There comes a day in every century that something cosmic happens. I am not talking about Mars being as big as the Moon but I am talking about the Threadless Grand Opening Celebration!!! On Friday, September 14th, 2007 we will be opening the doors of our first-ever Threadless retail shopping center!! Did I also mention that we are putting on a free concert at the Metro 3730 N. Clark? Yeah that's right...we will be having an all ages event from 6:oopm to 10:00pm. During that time we are having Hey Mercedes, Anathallo, and Freer. After 10pm the show will be 18 and over, starring Office, White Hot Knife, and The Assembly. You are probably asking yourself what's the catch...there is no catch! Well maybe a small one - you have to stop by the new Threadless Store at 3011 N. Broadway in Lakeview during business hours starting Monday, September 10th in order to scoop up a ticket for the Threadless Grand Opening Celebration. Check out Hey Mercedes, Anathallo, and Freer on today's podcast!!!!

We have completed our move! There are still a lot of unpacked boxes strewn across the floors and there is still a MASSIVE amount of space to fill, but we're here. Phew! We've traded in our 5225 Ravenswood 7,000 square foot digs for a 4043 Ravenswood 25,000 square foot behemoth of a dwelling. It's hard to even consider this an office since you could probably fit 5 or more gymnasiums in here. Imagine if you will, checking your email in the middle of a colloseum. It's sorta like that. Minus the lions, of course.

Craig is planning on shooting some video of the new place, so i'll make sure he posts it here or on his video site.

If I had to choose one aspect of the new office that I'm looking forward to the most... it would have to be the brand new ping pong table. And coming in a close second... Charlie's new Podcast booth. Although it's hard to call it a booth since... it's an Air Stream trailer. We're even considering surrounding it with a white picket fence. Imagine if you will, podcasting to the masses from a shiny new trailer complete with front yard, located smack dab in the middle of an expansive warehouse. It's sorta like that. Minus the lions, of course.

My only question is... when's the housewarming party? Any excuse to receive gifts that I can display proudly on my desk is a good excuse. Aside from a coffee mug, a pile of papers, and a signed Ham On The Street postcard, my desk is a barren wasteland.

More to come. Always, more to come.

UPDATE: WE HAVE FILLED THIS POSITION!

Hi there! I'm trying some "friend" routes before I have to start talking to strangers - something my mother taught me not to do.

So, the infamous, amazing, spectacular, and sometimes really offensive skinnyCorp (the umbrella to the best community-centric companies on the planet) is hiring a "master of organization". What does this mean? A job that would include too many roles to fit on a business card. Were looking for someone with plenty (this means years, people) of experience in many areas including: scheduling, tracking, traffic, and project management. Were looking for a Guinness Book record holder for multi-tasking. It doesnt matter if youre fluent on Mac or PC, as long as youre fluent. Points given for novice HTML skills. Extra points for appreciating fart jokes.

I must stress... this is not a design job, and this is not a programming job. If you're a designer or a programmer looking to get your foot in the door here with the expectation of being moved into one of those positions, please don't apply. If you happen to possess design or programming skills, they may come in handy - but not as a means for advancement. We're lookin' for a hardcore management mother-trucker who's in it for the long haul.

Think you've got what it takes? Shoot us an email with your resume and a few sentences on why you're the baddest-assed-most-balls-to-the-wall person for the job. Yeah, I just used ass and and balls in the same sentence. That's how I roll, broseph. Think you know someone who has what it takes? Please pass this on.

Thanks!

Football season is rapidly approaching and thus approaches with it, Fantasy Football. And thus approaches with that, a blog about the skinnyCorp fantasy football league that can only be interesting to those involved. And it’s probably not even that interesting to us. In spite of all this, and because it’s my maiden voyage on the Fantasy bandwagon, I’ve prepared this rundown of the teams just to get it off of my mind and on the screen. I have also tried to make it interesting enough for non-football fans alike. We’ll see how that goes.

There are 12 teams vying for the skinnyCorp title. Here there are, beginning with the best one by far.


