This is a project that I have been thinking about for quite some time. If you follow my tweets and read Emptees you’ll know that I floated this idea months ago, but now things are becoming a lot clearer, and we (yes, we) shouldn’t be too far off deciding upon a launch date. What the hell am I talking about you may ask if you aren’t an Andy stalker? Well, ShirtHive is going to be the best place on the web connecting t-shirt brands with amazing t-shirt designers.
At the heart of it, if you just wanted a bullet-point version, it’s going to be a t-shirt industry job board, and a t-shirt design marketplace, but I’d like to think that in reality it will feel like a lot more. New brands don’t have all the contacts they need, they could come to ShirtHive, post a listing saying what kind of designs they’d like creating for them, designers check it out (and have posted jobs e-mailed straight to them) and if they think the job suits their style they can submit their resume/portfolio and send a message to the poster. We’ll also be providing guidelines to brands and designers telling them the best practices in the industry, so that everyone gets treated fairly and with respect, ShirtHive will not be home to lowballers, design has value and we’ll be treating it that way.
But what if a brand doesn’t need something specific created for their line, what if they want some pre-made designs? Well, we’re going to offer that too, in the form of a curated marketplace. High-quality designers will have their t-shirt designs on sale in the marketplace, which can be purchased by brand owners, with print-ready files being available to download immediately. Currently we haven’t approached any designers for the marketplace but are drawing up a list of designers we would like to have on there, like I said, it will be a curated marketplace to ensure that there is quality across the board, but if you would like to be considered for the marketplace please leave a comment on this post (using your portfolio as the URL linked to your name), or send me a tweet/e-mail.
At the moment ShirtHive.com is just a holding page where you can leave your e-mail address which we will hold to give you updates when the site gets going, but it shouldn’t be too long before we’re open for business, and I will be giving you status reports over the coming weeks and months with how the site is going. I could go on and on about this project, I’m really excited about it, but I don’t want this article to run long, so if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback of any kind please leave a comment on this post and I will answer them all as fully as I can. Your feedback is very important at this stage and will be very much appreciated.
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