11 responses so far ↓

• 1 Simon // Jan 15, 2009 at 6:37 pm

  Well… 2006 was the year of the social network explosion. Could that be the answer?

• 2 Eve Dmochowska // Jan 16, 2009 at 9:42 am

  Thanks Eric…this is all really quite though provoking.

  I am surprised that the growth is not more exponential. I would imagine that the more users you have, the more *new* users you will get, until you reach some sort of saturation point.

  It all also makes Vinny Linghams’s Synthasite’s membership of about a million users all that more remarkable.

  (Btw, small typo in the second headline. Springleap shld be “Threadless”. I know where your mind is! )

• 3 Eric // Jan 16, 2009 at 11:39 am

  Eve - I’m really into the tipping point concept. Build slowly until a certain point, and it builds virally. So am surprised that not more people have joined the Threadless website over the last 2 years. But still an incredible community size.

  And changed the type

• 4 nick // Jan 16, 2009 at 12:06 pm

  thanks for sharing. threadless is a cool community but its getting boring there. it’s always the same talk, manner, style…

• 5 Eric // Jan 16, 2009 at 1:19 pm

  it’s always a challenge i guess Nick - when you reach a certain size, how do you keep the site fresh. when its small, the community gets to know one another - but as soon as it becomes larger, the individuality is very hard to keep

• 6 Andre // Jan 19, 2009 at 2:50 am

  Nice work Eric. Of course, the interesting bit of data for Threadless must be the translation from site visits to t-shirt sales.

  According to this article (http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080601/the-customer-is-the-company.html), here are some indicative numbers:
  “By 2002, the hobby had surpassed $100,000 worth of T-shirts and attracted more than 10,000 community members”
  “Tge user base grew tenfold, from 70,000 members at the end of 2004 to more than 700,000 today. Sales in 2006 hit $18 million — with profits of roughly $6 million. In 2007, growth continued at more than 200 percent, with similar margins. Though Nickell refuses to disclose the exact revenue number — perhaps because he now counts Insight Venture Partners, a New York venture capital firm, as a minority shareholder — it seems fair to assume that Threadless sold more than $30 million in T-shirts last year.”

  The two data points of note in there (70k users and $100k in annual revenue in 2002, vs 700k users and $30m in annual revenue by mid-2008) would seem to indicate that a 10-fold increase in users was matched with a 300-fold boost in revenue!!

• 7 Eric // Jan 19, 2009 at 9:45 am

  Thanks for the additional info Andre. It would be great to get more up to date stats on threadless revenue though - any ideas?

• 8 drunklemur // Jan 22, 2009 at 7:11 pm

  Good stuff, I’m a personal fan of the site although I’ve only bought one shirt off it but I’m always looking for good designs. So you are right to point out that it is a niche community hence IMO the retention of the user base will be stronger.

• 9 MissProject RAK // Apr 6, 2009 at 12:44 am

  Keep up the good work and great analysis…

  Thanks!

• 10 Arielle Patrice Scott // Jan 11, 2010 at 6:23 am

  Hey Eric, thanks for this! I would love to use this data for a Threadless case study I’m working on.

  Quick question - how did you go about getting your data?

• 11 Business models for DIY Craft // May 10, 2011 at 9:18 am

  [...] this is why it generates more than $ 17,000,000 in annual sales with a 35% profit margin with a growing community. Moreover, Threadless has a subscription revenue stream via the 12 club (a limited edition t-shirt [...]

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