
T-Shirt Printing API - mooreds
https://www.shirts.io/
======
ahsanhilal
I really like the concept but I don't understand why anyone in tech would want
to be in the bulk tshirt manufacturing business. I used to be in the tshirt
business: albeit we used to make high end stuff which was sold to premium
retailers. As I see it, the inefficiencies in the business do not come from
the ordering part. There are plenty of places where you can order tshirts. The
really hard problem to solve is the manufacturing one.

Second, I don't get how you would actually make real money through this. Most
of this business is low margin, labor intensive. In any low low margin
business you make money through scale. However, pretty much all of the high
quantity stuff is done overseas and then shipped to the US, because even then
it is cheaper. We used to airship stuff all the time (a lot more expensive
than boat) and it would still ending up costing us a lot less than doing it in
the US

I don't know why people keep making solutions for tshirt manufacturing. It is
effectively a price-conscious B2B model.

~~~
rlei
Why would we get into this business? Because of shirts like this:
[http://i.imgur.com/QNQqXnD.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/QNQqXnD.jpg)

In all seriousness, we really dislike the inefficiencies of this industry
ourselves. We used to contract out our print work, but we opened up 3
facilities (California, Pennsylvania, and Indiana) to improve on the quality
and efficiency issues in the industry.

This is an industry where everyone uses the same equipment, same consumables,
and same method of decoration, and still charge high prices because everyone
else does. We differentiate ourselves by having the technology and processes
(from the manufacturing side to the ordering side) and scale to move orders in
and out more efficiently than anyone else.

~~~
ahsanhilal
Yea see then it makes sense to me, sort of. If you have your own manufacturing
ability then for sure go for it.

However, I will still say that most of the money to be made is in actually
selling your own designs.

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triptych
Imagine if you could tie this api into a game, you level up your character and
get a t-shirt with all the new equips/stats to show off to your friends...

~~~
DerekL
Long ago, for many games, Activision would award an embroidered patch to any
player who beat a certain score. Usually the player would photograph the
screen and mail it to Activision.

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fletchowns
Bash Script + cronjob + Google Image Search + shirts.io = random new shirt
every week?

~~~
rlei
Raymond from Shirts.io here.

Shirts of the week? Done: [http://imgur.com/PWUsJ5s](http://imgur.com/PWUsJ5s)

For anyone looking to start a new t-shirt company using Shirts.io, we can give
$100 in account credit for you to get started. Just email me: raymond at
shirts dot io.

~~~
rschmitty
Hey Ramond, cool site!

tiny bug in FF/Win7 on Get Started:
[http://i.imgur.com/cwSd78R.png](http://i.imgur.com/cwSd78R.png)

also if i have an old t-shirt that I want to restore it, is that legal? they
no longer make it and it is _precious_ to me since highschool (10 years old!)

I kinda like the faded ink (/hipster), but the shirt it self is falling apart!

------
infinitone
Interesting- we are starting to see more and more APIs that interface with
real physical objects. Is this the new advent of APIs?

Am i going to be able to purchase a pizza delivery whilst printing a shirt and
having my car unlock for the car wash guy all from my phone as I'm heading
home.

What other real life APIs are there available atm?

~~~
jumanji89
An API for general printing (e.g. business cards, letterheads, brochures,
posters, etc.) is desperately needed. I can't seem to find any commercial
printer that offers an API.

~~~
arkem
For business cards, stickers, greeting cards, labels, etc Moo has an API
[http://us.moo.com/api/](http://us.moo.com/api/)

I haven't used the API but I've bought business cards from Moo and they were
great.

~~~
jumanji89
Thank you so much. The API does seem quite complex (it looks like you need to
go through dozens of steps to print). I wish they could take Stripe's approach
and simplify it somewhat. This seems like a great opportunity for someone to
disrupt this market.

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diggan
Cool thing, have an idea that I would like to try with this. However, the
following part turns me off quite much: >"Shipments going internationally are
subject to a charge of $8.50 per garment." Which means that if one order for
$3.32 becomes $11.82? That's pretty much, even for international shipping...

Anything like this within Europe?

~~~
jvdmeij
Spreadshirt has an API. But they are more focussed on small orders instead of
bulk.

~~~
diggan
As I understand shirts.io, they're also focused on small orders. Otherwise an
API would be overkill, no?

