their business, that never kept them from providing quality service, great shirts, and awesome prices.
Now, a couple months later, Tilteed has settled into a position where they feel comfortable returning to their original business model of one shirt per three days. I’m really excited about this, because Tilteed has one of the best track records of choosing excellent designs. The downside, of course, is that you’ll have a shorter time frame to grab a shirt for the $12 preorder price, but I’m sure most of my t-shirt aficionado brethren will have no problems keeping up.
As the green label on the above picture implies, there’s also a new series of Tilteed shirts: Tilteed Limited. Unlike contest winner designs, these designs are hand-picked by a team of curators comprised of some of the most well-known tee fans in the community: AdderXYU, JadenKale, and dunz0. Tilteed Limited works much like it sounds: each shirt is available for purchase solely within its 72-hour space, after which it will no longer be printed. This is a system most of us are already acquainted with, thanks to the likes of Woot and Teefury.
Sadly, not all of the changes are positive — Tilteed has decided that the flat $2 worldwide shipping rate was simply not economical, and has reverted to standard shipping charges. According to their blog, this was done so they could keep offering American Apparel shirts instead of switching to a lower-quality blank, as some of their competitors have done. As I’m pretty certain that most of us would prefer having American Apparel to a few dollars off shipping, I applaud the wisdom of their decision. For the record, their new shipping costs are extremely reasonable.
I’d also love to see Tilteed upgrade their site look — I feel that the current layout doesn’t do them justice and isn’t particularly easy to navigate. This awesome site deserves much better!
