If T-shirts, then why not bike jerseys? That’s what cyclist Sherry Keating thought upon reading an article about the Chicago-based T-shirt company Threadless, which runs design contests with cash prizes to determine what shirts it prints and sells. “I just thought, crowdsourcing—how awesome is that?” she says.
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The crowdsourcing model has been wildly successful for Threadless, which was started in Chicago in 2000 by a pair of college dropouts with about a grand in seed money. Design submissions now exceed 1,500 a week, of which about ten get produced; sales hit $18 million in 2006, with $6 million in profits (the company has since stopped releasing sales numbers, but says sales have continued to grow). Threadless even has a couple of retail outlets, in Wicker Park and Lakeview.
So far Keating and Hierzer have taken a more expensive route than Threadless, sinking about $25,000 in savings into the fledgling company. They put in about 20 hours a week on top of their day jobs, Hierzer as a Web designer for Sears, Keating as a business development manager for a software company.
Keating says some local bike stores have already expressed interest in advertising on the site, but they’re holding off to build “a really solid community” first. About 10 percent of their sales go to the Active Transportation Alliance and other mostly local pro-cycling organizations, but she admits that so far “it’s not a lot of money because we haven’t sold a whole lot.”
