We’ve been thinking about this since we started working on Swiftlabel. Should we or should we not hold a design contest?

It didn’t make sense for us to run one right away. One reason is that we espouse a particular style (very German) and actually enjoy coming up with T-shirt ideas. The other is that you need most importantly traffic, which we obviously didn’t have, and a new approach, an untapped market or more prize money (which all help generate traffic) to make it work.

But now that phase one of the site is over and our tee collection is growing, we’re mulling over ways to do things differently from others. Before I touch on this, let me first talk about the benefits of holding a design contest.

I see two chief reasons: to get print-worthy designs and/or to get traffic to the site.

Attracting Graphic Designers
A successful contest gives tee companies the luxury of choosing from a myriad of designs. It’s a lucrative model as they only have to pay for what they’ll use. For designers, it’s a different story as a lot of them will do work without being paid. But it’s not as bleak as it may seem, as I hope the experience of creating art helps them to develop.

The best known design competition are run by Graniph with $9,000 for the top prize, Threadless with $1,500 plus other incentives, LaFraise with 1,000 euros ($1,400). For Graniph, it fetches them hip designs from European artists that Japanese love so much. For Threadless and LaFraise, the design contest is more than a platform to get new product. It acts as a linchpin to build a thriving online community.

Boosting Traffic
It’s quite an ingenious business model: run a design contest to attract artists, set up a voting system that encourages them to get friends to vote (promoting your site in the process), print designs that garner a lot of votes (a gauge for buying interest), and pay well to encourage designers to try over and over again.

Threadless, the first to successfully commercialise the idea, and LaFraise, the first for the French-speaking community, are now multi-million dollar businesses by creating and fostering an interactive platform to feed the addiction of T-shirt lovers.

The Swiftlabel Design Contest
Like the two stalwarts, we’re interested in doing both – bringing in great designers and creating an online community – but have a different context in mind. I can’t reveal more as it’s really easy to copy and we want to be the first ones to try it.

I’d say we’re about 3-4 months away from releasing phase two (depending on how we allocate our capital): one month for planning, one for programming, and one for testing. We’ll see if things can go on schedule this time.