Threadless, the hipster online graphic T-shirt company with the unconventional business model, has been vigilant about ignoring the calling cards of national chain stores eager to sell its one-of-a-kind tees.
Until now.
The groundbreaking Chicago company quietly began testing sales of Threadless T-shirts in the men's department at 25 Nordstrom stores, mostly in California and Hawaii. The pilot, though preliminary, thaws the firm's longstanding chill toward old-school retail.
Neither Threadless nor Nordstrom are saying much about the trial, except to confirm that it began a couple of months ago. It is unclear if the trial has ended or if more Threadless T-shirts will appear in Nordstrom.
But it is easy to see the attraction.
The 109-year-old Nordstrom, like most old-line department stores, needs to bring in exclusive merchandise to attract shoppers tired of cookie-cutter stores. Threadless, which turns 10 this year, is undergoing a transformation from what was essentially a clever hobby into a full-fledged business.
"We've got a variety of growth initiatives under way, and this is one of them," said Tom Ryan, CEO of Threadless parent SkinnyCorp. "We believe there's a big opportunity for us to take all the fantastic designs that come from our global community and make them for sale."
Ryan took over the CEO post from co-founder Jake Nickell in 2008 and has been working since then to expand Threadless beyond its T-shirt roots.
Last month, Threadless joined forces with flip-flop maker Havaianas to create a limited collection of sandals for this summer based on winning designs from the Threadless community. It inked similar deals this summer with Dell Inc. for laptop lid designs and last year with Griffin Technology to design cases for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch.
Since its start as an online graphic-design contest, Threadless has grown to attract international attention for building an audience first and then selling them what they ask for, a practice that has come to be known among techies as crowdsourcing.
Threadless T-shirts have been worn by indie rock bands and on the TV show "Scrubs." Its business model has been studied in the Harvard Business Review. And its fans are so devoted that one Web developer started an unofficial fan site (lovesthreadless.com) that claims to catalog every Threadless T-shirt design.
It remains to be seen if Threadless can move into the traditional realm of retail while still keeping its loyal fan base. Designers submit designs to the online community and Threadless' nearly 1 million members vote on them and blog about them. Threadless, in turn, prints the most popular designs on T-shirts and sells them, paying the winning designers in the process.
When Threadless opened its first bricks-and-mortar store in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood in 2007, the founders bristled at calling it a store. They preferred the term "community center." A second store later opened in Bucktown.
The inventory is constantly changing in the Threadless-owned boutiques. Most T-shirt designs are in the stores only two weeks. Keeping that level of control could be difficult working with a giant retail chain, said Anne Brouwer, senior partner at McMillan Doolittle, a Chicago retail consulting firm.
smjones@tribune.com