Online fashion retailer Spreadshirt surges forth in 2013

06 Jan '14

3 min read

Spreadshirt shipped around 3 million products worldwide in 2013 before the traditionally strong Christmas period. The leading e -commerce platform that lets anyone create, buy, and sell ideas on products consumers love to wear, use, and carry surpassed its 2012 figures before the festive season.

December is traditionally the company's busiest month, when sales are, on average, more than twice as high as in other months.

"2013 was a year of innovation for Spreadshirt," says Philip Rooke, CEO of Spreadshirt. "The introduction of our own t-shirt collection and the launch of the touch-optimised t-shirt designer were just two of our innovations. These strengthened our position and meant that we beat our 2012 numbers before the Christmas period started."

Around one third of Spreadshirt's customers use the t-shirt designer to create individual products. They either personalise the product with their own text and images, or change the colour and size of designs. European customers are much more creative than North Americans: while in Europe, personalised products make up for around 47 percent of the products, in North America it’s just 14 percent of the products which are personalised.

The results seem to underline the cultural differences. While the Americans like to be part of a current fad or the latest trend when purchasing a t-shirt, and therefore choose something ready-designed, Europeans think more long-term. Europeans tend to buy products that are closer to their interests and say something about them. The personalisation offer appeals therefore more to them.

Often, however, they use designs offered at the Spreadshirt platforms from third parties such as designers and then add to them.

In 2013 over 72,000 sellers created products or designs using Spreadshirt, which they then sold through their online shops, over the Spreadshirt marketplaces or on other worldwide channels the platform supports, such as Amazon.

In July 2013 Spreadshirt launched the touch-optimised t-shirt designer. With it, customers can design and order products via their mobile devices. Since its launch, an average of 2 million people per month have visited the touch-optimised t-shirt designer.

Around 10 percent of orders done directly on the Spreadshirt platform are being completed on a mobile device. The number of orders where the final purchase is done on a PC, but a mobile device is part of the order process, is around 25 to 30 percent.

By the end of 2013 Spreadshirt had 550 employees. Nearly two-thirds are based in Europe and one third in the U.S. With around 200 employees, Spreadshirt's headquarters in Leipzig, Germany is the largest site, followed by the facility in Greensburg, PA (USA) and Legnica (Poland).

Spreadshirt

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