Introducing The 24-Hour T-Shirt: Bet You Can't Buy Just One

It started innocently enough. An advertisement on Facebook lured me in with a one-of-a-kind Hunter S. Thompson t-shirt -- perfect for a journalist who literally wanted to wear his profession on his sleeve.

Ten dollars was the perfect price too, especially for a t-shirt so rare. But there was a catch: it was only for 24 hours -- once that timeframe expired, the shirt was gone. If I wanted it, I was going to have to act now. No big deal, right? It's only ten bucks ($15 with shipping) and I could certainly afford that.

Little did I know, there would be another shirt tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, each one done by a different artist -- drawing me in with one of a kind mash-ups of the cult shows, movies and comic books that I grew up with in the '80s and '90s.

So, given that my latest obsession probably had me on the way to financial ruin, I figured if I was going to go down, I wanted to meet the men responsible.

That first Hunter S. Thompson shirt I bought was drawn by an artist under the alias of 'Jimiyo'. Not only was he strikingly talented, but he also happened to be the creative director of the site I bought it from, Teefury. This shirt company, based in Irvine, California, considers itself the originator of this irresistible business model. Sure, there were various precursors, but no one did it quite the way TeeFury did.

"We like to think of ourselves as pioneers of this particular niche offering," said Jason Gutierrez, an internet entrepreneur and apparel industry veteran who co-founded TeeFury with his brother Matt. "When we launched, back in 2008, there was really only one other daily t-shirt site with a comparable business model and that was Shirt.Woot.

"They had been around for one year when we launched, so we were kind of number two on the scene. The models are similar. However, the kind of designs they were doing -- even now today -- were kind of more mainstream hipster. They weren't necessarily designed around parody, mash-ups and really, the whole genre that we feel TeeFury has pioneered for the last four years."

It wasn't always that way. TeeFury's first few shirts were shishi fufu landscapes featuring angels, ponds, flowers and old english script with words like, "hope." But, the mash-ups sold better, and by the time they reached a shirt called "Chariots Retired," drawn by Ian Leino, featuring vehicular cultural icons like Optimus Prime, the Batmobile and The General Lee, all sitting in a junkyard, they had solidified their current artistic direction.

It's a direction that every daily t-shirt site has adopted since, including the Chicago-based RipT Apparel and the made-in-Canada Shirt Punch, from Oshawa, Ontario.



For both companies, it wasn't about trying to ride on TeeFury's success. RipT Apparel's three founders, Matt Ingleby, TJ Maples and Paul Friemel, grew up together, attended the same junior high, high school and college before going their separate ways. Then, by happenstance, they all got jobs in Chicago and on the way back to their hometown in Iowa, they realized that their chosen professions of web designer, record label graphic designer and inventory manager merged perfectly with the t-shirt business.

"We saw the beauty of this model for business. In that, if we got all the customers' orders, sold the t-shirts and then printed only what we sold, there was never going to be any inventory left over to take markdowns on," said Matt Ingleby.

Since their first year in 2009, they've also carved out a niche as a full apparel company and expanded past regular men's t-shirts to women's tees, kids sizes, hoodies and onesies.

RipT stands for Rest in Peace Tees, so their original gothic sensibility meant designs were more perverse and obscure in their parody.

"It's just a personal preference. Every day people come on our site and say, 'They hate that design,' but at the same time, other people buy from it. You're not going to make everybody happy everyday, but I do feel our designs are better than our competition," said Ingleby.

Russ Mantague, 30, started Shirt Punch out of frustration with the other 24-hour t-shirt sites. As a man who says he lives his life between the years of 1985 and 1995, when it came to pop culture, he could never find a shirt to his liking:

"I was really into the other sites, but I could never find a shirt that I wanted and I realized why. I started seeing all of these phenomenal designs that I thought would be great to print, but, the truth is, screen printing itself is actually very difficult and a time-consuming process."

One Saturday, he reached a breaking point after finally finding a shirt he wanted, only to miss it by mere hours. "I was so frustrated," said Montague. "I thought, if I'm feeling this way, there's bound to be a lot of people feeling this way."

So, in October 2011, with seed money from his father, he took matters into his own hands. As a former PR flack for Universal Studios and MTV, he used his celebrity connections to get stars like Ricky Gervais, Nathan Fillion and the cast of Harry Potter to help design and model his shirts. His crowning achievement was partnering with Warwick Davis and the Make-A-Wish Foundation to design arguably the only Willow t-shirt in existence.

"We may not be as quick as them getting the shirts out the door, but we're fearless," continues Montague. "We will print maximum colour, using the most complicated files every single day and we don't let them go out the door until they're perfect."

In the first few months, Shirt Punch could barely keep up with demand. The website was built in a friend's basement, a small print company screen printed the shirts and delivered them to Montague's parents' house. Mom and dad also enlisted all the neighbours to pack the shirts for shipping.

In fact, all of the founders of these companies have had the same kind of entrepreneurial tenacity through their veins. When Matt Ingleby and his two best friends were trying to get RipT off the ground, Ingelby's real estate agent father had a highly beneficial trick up his sleeve. "I presented this idea to him and he said, 'Well you know, I own 50% of a screen printing print shop' and I was like, you got to be kidding. How did I never know about this? So, everything seemed to click together rather easily."

Only the guys at TeeFury have been steeped in the t-shirt industry since they were kids. Guiterrez's brother Matt was an apparel graphic designer by trade and growing up in South Orange County, California meant that they were surrounded by lifestyle apparel brands like Quicksilver, Volcom, Hurley, Billabong and Oakley -- companies they worked for and interned at since high school. Even still, building internet businesses has always been their first aspiration.

"I think we would consider ourselves serial entrepreneurs," said Guiterrez. "We love building things, having an idea and putting all the pieces together, while dealing with all the hurdles and obstacles and problem solving until we build something that works."

Along with living their own dream, this model allowed all three companies to facilitate the dreams of others. "It brings a lot of exposures to great designers that are really looking to get this," said Montague.

"Whether you're a visual artist, an actor or a musician, getting exposure is difficult. It's the whole challenge," said Montague.

"The beauty of Shirt Punch is, because it generates so much web traffic per day, these artists get to get a lot of exposure and a lot of new fans, and for us that's really great. We get to help these guys out and in return, they come back with a lot of new designs. It's just a very symbiotic relationship."

All of the artists on every site get more than exposure, earning a dollar per shirt sold. This probably doesn't sound like a lot, but a popular design can move 2,000-3,000 shirts a day. Plus, the artist gets the rights to their design back once the 24 hour window expires. So, these artists could always re-submit the same design on another site.

In our next piece on the 24-hour t-shirt business, we'll meet an artist who is now so successful that he has become a minor celebrity in the industry. We'll also take a look at the design selection process and the pros and cons of buying from each company.

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