Threadless today announced a few changes/improvements to their offering.
- They are now printing new tees exclusively on Threadless brand tees. If you’re not a Threadless follower/fan, you might say “so what?”. Well until now, Threadless has printed its tees on Fruit of the Loom and American Apparel shirts. I can testify to the fact that the quality of these is variable and the sizes vary considerably. The new Threadless tees are, apparently (I haven’t got one yet), much better quality and of course much more consistent. So that’s good news #1.
- Good news #2 is that they have added sizes. You can now get XS girls, XS guys, 3XL guys and 2XL girls! So really there is very little chance you won’t find a tee to fit you here. Be warned that if you’ve bought before, the sizes might vary from the old shirts. One example given states that a girly medium for example is now about a girly large.
- Thirdly is that the new tee brand means that interesting new colours will be coming along. I for one was getting somewhat tired of every other tee being on a grey tee.
- And lastly, something that might or might not be viewed as an improvement (which is why I referred to ‘changes’ earlier). Variable pricing. That means that rather than every guy’s tee being $15, girl’s tees being $17 (I never understood the price difference really) and Selects $25, each tee will be priced according to its printing and decoration techniques (ie what inks and materials are used). That means that a tee might be anything from $15 to $26 (maybe more, but that’s the priciest and cheapest on offer right now).
So what does this mean in real terms? Well in a way, Threadless has grown up. Design by Humans has been pulling away in the quality of their prints and tees and Threadless needed to act. With the recent opening of it’s retail store in Chicago and the gradual introduction of its Threadless bran tees (until now limited to Select), Threadless has been evolving. It can now compete not only in terms if range and design quality (it still attracts the best tee designers, in my opinion), but in quality and value for money too. Which I believe it still is, despite this ‘cloaked’ price increase (granted it didn’t fool many, but it still wasn’t billed as an increase).
So I was planning a comprehensive review of Threadless, but now I must put that on hold until I’ve had a few Threadless brand tees with the new inks and materials. I’m gladI didn’t start it yet!
In the meantime, here’s a very cool tee that was released today (though slightly ‘geeky’).
