I must have seen the Information Revolution Tube ads at least four times last week. “Should one company really control the web’s information?”

I thought it was striking at ICANN’s hold on domain names, but it’s actually a marketing gimmick by Ask UK. Too bad they didn’t plug our Revolution T-shirt.

Note: this post is back-dated.

The shopping areas in Madrid seemed quite simple to categorise. All the high street shops like Zara, Mango, H&M are huddled around Sol, the Old Town. Most upscale and designer brands are in Salamanca for the business people and the pijos (posh) who hang out there. Finally, the cool and trendy shops are stacked in Chueca, the gay district (becoming more and more mixed) especially on calle Fuencarral.

Best place in Madrid I found for T-shirts and streetwear? Hands-down, the Mercado Fuencarral, a grungy, two-floor mall (akin to those in Ximen) in Chueca.

Image courtesy of Florencio Sanchez

I’m really intrigued by the T-shirt voting craze. I only knew of two sites, Threadless and LaFraise, when I started shopping online for tees in 2005. There are now at least 8 sites out there, with newcomers perhaps inspired by LaFraise’s success as it tweaked and adapted an existing model to a different market.

Why did the LaFraise concept work? The buzz of a French startup and the interactive space certainly spurred a cult-like following for the site. But I think the chief catalyst at the outset was that LaFraise made French-themed tees, a by-product of having a French site. Considering that such products were few and far between at the time and that the French are proud of their language and culture, there was bound to be a huge market for this.

Now, the good folks at Spreadshirt, the new owner of Lafraise, have bigger ambitions. They’ve recently rolled out versions of the site in four other countries and maybe more are in the works. Can the company as well as other newcomers in the business mirror LaFraise’s achievement in France? Their success, in my opinion, will depend on the following three factors.

Enticing designers
There are two ways to get designers. You can either try to poach them from other sites or find graphic designers who’ve never used a T-shirt voting site. Artists would participate depending on the prize money offered, the probability that the artwork gets printed, and the prestige of being selected by a popular site.

Mobilising the electorate
This is the million dollar question - how do you get traffic and encourage people to vote? It’s pretty tough to find T-shirt addicts that are not constituents of Lafraise or Threadless and have the time to go at least each week to exercise their democratic right to get fine tees.

One option is to try to convert people who aren’t T-shirt addicts into one by offering prizes based on their level of participation, which most companies do. But the risk is that that’s all they’ll do. You need customers too. Nonetheless, I think there are opportunities albeit very small windows, as discussed below.

Differentiating the product
It’s interesting how Lafraise and Threadless each have their own particular style. Because that’s what the voters like, graphic designers will perpetuate this by adjusting their work to reflect the style that’s en vogue. One opportunity is to shoot for a different kind of look by finding the right artists to submit work.

Another possibility is to differentiate geographically by building a voting and design community from the grassroots level. But you have to pick the country carefully. For instance, I don’t think a Threadless type of community would work well in Japan because what’s usually cool in fashion over there are things that are not made in Japan. I just can’t see people voting and commenting on things they don’t understand.

One country I can see it work very well is Spain, where few people speak English (compared with say Germany) and many wear T-shirts (considering the warm weather they enjoy). Italy would be another possibility but most guys tend to wear collared shirts.

Anyway, I’m eager to see how things will unfold this year and see just how wrong I am.

T-shirt voting sites
A Better Tomorrow (Germany), www.a-better-tomorrow.com
Camiseteria (Brazil), www.camiseteria.com
LaFraise (France, Germany, UK, Norway, Finland), www.lafraise.com
Just 4 T (Belgium), www.just4t.com
Koalala (Belgium), www.koalala.net
Split The Atom (UK): www.splittheatom.com
Threadless (US): www.threadless.com
Teetonic (Scotland): www.teetonic.com

Source: research, HipHipUK.

Note: This post is back-dated (couldn’t get Internet access yesterday).

This is the second design of our graffiti series. The pocket will obviously be placed on the top left of the tee. We’re still debating which T-shirt colour to use (most likely silver) and whether to include the illustration of a graffiti artist (most likely not).

It was the perfect setup to hit the road again. With Flatmate having both sets of keys and travelling on business, I returned to London locked out of the flat. For the first few days, I crashed at my friends’ places on the West side. But for the weekend, I looked at other options and found cheap last minute tickets to Madrid, home of the party people.

On my first night, I figured that staying at a hostel would be a good way to meet people. No luck. The couple places I tried were full. So I did what I think Madrileños would do: I stored my bags at the hotel I booked for Sunday (the next day the girl at the reception gave me a disapproving look) and went to party until the noon check-in time.

For the first 4 hours, from 10pm to 2am, I wandered around the neighbourhoods near Gran Via, the city’s major street, and scouting discotecas (clubs) listed on a weekly magazine. When my feet relented, I went to The Room at Stella’s without having a real clue what type of place it was. Boy did I luck out.

It was the kind of club I’d go if I lived in Madrid, with unpretentious revellers in their 30s dancing all night to electro, techno house. All it was missing was a bit of kick or a darker sound weaved into the electro beat, as they do so well in Germany.

The hardest part of the “night” was surviving the 8am until noon lull. With city officials curbing late night excesses, after-hour parties usually don’t start until late in the morning or in the afternoon. To kill time, I went all the way north to the Chamartin train station (the other alternative was the airport, which is cheap and easy to get to), had some churros, and dozed off for maybe 30 minutes.

On Sunday, after a good five hours of sleep, I went all the way to the ‘burbs to Fabrik, which hosted an “after “called GOA that runs from 2pm until midnight. After spending almost an hour in the metro, I got off the Fuenlabrada Central station and the inevitable occured. There were no taxis in sight. I guess I should’ve taken a cab from the city, but with that kind of money I could’ve printed at least 3 T-shirts.

Anyway, I’m glad the way things turned out. The party I went to instead was amazing, and played the electro sound that keeps you going all night.

I arrived at Maxime, an underground-chic club adjacent to the Puerta de Toledo station, at around 8pm to a packed gay/mixed crowd (mid-20s to mid-40s) strutting non-stop their dance moves and in some cases their beefy bodies. The room erupted when the DJ played Wally Lopez’s Strike Me Down and Rene Amesz and Peter Gelderblom’s remix of Waiting For by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

When the party ended at 1am, I hopped on the train back to the city centre and, since it was on the way to the hotel, took a peek at Bash, which hosts a popular night on Sunday. From the few minutes I was there, the party on Sunday night seemed like a tamer and younger version of Maxime (but still packed). It probably gets better later at night since Madrileños go clubbing starting at 2am but at that point I was ready to grab some lunch - crisps and a chocolate bar - the only food I could find at that time.

We’ll see if la movida also runs in full gear on a Monday night.