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.
A Whole Lotta Nothing 
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.
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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 😉
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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
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Thanks for representin’ and buying my shirt Matt. Maybe they’ll reprint one of these days now. Glad you got the last one.
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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.
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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.
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