Ball Snatchers USA, managed by Robert Nanna. Originally named Ricardo Montalban’s Fantasy Football Island. I wanted to imagine Ricardo himself on the sidelines of every game, swaggering about. He wouldn’t yell at refs about bad calls. He’d gently try and persuade them into changing their minds. He’d forego the team colors in favor of a sleek white suit. And of course, my offensive coordinator would be Mr. DePlane himself, Tattoo. However, the name contained too many characters… So I went with the suggestive Ball Snatchers moniker after hearing some of the other reprehensible team names. I added USA to up the ball snatching patriotism factor.

This year, people will be cheering the ball snatching talents of Oakland’s Lamont Jordan and Miami’s Ronnie Brown. People will chant B!S!USA! everytime Jake Delhomme throws a touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne. And when Ryan Longwell kicks the winning field goal, the crowd will be a massive flutter of miniature BSUSA pennants, given away free with admission.

My drafting skills must have sucked. Not only did I end up with a tight end who will be out for 6 weeks due to a knee injury, but I’m predicted to lose my first matchup. And my opponent didn’t even bother to show up for the draft. He let the computer do the work.


Mother Hugging Heathens, managed by Jake Hicks. My opponent the first week. He let the computer auto pick his entire team, and as mentioned before, he’s predicted to beat me the first week. Hide your mothers when Corey Dillon and Warrick Dunn take the field. And QB Derrick Carr will be leading the heathens toward victory each week. Except for the first of course.


Lethal Measurables, managed by Mike Halgas. Named after a very odd headline from a fantasy draft magazine, the team boasts big shot Peyton Manning and the only defense to give a hoot about, the Chicago Bears. Willie Parker and Deuce McAllister head the lethal charge upfield so get out your rulers.


The Lone Stranger, managed by Pete Woods. Coming atcha from LA, Pete comes cross country with a real powerhouse of strangers. Motorcycling maniac Ben Roethlisberger is at the helm and we all hope that he decides to wear a helmet. LaDanian Tomlinson & DeShaun Foster head his playfully-first-named running offense. He also nabbed Marvin Harrison as one of his receivers. Was he cheating?


Lita Ford Porno Van, managed by Dan Chafin. Kiss me once, kiss me twice, come on Tom Brady, kiss me deadly. Behind the wheel will be the running back two punch of Brian Westbrook and Reuben Droughns. The porn will also be handed out by Chicago’s Muhsin Muhammad, playfully nicknamed “stone hands” here in Chicago.


Sweet Thunder, managed by Katie Ford. First pick in the draft yields big shot Shaun Alexander. Lucky. At the QB, position, Donovan McNabb will be electrifying the field. Let’s hope WR Terry Holt’s bruised sternum doesn’t hamper the conductivity.


Most Explosive Ends, managed by Lance Curran. Also named after an odd headline from a fantasy magazine. Trent Green, Edgerrin James, and Tatum Bell better be exploding all over the field because there aren’t many available backups in his roster. Substance abuser Koren Robinson and injured RB Curtis Martin are both on the MEE bench and unable to play. Also he has to hope Mike Vanderjagt won’t do any more choking when the game is on the line.


The Winds of Shit, managed by Jef Kaplan. Named after Trailer Park Boys, you could perhaps substitute “hype” for “shit,” given that unproven Reggie Bush has a nice home there. Hopefully Matt Hasselbeck and Rudi Johnson won’t be too shitty, either!


Heavy Hitters, managed by Charles Festa. Nabbed Larry Johnson! But will the top projected draft pick deliver for him? We’ll see. Drew Bledsoe leads the hitters, and if Hines Ward can get his hamstring in perfect running order, we may have a contender here.


The Shitty Beatles, managed by Craig Shimala. Not so shitty there, Craig. Carson Palmer and his new tendon looked pretty swell the other night against the Packers. Tiki Barber and Willie McGahee lead the running game.


Sassy Jockstraps, managed by Brianne Liss. Donning the sassy protective wear for Brianne will be hot shot QB Eli Manning. But yikes, her RB, Steven Jackson might end up getting cut from the Vikings final roster… and all for not looking sassy enough in the strap.