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ScotterC
But are the shirts any good? No mention of material or examples of how one
might look.

~~~
rlei
Raymond from Shirts.io here.

For anyone interested in seeing our print quality, we can give out $100 in
free account credits for you to print some samples. Just send me an email:
raymond at shirts dot io.

Here's a shirt we just printed:
[http://i.imgur.com/PHa4hBL.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/PHa4hBL.jpg) Here's me
wearing a shirts.io shirt:
[http://i.imgur.com/Jcsq2uf.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Jcsq2uf.jpg)

~~~
dangero
Hey Raymond,

I have a fairly specific question. My interest in T-shirts has become refined
in recent years. I only like T-shirts that are super soft. Have you guys
tested a niche of super soft T's at all? I might be interested in using the
API if I could brand a custom T-shirt site focused first of all on the
softness of the T, and if you could guarantee the softness.

~~~
rlei
You'd be looking for a ringspun cotton or a triblend t-shirt from a high-end
brand like American Apparel or Canvas. It all depends on how much you want to
pay.

American Apparel and Canvas are on the high end of the market. They each offer
both ringspun and triblend styles. You're looking at $3 to $4 per shirt over
the cost of a basic cotton tee.

If you want a "value" soft tee, you should consider the Gildan Softstyle or
Hanes Nano T. You can get these for only $1 to $2 over the cost of a basic
tee, and you'll still feel a noticeable difference.

~~~
stevewillows
The AA tri-blends are my go-to shirt. A service like this would be well worth
it if they offered either this or the Summer shirt over the normal 2001 /
2102.

~~~
frankdenbow
Canvas triblend is another option, usually cheaper than the AA tri-blend and
has a more "solid" feel, while still being soft.

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obeone
Very buttony and well designed. Good MVP. I notice you can order 10 shirts and
send them to 10,000 locations, though.

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jumanji89
Love this. Any plans for other print items too like business cards,
letterheads, etc?

An API that serves not just T-shirt printing, but other printing as well will
win a lot of business IMHO.

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richkuo
Shirts.io logo uses the same image as the Stripe 'cloud' but inverted on the
y-axis

They also have suspiciously similar UI/UX with similar color schemes. The
random green sign up button mouse over is an obvious attempt at 'throwing you
off' from the idea that the design was copied.

~~~
jeffgreco
There is only one Cloud Icon in the Entire Universe:
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEn...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEntireUniverse.aspx)

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noir_lord
There is an issue on your pricing page.

Your font-awesome icons are not loading correctly for me on Mint/FF21

[http://i.imgur.com/NmO1yX4.png](http://i.imgur.com/NmO1yX4.png)

However it works fine on Chromium.

Love the idea but I'm in the UK so that rules it out for me (shipping kills
it).

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e-dard
Just an FYI regarding your documentation, of example GET requests (e.g.,
[https://www.shirts.io/docs/quote_reference/](https://www.shirts.io/docs/quote_reference/))

You can describe GET requests as follows with cURL, which I find a bit smarter
:-)

    
    
      curl -G https://www.shirts.io/api/v1/quote/ \
      -d "api_key=APIKEY" \
      -d "garment[0][product_id]=3" \
      -d "garment[0][color]=White" \
      -d "garment[0][sizes][med]=100" \
      -d "garment[0][sizes][lrg]=50"
    

In cases where you need to url-encode the parameter, you can switch out -d for
--data-urlencode

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tekromancr
I was about to yawn, until I saw the priceing. That's pretty good.

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agentworm
There's a company in my hometown of Albuquerque that does something similar
called Inksoft [http://www.inksoft.com/](http://www.inksoft.com/) except, I
believe Inksoft strictly offers software to companies that sell clothing like
shirts. I don't fully understand the garment industry, but from talking with
the owners, they make a pretty penny.

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songgao
Is everything completely automated or the API is just for placing the order?

Would be cool if the API server is connected to the printing machine
controller, packaging machine controller, and some FedEx physical logistics
system. When an order is placed, everything is automated, from printing to
packaging to shipping. That would save a lot, and more importantly, it's gonna
be so cool :)

~~~
jchung
\+ Quadcopter delivery for the last mile.

------
mildavw
I have a weekend project that is in "private beta" (still a few weekends from
launch) that combines computer generated art and one-off T-shirts. I've been
working with [http://printaura.com/](http://printaura.com/).

I like the idea of coding up adapters so we can switch fulfillment providers
if we needed to.

------
BHSPitMonkey
Your API console isn't working for me (the Execute buttons do nothing) in
Chrome. My JS console shows:

    
    
        Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token o   jquery.min.js:3
    

after each click. Also, the quote generator on /pricing only generates a price
if Front Colors is >0 (it doesn't work for a back-only print).

------
NIL8
I think you have a real possibility to make large amounts of money from water
cooler jokes alone. This could make big money with office inner circles. Also,
the random funny, odd, and cool imgur pic-of-the-week shirt could be very
lucrative. Just think of all those college and high school kids wearing the
Reddit best-of each week.

Good work!

------
jblock
Design note: that slider is awkward. There's no indication that it's moving
until it hits a discrete point.

------
codereflection
I wish this service was around 5 years ago when I was going through the hell
of designing a Silverlight interface for tshirt logo / text placement. The
customer was such an a __I would have pull my app, launched it myself with
this service as the fulfillment end. Nice work guys, best of luck with it.

------
moeffju
Spreadshirt has had an API for a while now, spawning things like
[http://zufallsshirt.de/](http://zufallsshirt.de/) (German, random shirt per
visit, you either buy it or consign it to oblivion.)

------
Metapony
I'm wondering if you could add a page describing all of the 'garment' options!
I like what I see otherwise, but am not familiar with what each of them are,
and there's no where on the website I can find that info.

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locusm
When will international shipping be supported? Australia in particular.

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ada1981
Your pricing calculator doesn't work on mobile well. Was not able to select 1
tshirt on iPhone. Maybe add a manual text input for size as well? Looking
forward to using this though.

------
imtu80
May be its time for me to finish my weekend project.
[http://tshirts.imomin.com/](http://tshirts.imomin.com/)

