A Whole Lotta Nothing Matt Haughey’s Personal Blog

Threadless: brilliant as always

I’ve had a love/hate thing going on with Threadless for a while. While I love their shirts (extra points for cutting off the tags so I don’t have to), I’ve grown tired of the trend towards one-off visual jokes as shirt designs. I like designy, witty, and yes, amusing shirts, but it felt like for a good six months most new tees were frat boy jokes. My other beef with them is their cart/login system. Often I go through their new shirt email and click on 4-5 shirts I like the look of, and I’ll toss a couple in my cart. Whenever I login to pay, my cart’s empty and I have to do it all over again. At that point, the fun wears off and I just close my browser window.

Today, Threadless totally went and redeemed themselves. I got an email saying that a shirt left in my cart many visits ago was about to go away — there was one shirt left, and it was in my size. Not only that, but it was the Pee Wee shirt. It’s such a cool feature and a great shirt that I caved and bought it. I also picked up a half-dozen more I’ve been thinking about for the past month. So kudos, Threadless, you continue to amaze me.

Yes, they seem to keep an eye on things pretty closely around there. I once left a shirt in my cart because I couldn’t decided whether it was *really* worth that 15 dollar price tag. Several weeks later, I got an email saying that they noticed my unpurchased item and offered me 5 bucks off if I decided to buy it. Of course, I did so immediately, and was amazed by the happy vibes that kind of simple gesture gave off.

I agree that the selection at Threadless isn’t quite what it used to be, but their customer service is certainly top-notch.

Had the same shit with the Large.. =P They really suck if it comes to internet, but don’t blame them: blame the fourteen year-old geek programming that kind of sites ;)

It’s too bad they take so long to ship things.. I ordered a shirt on Dec 1 and have yet to receive it. You would think a place that charges $5.50 for shipping and handling would put it in the mail the same day, especially if its marked ‘in stock’.. sigh

Thanks for representin’ and buying my shirt Matt. Maybe they’ll reprint one of these days now. Glad you got the last one.

Matt, would you mind sending me the email Threadless sent you? I have a client that is selling t-shirts to the upscale celebrity crowd and they’re experiencing a high rate of shopping cart abandonment. I mentioned it would be a good idea to send emails to those people who abandoned their carts, but have no idea what this language should look like. I would love to see how Threadless handles it. Thanks.

raj, I think it’s just the xmas $10 sale that is slowing things down. Two months ago, I bought a shirt and had it in my mailbox three days later.

Sure cam, I’ll send it along. I’ve never seen anything like it before, but I really liked it. Also, you might want to consider more payment options/more streamlined forms on the store if people are abandoning in force. I know I abandon carts all the time when people use stuff like OSCommerce, since it means I not only have to give out my address, visa number, etc, but I also have to create an account on someone’s system, which always adds another couple painful screens.

Especially if it’s an impulse buy, I just bail out on it.