I wish I could draw. Or had any artistic talent. Because I have some great ideas for tees and there are so many opportunities out there to earn some decent cash! Here are some of the main ways to get your designs printed and earning:
1) Threadless. The site that will nowadays get your tee worn across the world (I can’t beleive how many Thredless tees I spot around London).
Prize: $2,000-$13,000
2) Design By Humans. Another huge site and growing quickly. Different style to Threadless, much more arty and tend to do unusual and full-tee designs.
Prize: $2,000-$13,000
3) laFraise. The ‘new’ kid on the block but starting to gain traction against the above big two. Prize is in Euros, which for you Americans is good news!
Prize: €1,000 ($1,600)
4) Uneetee. Good prize on offer and I would suggest generally a lower quality than the sites above (so in theory easier to win?).
Prize: $1,500
5) Teetonic. Works slightly differently in that you get a one-off prize of £100 ($200) and then £1 per tee sold. So in the long run could be more beneficial, but depends hugely on the success of the site.
Prize: £100 ($200) plus £1 per tee sold
6) Wooshka. Cool website and a few cool tees.
Prize: $500
7) Here are some of the rest.
- Allmightys. €2 per shirt sold
- Gorilla Tank. £420 prize
- Styletax. €1 per shirt sold (though not currently accepting submissions)
- Without Pockets. $1,500 prize
- Split The Atom. £250 prize
- Tshrt. £50 prize
- There are quite a few more.
But there are other options - competitions organised by big brands. For example, the uniqlo yearly competition can net the winner $30k! Or there’s currently a Virgin-Edun competition going on here which would get you great exposure.
So which to submit to? Well I would say that if you are top notch and can make your name at Threadless, you can generate not only decent prize money but fantastic publicity that you could then take to sell your own tees. Smaller sites like Without Pockets provide a great opportunity for the prize money given the (currently) lower number of submissions. But if you really want to get your name out there, I would keep an eye out for the competitions like uniqlo’s.
Of course, these are the ramblings of someone who can’t draw for shit, so it might all be crap!
Here’s a good resource that lists some upcoming competitions.