before thread. Lis. My personal experience with T shirts was, You go to the mall and you buy like, uh, logo T shirt like Gap or bomb equipment, Abercrombie or whatever it literally has, like the company's logo on it and that just I hated that. Like, why am I gonna I'm paying money to promote some big organization that I don't care.

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Simple Bit Show, a podcast for creative people hosted by a puppet. That's me, Dan Cedar Home. It feels good to be back. Last spring, I decided to retire from Dribble Company that my friend Rich Cornett and I co founded about 10 years ago, and it was after that. It's reflecting on what I learned over the course of that 10 years that I, uh, up writing an article about those those lessons that I learned. And I figured, Hey, why not make a podcast about the things that I've learned in also interviewing other creative people, designers in business people about what they've learned that one of those lessons learned was start

with a T shirt? And that's because enduring dribbles early days when we finally had a beta ready for people to try. We ended up sending 50 T shirts out dribble T shirts with a handwritten card, inviting some friends and respected colleagues to try out the site. And I think, you know, sending them a T shirt in a way, kind of guilted them into actually checking out what way had made. Ah, but it also set the tone for, you know, the talent that was sharing the work and what kind of work would shared. So it was a really critical time. Um, Tiu start that community on the right foot. I also recently started a T shirt pin patch hat print brand called Adventure Supply Company, and I'll be sharing.

The journey of that business Here is well, because I really don't know what I'm doing. I never have. So hey, I thought, If we're gonna talk

T shirts, we have to talk to Jake Nickell, founder and CEO of Thread Lis, the T shirt community that's going on 20 years strong. That is the dictionary definition of crowd sourcing and crowdsourcing for good. That is better, wonderful platform for artists, and I've been a huge fan for a long time, in a fan of Jakes as well. I can't thank him enough for taking a chance on this first episode and being our guest to talk to talk T shirts. Today's episode is sponsored by My Friends Metal Lab at premier agency that builds interfaces for tiny startups up to Fortune 50 companies like Lonely Planet, Slack, Google, Apple, Disney and the Air Just awesome, and I really appreciate them stepping in to sponsor this, uh,

this inaugural episode of the Civil Bit show. So let's get to it and talk with Jake Nickell about T shirts and business in life, on hiking in Colorado, Alien life and much more help We enjoy it. What is it about T

shirt? Because I have always loved them, too. In a I don't know, I was a huge fan of thread less when you guys started. Have you always loved T shirts or is it just kind of stumble on it or curious about history with them? I mean, I think T shirts they're just the perfect way to, like show the world what you're about without and having to talkto anybody actually like walking down the street. You can wear your shirt that describes who you are makes a quick statement. I mean, I was thinking back to the first tee shirt I ever made, and I think it was in my art class. And it was like a lithograph print or something. Who, uh and it was just I was into graffiti at the time, so I made,

like, illustration of a spray can and printed it on a shirt and then later made shirts for my skate team in, you know, for music I like. I was when I went toe band, you know, a concert. I would ah, make the shirt in advance, you know, to support the band that I'm seeing. So ah, sweet too. Just like a fae. A fan version of the shirt. Yeah,

I would just make my own fan shirts rather than spending the 30 bucks at the concert. I guess it was more like 12. Expectant? Yeah. It always was expensive that Yeah, it always felt like too much. I was a real poser skateboarder, too. Well, I was thinking about this recently, and I realized that I'm not actually in my memory. I was a skateboarder, but I totally was a roller blade. Er Oh, nice that. Whatever happened to roller blading?

Yeah, I got way into, like, aggressive inline skating. Well, doing handrails and stuff in Chicago was fun. Oh, like like like skateboard tricks. But with roller blades, Right? Exactly. Yeah. Which seems, ah, way harder to me. Our team name was Team reflection.

