Exchanging Schooling for T-Shirts

Wednesday 10th of December 2008 03:05:58 PM

Exchanging Schooling for T-Shirts

In Leeds Road, Bradford, UK, you will find a store selling t-shirts that is owned by Steve Winn. Mr. Winn is not your typical store owner though, because he gave up medical school in order to pursue the business. Despite the poor economic conditions, he said, “It’s quite a difficult time to launch a business, but we have actually this is quite a popular time of year for us. Since we have increased the business by nearly 300 percent this year I’m reasonably confident we can double its size again.” What has made this company so unique is that this t-shirt business called Streetshirts has successfully found a market niche selling t-shirts with unique designs to people needing low volume t-shirt printing. The company has been so successful, it has is on the short list for the 2008 Retail Week Awards for Technology Initiative.

Mr. Winn also developed his own e-commerce site called PurpleFishes to work jointly with Streetshirts which offers other companies the ability to web design and brand unique t-shirt designs which can be downloaded for printing. With both Streetshirts and PurpleFishes well established, Mr. Winn decided to pursue his businesses full-time in September 2005. Since then Streetshirts has been so successful, he plans on doubling the size of the company by the end of 2009. His market strategy includes adding the ability to sell in the US and increasing the product line with additional items such as printed business cards and letterheads. The company experienced an increase in like-for-like sales of 288% in 2007 to 2008. In addition, the company employs 15 people, and additional plans for expansion means more jobs will be available in Bradford during a time companies are laying off.

Mr. Winn said, “Streetshirts continues to trade profitably, now part of PurpleFishes, and occupies envious world-wide search engine rankings for popular, generic keywords.” Streetshirts enables people to make their own freehand t-shirt drawings which are then uploaded on the internet to be used in unique designs.

(c ) Image by Petr Kurecka, www.sxc.hu/