Threadless

For new artists

I’ve notices that Threadless published a useful article in their Creative Resources section: Get Featured on Threadless.

One of the questions that new Threadless artists often ask is whether they should opt into the Threadless Marketplace. I think it’s really worth it to opt in — most of my sales come from the marketplace. If you are a new artist then most likely you are not very good at promoting your art yet. If you don’t opt in you will have a difficult time getting people to visit your shop. It’s of course up to you. You can read Threadless’s advice here.

One other topic that Threadless mentions is that you should submit 1-2 designs a week. I admit I haven’t been designing much recently. I wish I could submit more but I’ve been swamped with other work like preparing our game for releasing on new platforms and migrating the manichyena.com website to a new server. But that’s all behind me, I plan to draw more in May.

Go read the whole article, it’s full of good advice 🙂

Act now

My design “Act Now” has just been added to the Threadless catalog.

There’s a story behind the design. I was in a grocery store and behind me there were two guys buying beer.

Guy 1: So how’s that postwoman of yours?
Guy 2: …
Guy 1: Have you talked to her?
Guy 2: I didn’t dare … I won’t ever dare.

I was thinking about it when drawing the skull. We are all going to die, we have less time than we think. I added the flower — a symbol of romance — to say: if you hesitate, if you don’t act on your feelings, you will die alone.

“Act now” is in the Threadless catalog. Check it out here if you want. Wear it as a reminder to be brave.

Design Challenges

I was looking for a topic to write about and noticed that Threadless published a new video in their “Your Art, Your Shop” series, this time about design challenges.

I have participated in many challenges but have never won any. However, my “Not Today” design was one of a few designs selected for printing in the Black and White challenge back in 2016, so maybe it counts a bit like winning. Besides that, a lot of my designs were selected in the Threadless main challenge, where you can submit anything. But I haven’t yet won any of the themed challenges.

Even if you don’t win anything, it’s still good to participate. Thanks to the fact that I submitted my designs to challenges, I got a few hundred followers on Threadless. And now, when I publish a new design, people who follow me are notified about it, and some of them probably end up buying something from me.

That reminds me that Woot has challenges too – they are called derbies. I used to participate a few years ago. Again, didn’t win anything but some of my designs got printed anyway 🙂

Sangie

This is Sangie, and she’s wearing my “Overthinking and also hungry”.

She posted another photo of this shirt on her Instagram and wrote about losing hair. It’s scary how many young people have cancer.

Overthinking and also hungry - by Justyna Dorsz — “Overthinking and also hungry” on Threadless

This design is part of my philosophical cat collection.

As a side note, I’ve never met a stranger wearing any of my designs. I wonder when it will happen.

New products, new colors

When Threadless adds new products everyone who has an artist shop should go through their designs and enable them on new products and colors. It’s what I do regularly.

Threadless recently added Women’s Scoop-Neck Regular t-shirts which they wrote about. It also looks like there’s a new kind of hoodie: Classic Fleece. I don’t see them mention it anywhere so maybe it’s not yet available in all artist shops. I remember that when Threadless introduced face masks there were not available in my store at first so maybe they haven’t added Classic Fleece to every shop yet? I don’t know, but it’s probably a matter of days.

The easiest way to enable new products on all your designs is to go to your Shop Dashboard, and then in the Artist Shop section hover over Products and choose which products you want to edit. You will see a list of all your designs and just have to choose colors for each:

It’s nice when my design is featured

Even after all these years as a designer it still brightens my day when I see one of my designs featured on the Threadless home page:

It’s my Black Sands design that I made recently:

I also always check other artists in Discover More section to get inspired and see what others are working on.

My art in the wild!

Threadless sent me the following photo:

It’s Daniel Nguyen, you can view his Instagram profile. He is wearing my Space Painted design, I think it suits him 🙂

This is one more reason why it’s great for designers like me to work with Threadless. Every now and then they run various campaigns to support artists. Sometimes they double artists’ earnings, they also find opportunities to sell our designs in retail stores or other online stores. This time they teamed up with creators and influencers to show off our designs as part of the Threadless Spring Style Refresh campaign.

Space Painted is of course available on Threadless like all my designs:

Double earnings for masks in April

Last month Threadless doubled royalties for regular t-shirts sold in artist shops. This month they are doubling royalties for masks. If you haven’t enabled them in your store then you definitely should because they still sell very well.

Read the whole post that Threadless wrote about it, including an explanation of how to let Threadless manage your prices: Double Your Earnings with Face Masks in April!

I particularly like that they included example earnings when face masks are sold for full price, and when they are sold with discount:

I know artists are sometimes confused when there are site-wide sales and they don’t get paid in royalties as much as they expected.

Here are some of the face masks in my artist shop on Threadless:

Update your collections

Updating collections in your Threadless Shop is one of the items on my Store Maintenance CHECKLIST.

Create collections and keep them up to date so that customers can easily find relevant items. I have my Ridiculous Cat Collection, Dogs, Space, Best Face Masks, Forest, a collection with Best Gift Ideas, and also my collection with Black and White Cat Designs.

Now, I’ve added a collection called New Arrivals. I will make sure it always shows my 10 to 15 most recent designs.