Swiftlabel is now registered in Quebec. The most difficult part was figuring out how to sort out the relationship of the new entity with Swiftlabel LLC, the company we first registered (we did so as the LLC, which doesn’t exist in Canada, provides protection for partnerships and skirts corporate taxes so we’re not taxed both on income and dividends).

One possibility was to establish it as a subsidiary of Swiftlabel LLC. But then we’d have to incorporate the business and handle a pile of administrative work.

Instead, we registered Swiftlabel Quebec as a sole proprietorship and formed it as an independent entity whose sole purpose is to process transactions for Swiftlabel LLC for a small fee.

Doing so frees us from the red tape shackles of an inc. business, so we can concentrate on the T-shirt business, and reduces our tax burden, so maybe one day Business Partner can buy a yacht.

I’m back in Montreal for a couple months. No it’s not to avoid April showers in London. Over the next several weeks, I have to take care of some admin stuff like registering the company in Quebec, opening a business banking account and getting an Internet merchant account to handle payment on our site. This long-drawn-out series of paperwork is mainly why we stuck with Paypal for the February launch.

If all goes well, we should have 6-9 new tees, model shots of the T-shirts, and an in-house payment option by the end of April, when the T-shirt wearing season begins in the Northeastern Seaboard and in Europe.

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.

We’re doling out freebies through the good folks at I love your T-shirt. Submit your answer on their site to win one of 3 tees we’re giving away each week in March.

It’s time for some consistency. Our blog never got our full attention during the past four months, as we were often wrestling with time to get the store launched. Now that that we’ve crossed this hurdle, we’re aiming to add content five times a week as we’ve done this week.

Here’s our planned editorial calendar:

Monday
Nightlife and music: sharing our insatiable thirst for entertainment and our interest in electronic music.

Tuesday
T-shirts: announcing our T-shirt projects and releases, and showcasing the cool work of other colleagues in the tee business.

Wednesday
Strictly business: commenting on Swiftlabel and the business side of the streetwear and T-shirt industry.

Thursday
Urban and web exploration: spotting hip stores, areas and sites all over the world.

Friday
Open: anything goes.

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