What they do:
Customer designed and voter-approved tee shirts, sold on-line.
Inspiration:
Selling tee shirts online is no big deal, but Jacob DeHart and Jake Nickell ask visitors to their website to submit their own original tee-shirt designs.
About the business:
Visitors to threadless.com submit original tee-shirt designs, which are posted every week. Web viewers vote on their favorites, and winning designs are put on tee shirts. Designers get cash, gift certificates and the opportunity to win more. So far, every design printed on a tee shirt has sold out. Recent projected sales $25-$30 million.
He started his first business in college. He sold his second business to Clear Channel. He came within four minutes of winning CBS’s the Amazing Race. He’s led an interesting life, but what Blake Mycoskie is best known for is starting TOMS Shoes, the company that has donated well over a million shoes to needy men, women, and children.
In the latest episode of the Why Didn’t I Think of That? Podcast, Bob Smith and Greg Anastos sit down with thinkofthat.net blogger Benjamin Christopher and discuss the first of their Axioms For Entrepreneurs, “Re-think Your Industry.”
The Why Guys explore how companies like Netflix, Apple, Xerox, and General Motors were able to look at their industries, and their companies, in a new light.
Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos says that they’re “the only tech company with low margins.”
Low margins is an understatement. The company is losing money on every single Kindle Fire tablet they sell. But it’s all part of Jeff Bezos plan to conquer the Universe. He may or may not succeed, but one thing’s clear: With the Kindle Fire, he has single-handedly created a low-end tablet market where there was none, and for that reason alone, he’s about to change the tech industry forever.
The road to Groupon’s initial public offering has been long and tortuous. But it’s finally over. Sure, they’re still losing money and getting negative press. But now they’re also worth more than $15 billion dollars. In fact, it’s the biggest IPO by an Internet Company since Google went public in 2004.
The question now is: How long will the party last?
It was 1999. Aspiring screenwriter John Brozek was poking around a new website called eBay, and what he found surprised him: Counterfeit Rolex Watches. Lots of them.