Threadless

If you live on a college campus or in a trendy part of town, chances are that you've seen a Threadless t-shirt. Threadless.com is website where anyone can design a t-shirt and submit it on the website. After submitting a design, it gets voted on by the site's community. If the submission does well, anyone can purchase it on the website.

Threadless is a breath of fresh air when it comes to t-shirt sites. Rather than the lame movie references and stupid jokes that fill most other sites designs, you can really find something unique on Threadless. What makes the site genius is that the submission and voting process allows the consumer to be involved in the entire design process.

I think that this kind of business-consumer, collaborative, marketing is the future. This Business Week article describes how Nike is letting its customers design shoes in-store and then purchase them. I expect more and more companies to roll out similar initiatives.

BTW, I'm crossing my fingers that this design goes into production soon.