And so we made, like, some brighter hoodies for team reflection. Um, and one of the guys are head of digital A threat list, actually. Still has his because he was on the team back then. No way. Yeah, that's amazing. So it started like it started, like, organically with you. Like wanting to brand yourself or your team and yeah, yeah, and even,

you know, threat list started as a hobby. It wasn't even supposed to be a business. It was just spending a lot of time on the Internet forum called dreamless, and it was filled with artists. Um and so I just wanted to make t shirts out of, you know, the favorite. My favorite artists on the forum. Um, so, yeah, I was just kind of for fun. Wow. So that's where the name comes from. To the thread.

Look. Yeah, threat list started as a thread on dreamless. Oh, okay. Wow. Yeah. The 1st 5 designs came from literally. I started a thread on the on the forum saying I had just designed a shirt for this event that took place in London. And it was Ah, it was a competition for who got toe, whose design got to be the official event T shirt and my eye one and literally like an hour after that. I started this thread asking people toe post designs into it, and I'll turn him into T shirts. That's how it got started, while so right off the bat to it was like,

Ah, you know, getting other artists involved. Yeah, not just you making designs. And it was even kind of a competition right off the bat because they're a couple 100 designs posted in that thread, but I couldn't make all of them minimum quantities and stuff. So, um, you know, we actually, as a community kind of pick the top five by commenting on which ones were like, the best and stuff. And I made five and sold them at cost. Basically, I always want to nerd out with you on the productions toe.

It's, like, ridiculous. I don't know how. Uh, there's interesting that is everybody, but yeah, right. But I mean, early on, Like, you know, I assume screen printing was the only way to do it back there. Yeah, screen printing. And not only that,

very limited colors, you know, we had limitations. And how many colors could be in your design, cause we could only do, um, you know, two or three screens to start. It was my co founders founders onto did the production just hurt? Okay, so there's a lot of limitations there and then screen printing. The advancements were just crazy, too. I mean, there's presses with, like,

20 screens on it. Um wow, where you can do crazy, you know, amounts of colors and such. But And then yet the whole digital thing has completely changed the game. Is that where it's at, You know, you see, like the future of Yeah, I mean it printing, digital or for anything less than, um, even like, 72 units. I mean,

you can you can get the pricing out of digital that you can out of screen printing almost these days. And the quality is just blowing up. I mean, literally. You can tell differences every couple of months in quality improvements. And you know, there's certain graphics that I think print better quality than a screen print when you have a lot of radiance or, you know, like a photo realistic type print through. That's how are you doing with a bunch of screens? Oh, my gosh, yeah, yeah. And then the minimum quantities for that kind of stuff. You know,

for every screen you add, just increases, set up costs and minimum quantities just get blown up. But, you know, it's like any other industry going digital. Whether you know, music and photography. You're probably good examples, but, um, I think for a while, you know, people were concerned. If there's a phone in every pocket with a nice camera, are like photographers not gonna be relevant anymore.

But they're totally relevant. You could still make really great T shirt design and really bad T shirt design. The print meant that is kind of that doesn't matter, I guess. Yeah, No, that's a great example. That's so true. Yeah, music. Do you write like anybody can ever has a recording studio in their pocket. Yeah, And there will always be a love for vinyl or, you know, film. But yeah,

h have their place. And what school is with each of those. When an industry like that goes digital, there's kind of all kinds of new, exciting business models that form around it. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Like, you know, with digital music going from stealing MP three's toe, selling them for 99 cents to streaming. You know, I mean, um, trained where we spent a lot of time a threat was thinking about,

You know, what is what is digital gonna mean for for fashion and yeah, I bet I feel like you're really pushing the envelope there in, you know, with your artist shops, for instance, which is so cool. And this is not nobody's paying me. Or I should say, Jake's not paying you to say this, but, like, it's very cool that literally anyone could start a T shirt shop. How? Thanks. It was so cool.