And lastly…


Tom Selleck Chest Hair, managed by our commissioner, Ross Zietz. Lotsa moves being made pre-season in the depths of the chest. Ben Troupe and Ladell Betts have already left the chest area and I guess are heading toward the ample stash? Two big name QBs in Daunte Culpepper & Michael Vick will be battling it out for the starting position. We hope for a nice full thick offense for the commish.

…
And there you have it! I’ll post the winners & losers every week, but as for in-depth analysis and smack talk… well, we’ll leave that for the office.

The dawn of September is right in front of us and somewhere in the middle of that month we will be moving a few blocks south of where we are now. I must admit that i am a little sad of the move since the office we are in kicks arse. But Threadless keeps growing and we are running out of room with all of these t shirts. So here are some pics of the new office it is located at the corner of Irving Park and Ravenswood. I forgot to mention that the office we are in is about 7,000 sq. feet and the new office is about 25,000 sq. feet so we are definitely bulking up...But i am still sad..

The moment you've all been waiting for has arrived!!!!

Threadless II: Deathmatch!!
As I'm sure you all can see, we've made some big changes! The biggest in our opinion are three new lines! Here's a little sum up of what they are...

Threadless Kids
We thought it was about time to get some tees on the whippersnappers. The Kids tees are printed on American Apparel kids sizes 4,6,8,10 and 12. So if you're over the age of 18, toss away those condoms and start poppin' out some babies so they can be as well dressed as you!

Threadless TypeTees
We used to have another tee company called OMG Clothing. We decided to close the doors on that and integrate the slogan submissions and scoring right into Threadless! Now the highest scoring slogans are printed right on the tees in plain text. The twist, however, is the slogans are set in today's hottest new fonts courtesy of our pals over at T26.com.

Threadless Select
We've been doing Threadless for about 5 years now. When we first started, besides the on-going competition, we also invited well known designers to design a tee for our line. This kept the leaders of the field and the up-and-comers closely related. With Threadless Select, we're kickin' it old-school-stylee! We feel that the best way for the leaders of the design field to gain exposure to our community of designers is to bring you all together! Threadless Select tees are an anything-goes canvas for the designer... up to 8 colors, foils, metallics, inside printing... anything. They're then printed on super-fine American Apparel fashion-fit tees! We love em, and we know you will too!

Also, any designer who wins the Threadless competition 4 or more times will be invited to design a Threadless Select tee!!!

Beyond the 3 new lines, we've made some changes to the scoring process, allowing you to score right from the submission listing by clicking the "quick score" button. Also, very soon you'll be allowed to vote "I'd Buy It" at any time, even if the submissions scoring period has ended.

You'll also notice some amazing new changes to your profile pages! We've added the ability to import in data from flickr, last.fm, and any external blog you have via RSS.

There's so much more, and many new features we're working on which will be launching in the coming days. We're confident you'll find it all!! So our amazing Threadless community... go forth and play! Play like the wind! ENJOY!!!!!

As many of you know - Jake, Jacob and I spoke at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX this past March. We receieved a lot of positive feedback from what we had to say (thank you all!). The best of it, in my opinion is this blog by David Seah. David wrote:

Zero Advertising Brands — I’d only heard of skinnycorp and threadless a few hours before at the Cluetrain panel, and this one featured the dudes who started it up. I was really, really impressed by their philosophy and their actions. You know, in the game industry there’s a mentality that I’d describe as don’t suck, and until this morning I thought that was the adequate defining mantra that made it “better” than more “traditional” corporate environments. That I’m realizing is just stage 1: taking a stand. Stage 2 is what skinnycorp is doing: make stuff that rocks. Now, every game company will say that’s what they do, but where does the energy come from, and is it positive or negative? It’s a subtle shift in where you put your explicit emphasis. If you identify yourself by how you don’t suck, that’s actually pretty negative. If you identify yourself by rockin’, then that’s way cooler dude! What was awesome about skinnycorp was that these are the guys in charge because they’ve taken charge, and the attitude they set from the very top throughout their entire community, to the extent that their business model is dependent on pleasing them. Imagine that, basing the success of your company on your customer base’s loyalty… it seems so obviously right, but very insane from a risk/safety/control perspective. I wouldn’t even say that it’s a sign of courage that they do this. It’s their acceptance that if they aren’t pleasing their customers, that just means “it’s time to go” that I find so awe inspiring. They’re shipping a million shirts a year, and their business has grown so much that they’ve moved every year for the past four years.

