Just to remember: Our move is already history but what is a move without an appropriate house warming party? Right… A snail without its shell - possible but not the best solution.

Last Thursday, October 2nd, our new cafeteria and conference room in Leipzig, Germany, for one night lost their usual purpose and turned into a party place. And I must say: Not that bad change. As if the people reconstructing the building had only one thing in mind…

To explain the pictures below: Before Jana, Matthias and Michael opened the party with a speech and hence the buffet some of us used the possibility to press their own shirt during a production session. One - but not the only - advantage of having production and HQ located in the same building now. Besides really danceable music from DJ Ole as well as from Alex (yes, our IT-Alex!) and friend, good vibrations came from the drummers of Samba Pintada. Who wasn’t keen on dancing found some other distraction in playing Wii, table tennis, kicker or American Gladiator.

A special thanks should go to our IT barkeepers for sponsoring the bar and mixing 200 cocktails! And last but not least I (that´s Manuela, normally responsible for internal communications btw :-)) want to thank Anne for taking all the pictures from which you can see a little selection below. It was definitely fun partying with you!

Having been here for a few days now, I´d like to share some impressions from Spreadshirt moving out of the former HQ - the “Garage” - to the new one which is located in Leipzig, Germany, as well and just a 5-minute walk away from the former bulding:

And here´s some pictures from the brandnew offices:

September 21st is International Peace Day. Especially in regard of current developments, this seems to be a good occasion to spend some thoughts on politics. But besides worrying about old rivalries becoming new ones, there´s also a reason to celebrate - this year, the famous peace sign celebrates its 50th birthday.

That´s why Spreadshirt and laFraise join forces and launch a special shirt design competition around the topic of peace. The only requirement to take part is to incorporate the peace sign in the design. Not necessarely as the key visual, but it has to be in there somewhere.

The winner will get 1,500 EUR in cash and we´ll also give away some slots in the Spreadshirt end customer newsletter for those designers who not only submit their pieces to the European gallery of laFraise but to the Spreadshirt marketplace (please use “WorldPeaceDay08″ to tag submissions) as well.

Deadline for submissions  is September 12th. The winner will be announced on September 21st.

We have been waiting for this quite a long time: After solving final issues with the local authorities (such as TüV - which is an institution that checks the machine and worker’s safety) we yesterday kicked off Digital Direct Printing in Europe with a soft launch. Soft launch means: to minimize communication efforts and trouble shooting (if there is some ;)) we start in our own German T-Shirt designer first, with limited apparel only (currently the white Comfort Tee).  This gives us the time to react to any contingencies. Once we know it works fine, we will scale up and enable Digital Direct for more products and partners as well. If you are interested in the status and the progress of the soft launch, take a look at the Forum thread.

It’s been a while since we asked for designs to decorate our new building. Last week we decided to postpone our move until mid of September (and we eventually have entrance doors), so now we even have a little more time: If you have any designs that you would like put on our new office outside walls, just drop me a note (ami AT spreadshirt . net) or leave a comment here. This is what it looks like so far.

According to High Snobiety, one of the most important figures in contemporary American t-commerce, Aaron Judah Bondaroff  - a.k.a. A-Ron, a.k.a. the Downtown Don - will publish an autobiography on September 6th.

I love to see the founder of aNYthing - “the only brand that matters” sharing his stories. Already two years ago, the New York Times had a great article on him making his lifestyle a business which should be in the bookmarks of every t-shirt fanatic: you can still read “The Brand Underground” online and check Aaron´s current project “Off Bowery” afterwards in order to kill the days left until the book comes out.

Do I have to write this? The size relation doesn´t mirror reality.

Now that at least in Germany summer finally decided to look like summer again, for hygenic reasons, backpacks aren´t the bags to go with anymore. Fortunately, Alena who is responsible for Spreadshirt´s apparel, has added some new shoulder and hand bags to our stock.

On the one hand, we got the “Retro Bags“, which exactly hold a towel, a book, a cellphone, a bottle of water, a bottle of sun screen and some bathing stuff.

On the other we have the Organic Tote Bag which - I tested that myself - can perfectly hold a Powerbook, a headset, some magazines and one or two pencils.

Of course, they offer excellent printing results, too. Otherwise we wouldn´t have them.

Mirko has made it. Like millions of Europeans before him, he has gone to America in search of freedom, money and indepedence from German food. And also to help Spreadshirt US develop and manage accounting, finances and controlling, HR, internal IT and legal. Read what he thinks of his new job, cultural differences - and similarities.

Continue reading ‘Meet a Spreader - Mirko Bröcker’

Hi guys,

For those of you who like a little (early) Saturday morning browse of our websites, i want to give you the heads up that we will be having some scheduled routine performance maintenance. This will take place on Saturday, July 26th between 08:00 and 10:00 CEST (so 07:00 to 09:00 UK time). During this time, online services on our platform and all related shops won’t be operational for the following:

· www.spreadshirt.net 

· www.spreadshirt.com

· www.lafraise.com

A screen will inform customers to come back after the scheduled maintenance period, when we will be back up and fully operational as before.

We apologise for the short notice of this announcement and for any inconvenience this might cause you.

Your Spreadshirt Team

Time’s on speeeeeed, honestly! Just yesterday or so our new Headquarter would look like this. Only a few moments later all the little dwarfs (Heinzelmännchen is what we call them in Germany) throw their scoops aside, and today it looks like this:

And in a few more weeks we will be moving in completely to our new Headquarter in Leipzig Plagwitz. Of course we spent a couple of thoughts on how we show from the outside that Spreadshirt is located here.
This is our idea: outside the building we will mount plates that look like T-Shirts in different sizes, shapes and colors (and as if they were “stuck” to the building). Therefore, we need your help!

To make these shirts not only huge T-Shirts, but SPREADshirts, we kindly ask for your support: Give us your favourite 3 designs that we should put on the shirts outside the building! In the end, we will put up 10 shirts with your designs!
Continue reading ‘Call for Designs - Your Design, our new HQ’