It was funny. You know, a lot of the first uses of digital printing were marketplaces, like going back to cafe press and Zazzle spread shirt. All right, then there's kind of a new wave of them with society six and red bubble and such. But we kind of thought, you know, maybe we build a marketplace at some point, But eventually it would be cool if artists could have their own shop and not just be one in 100,000 artists on the same website but have a shop for their own brand. Right? And Bruce. And so we kind of just started there like week. That was gonna be a version seven of what we're gonna build on them were like, Let's just do that now because that's really exciting. It's funny,

like a lot of those artists who originally I got to know on dreamless never submitted designs to thread Lis because they didn't wantto the point wasn't toe compete with other artists and, you know, have a one in 1000 chance of being printed. But with artist shops, you see some of them actually starting up their own shop because they love the idea of, you know, having their own brand. Yes, totally. Yeah, it's pretty. And with with zero risk, that's what's incredible, like, Yeah, I mean with,

you know, without the digital printing, the minimums. You know, for some people, just getting started, the minimums or too much, and there's just he almost kind of get a feel defeated before he started. So yeah, for sure. And being able to offer such a wide range of product and letting your customer juice like, I mean, my kids school have an artist shop and for the over kids and horns and stuff to choose what they want rather than the school doing like a a run of, you know, 100 shirts and various sizes. Um,

they can choose, like, endless silhouettes and color ways and stuff like that. So it's gonna go you mentioned earlier, like thread Lis. You know, he didn't start intentionally, or it was a side project, which, which I love that's anything I've done has been a side project that happens. Toa get subtraction or whatever. Yeah, and, um because I know you actually posted about this recently on Twitter. It was fascinating because you you had a I guess the company is skinny. Corporate is the the umbrella.

And you guys tried a whole bunch of different things, and I remember a lot of them, actually. Um and it was like a cool trip down memory lane to see you must have a great team together right there. It's just wanted to build cool stuff and see what sticks. Oh, man, I don't even know how we did. It was like, every day, a new idea. And we're like, Yeah, let's just do it. And then all night coding and yeah, I mean,

we started dozens of these little websites with for little ideas and, um, yeah, it's ton of fun. I try to focus it now, underneath the umbrella of thread Lis, like, we still come up with new concepts. But I feel like the the hardest part in getting traction on something like that is, you know, the marketing side, Like actually getting people to come to your website. Yeah, and so what? Drew birds? If you have a bit of that and you're starting something new,

it's nice to be ableto leverage it. You know, the web, right? Made that so possible. Yeah. Ah, fresh. Like tea. Just try things out on without much risk. Um, what was the turning point for? Like Okay, One of these things is working really well. Let's focus on that you know, it was what was the thing that made it jump to that?

Well, so I'd say the 1st 2 years and thread. Lis is 19 years old, so we're talking. 2000 to 2002 was really just a hobby side project. I was working a full time job when I quit. My job started Skinny Corp. And the idea was that we would build websites for clients, so we actually were a Web consultancy firm for a long time. We built what else I really like Kohler, Office Depot, McDonald's. And we ended up doing a lot of the agency work here in Chicago, mostly with Flash, actually cause wrote a lot of agencies they want to do flash projects, but they don't have any flesh talent on staff.

So we do that work. And then it was in, I think, 2000 for another two years. And we're like we looked at the end of the year bank account were like, Oh, we've been spending 90% of our time doing client work 10% of our time on thread lis. But thread loose is really making the most money, you know? Yeah. So then we fired all of our clients. Um, but we didn't realize then that we should be focusing on thread. Lis are thought was we should be building all these new cos that's when we started all these new internal projects, like naked and angry and 15 minutes of fame human. I park like an idiot.

You know all these things on, uh, then we're running those for another couple of years. Um, and I don't think it wasn't till maybe 2008 Like, eight years into the business where we said, OK, guys were focusing on Fred Lis. It's gonna be threat, Lis. Wow. He really took us quite some time to figure that out. Well, I I just remember buying church from thread. Listen, the really early days,

and at the time, he was actually hard to find, like, good T shirts. You know that That Yeah, that weren't already part of a brand or whatever. And so I just immediately loved it just because you were I never I didn't think of it at the time. I just knew that you were exposing. I didn't know that you were exposing these awesome designers. You know, That way I just thought of it as thread. Lis. That's where I go to get cool shirts, but yeah, before thread Lis, my personal experience with T shirts was you go to the mall and you buy like,

