Many times I’ve wanted to grab by the shoulders every 23 yr old graphic designer who’s submitted to one of these sites and shake them screaming that they are letting themselves be ripped off. I’m glad to hear that Threadless is at least now compensating their designers more in line with their profits, but the variety of similar sites that are still around sets my stomach on its side. It seems to me that the fairest scheme would involve a generous percentage royalty. There is a large fixed cost of production and inventory holding, but a lot of the risk involved with that is already controlled by the design admission process. If you don’t need to worry about not selling your full run of 1500 shirts, you don’t need to try and pass this risk onto your designers with low, flat compensation schemes.

I’ve come across a number of web businesses that operate on the idea that you engage a whole set of buyers to commit to a large bulk order, and create value for them by passing on savings. What if you had a t-shirt producer that allowed users to not just rate new designs, but to commit to their purchase? Each week, put up new designs, and any design with enough orders to cover costs gets made and shipped that week.

This is not that different from how these sorts of sites already operate, but seems like an environment better suited to directly sharing profits with the designers. It also would create scarcity in every design, which has its benefits for both producer and designer.

You may also want to check out Graniph, which has been commissioning independent designers to make graphic shirts since well before Threadless came around. They are more in line with the cosmopolitan art geek demographic, but I’d be interested to find out what their compensation scheme is like. My intuition says it’s much closer to a traditional commissioned relationship, with a professional flat rate and no profit sharing.