~~~
jchung
What exactly is the goal of this project?

~~~
imtu80
I wanted to play with Fabric.js and may be sell gravatar tees.

------
batbomb
Using square brackets is silly because you won't be able to ever put API
parameters in the URL.

By using semicolons (a la matrix parameters) or commas you could eliminate
that.

------
jimauthors
Can one product be part of multiple categories? Will (product_id, category_id)
tuple ever change? Can I cache the ids and use it after sometime?

------
adcab
this looks great, i just have one question. How are you able to make a profit
by selling 100,000 1 color shirts, plus shipping and handling, and blank for
2.60?

shipping along wold be 2.60, not to mention the cost of the shirt which is at
least 3.00... i would love to use you guys, just not sure you have thought out
your pricing

~~~
rlei
1\. We print hundreds of thousands of shirts every month, so our cost of goods
is much lower.

2\. The base price includes free shipping to a single address. If you want to
split the shipment to multiple addresses, each additional address costs $3. So
if you want to ship each shirt to a different address, just add $3 to the per-
shirt price.

~~~
adcab
that makes sense, i did forget to add the pricing for different addresses...
thanks for the reply

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kevinpet
The call to action lands me on a sign up form. Apparently I can get only very
limited information before I sign up.

~~~
flyingyeti
If you scroll down a few more pixels, you'll see links to the API
documentation
([https://www.shirts.io/docs/overview](https://www.shirts.io/docs/overview))
and their capabilities
([https://www.shirts.io/capabilities/](https://www.shirts.io/capabilities/))

------
lingben
so is this like
[https://www.startupthreads.com/](https://www.startupthreads.com/) where you
can integrate with them to send t-shirts to clients or community members?

~~~
frankdenbow
We (StartupThreads) also have an api in private beta that companies have used
to ship swag. A little different than this but this looks cool.

~~~
granata
Agreed. This looks like a lot of fun. My company (a traditional swag
distributor) is working on an ecommerce site at SwagExpert.com. It's being
built using real-time data on almost a million products (including apparel)
that comes from an industry provider's API.

I like how this not only provides the product data but a mechanism for
manufacturing and fulfillment as well. Very clever.

Good to see you here, Frank. We met a few months ago at SXSW and I rock the
shirt you gave me regularly.

~~~
frankdenbow
Nice! I have rocked the "Keep Calm and Swag on" shirt as well. Will catch up
on email.

------
timsaunders
The Stripe and CardFlight of selling t-shirts.. I like it!

------
aidenn0
This looks like it's an API for ooshirts.com

~~~
jdanielnd
It is! It's said that on their footer :)

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gailees
Here come the teespring competitors.

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jjsz
You guys should talk to Teespring.

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notjustanymike
Stripe wants their web design back

~~~
pudquick
... really not sure where to go with this particular comment.

shirts.io would appear to be using Bootstrap, which will give a common popular
minimalist style to their site - of which Stripe is a good example (but I
don't think they use Bootstrap).

However, I'm not really seeing anything on their site that immediately screams
'We cribbed our design from Stripe'.

Do you have something you can point to?

~~~
georgespencer
I thought of Stripe too.

1\. Logo looks similar-ish 2\. API functionality in a similar place 3\.
Similarly proportioned "reasons to love us"

Not a bad thing -- Stripe's design is good.

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hk__2
Do you ship internationally?

~~~
gavingmiller
They do, but it's an extra 8.95

~~~
hk__2
Thanks!

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yuvalyonigalor
What is this?

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krfantasy
good idea!

