
Teespring: How To Build A T-Shirt Company, The Hacker Way - yonasb
http://blog.leanstack.io/teespring-how-to-build-a-t-shirt-company-the-hacker-way/
======
j2d3
"Because we’re in this transition period between PHP and Ruby, we couldn’t use
PostgreSQL on Heroku because PHP doesn’t speak PostgreSQL."

sigh

~~~
krapp
Wait, what am I missing here? [http://php.net/pgsql](http://php.net/pgsql)

~~~
derefr
I'm guessing that it might mean that Heroku's PHP runtime (or the common PHP
buildpack, or however it works) doesn't come with a Postgres driver.

~~~
yonasb
Yonas from Leanstack here. I also edited for grammar after the initial
transcription and it looks like his full statement was inaudible. So *Eric was
simply saying that Heroku Postgres does not support PHP
([https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-
postgresql](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgresql)). I'll be
making the corrections soon.

~~~
bmelton
I don't usually carp about grammatical errors, but if you have any editorial
sway, that article has one in the second word of the first sentence.

> Teespring let’s anyone easily create and sell t-shirts.

has a grocer's apostrophe on "let's". It should be "lets", sans apostrophe.

~~~
yonasb
Got it, thanks. We'll have a better editorial process moving forward, sorry
for the errors guys.

------
theboss
A friend and I built a t-shirt site too. It's so incredibly basic (ours is
ugly) but was fun to do to actually write some software for the web (we arent
really web guys).

The code is actually really cool because we never have to touch a shirt.
Shirts.io handles all the t-shirt fulfillment, stripe handles payments, and we
design shirts and add them to the site. If you don't have a t-shirt company,
you should, just because it's cool to write a program that turns your own
money into tshirts.

The site I made was www.binarytees.in

~~~
Alex_MJ
I totally agree. I've been playing around with Shopify and Merchify (similar
"never touch a shirt" workflow) in the same way. For someone who mainly plays
in engineering, testing ads on facebook and adwords and playing marketer for a
while (without committing any meaningful amount of capital or attaching my
name to anything) has been really enlightening and fun.

www.roguethreadsdesigns.com

For anyone who wants to set up a first business so you get a basic sense of
selling things [online], highly recommended.

~~~
pcharles
How do you market the site?

------
j2d3
I thought this was going to be a joke post along the lines of "disrupt
threadmaking" -> "disrupt sewing machines" -> "disrupt sweatshop labor issues"
-> "disrupt textile design and manufacturing process cycle" -> "disrupt
fashion industry" -> "disrupt ecommerce" -> "disrupt logistics"

------
t0
Why don't you allow single orders? I always thought you required 10+ shirts
because you had to create some sort of mold and load it into the printers, but
it seems that isn't the case.

With everything automated, you could easily allow anyone to create any number
of shirts.

~~~
afriend4lyfe
i think your initial thought is spot on unless they've figured out someway to
automate the molds and store them for retrieval at a later time.

apparently they are on the verge of releasing an API and widget so that t
shirt designers can embed directly onto their own site.
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/11/teespring-wants-to-be-
the-p...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/11/teespring-wants-to-be-the-place-
where-you-can-crowdfund-anything-is-starting-with-t-shirts/)

If they are able to allow single orders along with the widget I don't see
whats stopping them from taking over the entire market as they are taking all
of the hard work out of running a t shirt company.

good luck fellas

------
TechNewb
Great write up and insights into Teespring's history, current stack and
workflow, really fun read! Awesome to learn from others tribulations,
especially enjoyed reading about their solution to getting correct postal
addresses, and the tech they used to do so.

------
b3b0p
Why would you want to redo in Ruby and Rails if the current solution is
working fine in php? Are there significant benefits? You could significantly
improve upon and/or add to the current system/application instead of
rewriting, no?

~~~
sentientcabbage
From the article, it seems that the major benefit of the change would be the
freedom to use PostgreSQL on Heroku.

------
zimbatm
The url to Teespring in the header is broken:

"Editor’s note: Evan Stites-Clayton is Co-Founder at Teespring. Eric Koslow is
Lead Developer at Teespring."

=> h[http://www.teespring.com/](http://www.teespring.com/)

------
spobin
I've been building a t-shirt website at
[http://electricfairground.com](http://electricfairground.com) so this article
was a really interesting read.

How long did it take you guys to get traction?

~~~
sycren
Why do you have images of the design and (presumably you) wearing the t-shirt
design? It looks duplicative and jarring.

~~~
spobin
It's not me, they are stock images. You're right, it does look jarring. I'm
currently working on making a number of new products available. Eventually
there will be very little duplication on the front page.

------
Killswitch
Nice article, I had went through a few phone calls with Evan early this year
about coming on board as a developer. I really like what these guys are doing.

Good job Evan and Walker.

------
pge
CustomInk.com is worth looking at as a comparison - similar approach started
10+ years ago, now apparently selling several hundred million dollars of
T-shirts.

------
srik
> We make more, on average, than $1 per visit.

that is VERY impressive.

------
sycren
What kind of t-shirts are you printing on? American Apparel?

------
moocowduckquack
I was hoping they might be getting robots to make t-shirts.

~~~
wiwillia
Don't tempt us

~~~
moocowduckquack
If you do, I promise I will buy one.

I'll buy a dozen if you manage to make the fabric as well.

And I will send thousands of adorable kittens, on the hour, every hour, if you
manage to grow/produce your own fibre or at least make sure it is traceably
sourced to groups that are not total bastards.

If you are going to hack t-shirts, you might as well do the entire chain. :)

edit - note: you are not allowed to source the fibre from the kittens just to
get the kittens, that's cheating.

~~~
wiwillia
Kitten cotton (sustainably sourced of course) sounds like a billion dollar
idea if I've ever heard one

~~~
moocowduckquack
I can see it now, Kitton. The future of fabric.

Each Kitton t-shirt is guaranteed to contain as a minimum, the fluff of 30 of
the fluffiest kittens and we at Kitton are dedicated to acting sustainably,
with full regard for the environment, all while keeping a close eye on the
bottom line, at our unstaffed combined kitty processing plant and owl
sanctuary.

