Entrepreneur in Focus: Jake Nickell

For this round of Entrepreneur in Focus I was eager to write about one of my favorite hip Chicago businesses, threadless, but I didn't have to. So many people love theadless that my job was already done for me. In fact, I've probably had more trouble choosing the video that best portrays this plugged-in, Generation Y company. But let me indulge in a short who-is-threadless-intro. 

Who Is threadless?

Threadless is a online apparel store run by skinnyCorp of Chicago, Illinois and driven by the graphic arts community. Co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart started the company in 2000 with $1,000 in seed money after entering an Internet t-shirt design contest. How does threadless work? Members and artists submit t-shirt designs online that are open to the public to choose what designs they like the best.  A small percentage of submitted designs are selected for printing and sold through an online store. Creators of the winning designs receive a prize of cash and store credit. It's a company the relies heavily on crowdsourcing and web 2.0 to connect to the public, and it's this open connection and two-way communication that laid the foundation for this company's success.

This is a great documentary that explains the history of the company.

And in case you can't watch this video at the moment, here's a great blog post that Jake Nickell wrote about the history of his company. You can find the post on the threadless blog, here.


Some insight into threadless' interesting corporate culture:

10 Years of Awesome!!! from Threadless.com on Vimeo.