Thanks David!

I thought this new Threadless tee would be appropriate to post over here :)

Also, take a listen to the song Bob Nanna wrote about it, blog.mp3

Ella is Brianne's bulldog puppy and she joins us here in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Back in late 2000, when we started Threadless, we gave $50 and a free tee shirt to the winning designers. We've since raised the prize to $250, then $500, then $1,000.

Today we've increased the prize to TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS. $2,000!!!!!

Yes, TWO GRAND.

Incredible. We are so happy to increase the prize. Winners will now recieve $1,500 cash, a $300 Threadless Gift Certificate and a $200 12 Club membership.

Also, we are printing 4-6 new designs every week so that's plenty of opportunities to win!

Read all about it here, on Threadless

Check it out: http://www.skinnycorp.com/video

We'll keep it updated, we promise ! :)

Videos of the gun in action to come. In the meantime check out this video parody of the Nintendo 64 video that's been going around. Charlie opens it up :)

Last night a few of us pulled an all nighter to finish up ExtraTasty and put some more work into the new version of Threadless. I'm still awake and should probably go home soon :)

We just got in our shipment of glassware (shot glasses and pint glasses) for ExtraTasty prizing. Drink of the day winners are all going to be getting huge prize packs of all kinds of fun stuff like this. Including tee shirts of course.

Hello everyone.. I am Charlie Festa... And i want to discuss some of the antics here at skinnycorp.. I will try to post as often as I can about some crazy office antics!!! Yesterday Jake and I called and purchased the micro mini t-shirt gun.

Hear the phone call here...

I know the guy told us not to juice up the gun but I want to do it anyway.. Once we get the gun we will post up some pics and vids of the new toy..

Since Charlie and Craig haven't introduced themselves yet, I thought I'd do so myself.

Craig has been with us for about 3 years now and manages a lot of the day to day Threadless tasks. Particularly printing up new tees and interfacing with the winning designers. Craig has an awesome video website that I made for him with a lot of videos from around the office that you should check out: craigshimala.com

Charlie used to ship packages for us and now he does all of our podcasts. He's also going to be helping with filming videos for new tee shirts when the new Threadless site comes out.

They are both pictured below. Charlie is on the left, Craig on the right.

Quick poll. Do any of you want to hear us write about the craziness that goes on around our office on a daily basis? I've been tempted to post about these things many times but I'm not too sure if you readers would be interested in such posts.

For example, last night we had a poker night and I was going to post a little synopsis. And about how much our office neighbors hate us lately. Woa they just killed Chef on South Park!

Well, should we post about this stuff?

Part 3: Structure.

I think i was avoiding writing this last part due to the fact that we are all still learning how to do podcasting without sounding like idiots – and for anyone who has heard us – we still sound like idiots. So what i am going to do is go through all the tips and structure guidelines Charlie and i have been trying to follow. Of course they are not commandments sent down by Harper the Podcast God. These are just some loose guidelines and hints that Charlie and i both have had great success in using to create our awesome and somewhat insane podcast.

I want to jump right into the form and structure of a podcast. When i think about doing a podcast, a couple things really jump out at me.

→ Continue reading...

Jake, Jacob and I have been speaking a lot lately. We've had the honor of speaking at places all over the country such as MIT, Parsons, DePaul, and UCLA amongst others.

We were recently invited to speak at the CustomerMade Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. I can't even explain how incredibly excited we are to participate in this with such a distinguished list of speakers.

If anyone lives in Copenhagen and would like to meet us out for a pint or 5, don't hesitate to get in touch! We'll be tearing up the streets of Copenhagen for 5 days from April 18 - 23.

UPDATE: here's a link to watch our presentation http://www.digicast.dk/ilab/. Ours is in the bottom right corner.