The Spreadshirt company offers small wanna-be designers, to upload their own vectorized design (vectorized means that it is not a picture, but a technical plan with coordinates, which could be turned into a picture - without blurry edges no matter how much you zoom it) and they print your shirt in perfect quality, even if you just want to have one shirt.
The most shirts you have in your closet are silk screened shirts, printed in almost the same way as a picture. But silk screening needs a custom-made screen for every color your design is made of — and you have to pay for the making of the screen before even a single shirt is printed. Spreadshirt’s way is clever, you are only limited by the amount of colors and detail-richness (no lines thinner than 3 mm), but most shirt designs are graphical illustrations anyway, so it’s not really a limitation.
What pisses me off
Spreadshirt started their business in germany and soon after they made some cash, they opended up the exact same company in the usa. That’s good you think. But they shoudn’t have cloned their german headquarter and send it’s twin to the usa: To outsource the printing and packaging process was all they needed to do — all the other stuff (their website, the customers webshops, the vectorized image checking by hand (they need to be checked in case of designer mistakes), the management, the billing etc.) can be handled from germany. And by leaving that part of the process in germany, one could offer a designed and spreadshirt-approved shirt to the whole world. But no - now we have to upload our design to two different websites, manage our two shops on two different websites, and get our design approved two times by two different spreadshirt technicans.
You read that correct, the customer has to do everything twice, just because spreadshirt had too much money on their hands and doubled the amount of employed technicans.
Funny is, that their marketing strategy is “to be cool and hip and openminded like the the young generation”, and you think that they have a transparent business model and a transparent strategy. But when you ask them “why is that so, why do you make it so hard for me -twice” you get a “sorry, that’s not possible”, and when you offer your idea to them, you get a request to send in your fucking curriciulum vitae and your school certificates! Are you interested in certificates or in ideas? Do you sell certificates, or do you sell a great idea? SORRY, BUT WHAT THE FUCK? Don’t pretend your the young and openminded generation when you are too scared to listen to someone without a certificate that does not meet a university degree. I don’t want to take over (i could, but i don’t know how to get venture money), so just fucking relax and open your eyes to what your customers ask or what someone recommends - at least think about it.
What happend earlier?
I send a link and a short explanation to the human ressources dept. of Spreadshirt yesterday, saying that my article and my qualities might be of value for their business (and for me) — i guess it sounded to much like an application, but i was just hoping that someone with enough power would read it, and would finally change something for us, the users. I was just trying to solve my problem i have with their user-interface, as a trojan horse — from the inside.
What they replied
“Dear sir, you have to send us an ordinary application form, complete with references, certificates, diplomas and curriculum vitae”.
What i though after that reply
I mean, what the fuck? What kind of people are working there? Ordinary lame secretaries, who have a certificated background in bureaucracy and shortsight? Who build their great business-idea? Who writes all the friendly newsletters and made their interface look like that i feel like i am a mate of everybody at their office already?
This is what i wrote back
“I do not understand why everything at spreadshirt.net sounds like we are mates already - which sounds ok to me — and that you guys are relaxed folks, but when it comes to internal stuff, you suddenly change gears to “yes Sir” and make me a stranger, without even tipping the clutch.
All that stuff that you won’t find on my site, stuff you think-you-need to know me better (i.e. certificates, diplomas), is not important for my understanding of what i am and stand for, ergo you won’t find those things in an ordinary application by me either.
We could try to talk, in case a personal chat on the phone helps you “to get me”. I sure am a complicated person, in real life and in business — i don’t pretend to be slick — but i do have my qualities. Rules are there for a reason, but they can’t stand tall against all alternatives hitting them.
My applictaion comes with the following ingrediences:
a) The art and kind how i communicate with you (really, analyse it for a second)
b) My professional cricic in the article i wrote about you (that should be enough already)
c) The look and feel of my personal weblog
- Are graphical and aesthetical tasks my thing? Have a look - like it?
- Is the interface and its layout/look a good choice, do i know the basics - or more?
- Do i sound symphatic to you, or like a pissed off bully who happens to have a blog?
If that is not enough for you to decide who i am, then i don’t know how a school diploma could help you there, and if you really need that, then i guess you don’t recieve enough authorisation to think further and ahead of ordinary applications and that the human ressources dept. missed a lot of potential candidates.
Finishline
If that is so (i still hope you just had a bad start today), then i am sorry to say that i am not interested.
I didn’t really seek for a job, i just offered something.”
