Judge’s Selection: Best In Show | Joe Pemberton

www.threadless.com
SKINNYCORP
In the world of web design competitions, there are entries that leap from the screen as the one and only appropriate choice for a judge to pick, leaving little room for doubt and no need for further review. And then there are entries like Threadless.com, which sit far enough outside what’s expected of a capital-D design-competition winner that they take some mulling over. But they also have the potential to expand the definition of what it means to be “the best of the web.”

Joe Pemberton, a principal at San Francisco’s Punchcut, did due diligence as a competition judge, carefully reviewing a steady stream of impeccably designed, immersive, Flash-based sites. And as he did, he couldn’t help but consider the fact that the power of the web is its capacity to be a “living” medium. The shiny sites from real estate developers or photography studios, beautiful as they were, felt somehow stagnant. “A lot of companies fall into a situation where they launch a site, walk away, and a year or so later publish something new,” says Pemberton. “But I think users are subconsciously gauging how fresh the content is.”

For Pemberton, two entries typified what it means to be a “living” site. The first: An online showcase of fresh student and faculty work from the Art Center College of Design (see page 126). The second—Threadless.com—eventually became his Best in Show pick. Weekly since 2000, this online T-shirt retailer has relied on its devoted members to determine which shirt designs, created by other members, go on to be produced and sold via the site. Call it crowdsourcing. Or peer production. Whatever you call it, the direct line to consumers’ expressed desires eliminates the hit-or-miss guesswork of predetermining demand, which has serious bottom-line ramifications. Threadless is reported to have sold an estimated $15 million worth of T-shirts last year, shipping about 80,000 per month.

The loyalty of the site’s 500,000 registered members has almost everything to do with the fact that they shape what happens —and not just in terms of competition results. In an entry on one of the blogs that live on Threadless.com, a member recently complained about the format of the site’s weekly newsletter. The blogger’s comments made sense. And when the next newsletter rolled around, the issue had been addressed. In a case like this, it would be difficult not to feel personally invested in Threadless. “It’s a constantly evolving project, based on what people want and what we see works or doesn’t,” says Jeffrey Kalmikoff, the site’s designer and chief creative officer of Threadless’ parent company skinnyCorp.

For Pemberton, who admires all of these qualities, the challenge emerged when he imagined screen grabs of Threadless.com in this Best of Web issue of STEP. He wondered if readers, flipping through the issue, would be surprised to see Threadless.com—with hand-drawn icons that seem more haphazardly placed than they actually are—bumped up against sites with more aesthetic polish. But he took a step back and considered the competition’s mandate. “If this competition was just about the interface,” he says, “we could analyze it, create tangible rules and measure the most compliant site. Instead, this competition is about honoring the best of the web—the things the web can do that other media can’t.”

Clearly, he’s not talking about animating because you can, or adding sound because you can. At a fundamental level, Threadless enables an experience that isn’t possible on television or in print. And it’s more than just connecting people, Pemberton says. Threadless connects people in a brand-centered forum, involving them in such a significant, meaningful way that their loyalty in turn sustains the brand. “These people who contribute online are also out there virally sharing and wearing the shirts,” he says, “and they’re pointing other people back to the site.” From a business and brand-building standpoint, that’s a level of evangelism most brands can only dream of tapping.

Threadless also achieves a level of transparency that corporations increasingly attempt on the web—with greater and lesser degrees of success. When they are successful, Pemberton says, it’s because they’re not afraid to let the community’s voice become an integral part of the dialogue—to interact with and directly impact the brand. “The mono-directional web—or the web as an interactive brochure—is dead,” he says. “It will stick around in corners of the internet—for beautiful real-estate developer sites, maybe—but it is not where the innovation and the life of the connected digital world will come from. Instead, the life branches of the internet are elsewhere.”

That Threadless.com is perched securely on those life branches tipped the scales in its favor—and, in the end, rather easily trumped the typographical purity or cared-for details of other entries. Why Threadless.com over the Art Center site, which Pemberton pegs as another example of one that’s “living”? Quite simply, Threadless extends further into this realm.

You’ll never hear Kalmikoff and partners Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart refer to Threadless as a business. For them, it’s just one of many skinnyCorp projects—like nakedandangry.com, a competition that accepts consumer-designed pattern submissions, which then make their way to products from ties to housewares. Threadless just happens to have exploded. And it still feels like a project, largely because it behaves like one. For instance, skinnyCorp recently realized people were using the blogs on Threadless to solicit feedback about their designs before they submitted them officially. Though it gave people a competitive edge, the partners didn’t pull any Big-Brother stunts. Rather, they added a feature called Critique to facilitate what was already happening.

As a designer, Kalmikoff’s primary goal is to keep the site fun and accessible—and to stay relevant to a demographic of members aged 13 to 50 and up. That means Kalmikoff avoids anything that feels technologically elite. “If you say ‘Web 2.0,’ only people who know what that is can identify with it,” he says. “But my mom doesn’t care about Web 2.0. She wants to go to a website, and then she wants to use it.” And that’s what he keeps in mind. Kalmikoff makes it sound easy when he says he just pays attention to how people use what he’s built—and then responds accordingly. “As a designer, there is ego involved in what you do,” he says. “But we’re certainly not so egotistical to think that the people who are involved in our community don’t have ideas that are better than ours. Because they do.”
Tiffany Meyers