uh, logo T shirt like gap or bomb equipment. Abercrombie, whatever it literally has, like the company's logo on it and that, Yeah, exactly hated that. Like, why am I gonna I'm paying money to promote some big organization that I don't care about. Right. And then there was music and music is what I were. I mean, I always bought, you know, T shirts of my favorite bands and stuff, but never really saw anywhere Artwork on T shirts and,

you know, started threat list as a hobby to be able to do that. But never thought that anybody else would share that. You know, the concept that would also want to wear artwork on T shirts? That's been the I think one of the most surprising things with thread Lis is in the early days, I was just like, Why do so many people want this stuff? Yeah. Yeah. And now, But now everyone's making T shirts. Yeah, I feel like art on T shirts like he said, no one was doing that. And now it's really prevalent.

Oh, yeah, you know, threat. This is concept is is really interesting with the contest idea and the fact that, you know, you're sort of crowd sort crowdfunding or crowd lets the crowd sourcing is what we're first crowdsourcing first kind of aligned with you. In this case, it's It's It's like good crowd crowdsourcing to me and and obviously there there are bad examples of it, too, for designers and with spec working and get into that kind of stuff with with, uh, with some things. But, like, have there been any controversy with on the thread lis side with that or you guys?

Yes, you're clear of it. And we're able to treat the artist you know properly, right? Yeah. Crowdsourcing is a term that was invented in 2004 by this guy named Jeff. How? And it actually got added to the dictionary that year, and he used your loss as the example of what it iss like. Wow, No way actually started getting all this weird. Like we're a case study at Harvard Business School for crowd sourcing their M I T media lab invited us. We went there and talked to them a bunch of, ah, about the concept and we actually, this was in like,

Oh, fordo six that got it almost like, took over like I was speaking a lot about it and I, uh, it honestly, like I don't like that period of thread Lis because I look back at it like it just felt like we're taking ourselves too seriously. And we invented this new form of business. And now I look back and it's like we're just making stuff with friends. That's it's not crowd sourcing was making snow together with friends. But yeah, there's a lot of companies that have started. You know, I think there's crowds. Spring and 99 designs were a couple of big ones with the logo design room. And that gets a suspect work issue that you're talking about. Where you know there's a contest for a florist to get a new logo and,

you know, 500 people, 500 designers submit logo ideas and one gets paid, and it's like $100 right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, I think we got grouped into that bucket a little bit. I feel I feel that throw. This is different because it's it's not. There's no speck like we're not saying design a logo. It's It's all artwork in its artwork that would be created, whether it's submitted to thread lis or not, it's exactly like should somebody not take a photo unless they have somebody lined up to buy?

Or should somebody not paint a painting unless they have somebody lined up to buy it? Um, it's a great point. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, honestly, like And I think the artists obviously retains ownership over whatever they're submitting, right? Yeah, and they can go get it made anywhere. But I do think crowdsourcing is interesting in terms of like, you could build the exact same software behind a crowd sourcing project and use it for evil or use it for good. Like it's kind of like I like to think of the way we use it as, um, we see a crowd of people that are super talented that we could go and help out toe actually helped.

Um, you know, get their workout there, monetize it. Where is somebody else could start it and be like, you know, how do we use this crowd to fulfill our our goal? Internally, there's just two different a man behind it. Oh, totally different, right? Totally different. And that's what I love about what you're doing. And because you're you're giving a platform to artists just getting amore exposure. Yeah, and I mean, I discovered all sorts of things

through through through endless and especially in the early days. Like because

there wasn't a lot out there, there wasn't there wasn't. People didn't have

their own T shirt brands if they, you know. And they discovered so many artists through that which is fantastic and now a little bit more about today's sponsor. For a decade, Metal AB has helped some of the world's top companies and entrepreneurs build products that millions of people use every day. You probably didn't realize it at the time, but odds are used in that, but they've helped design or build absolute slack, coined based Oculus, Facebook messenger, Lonely Planet and many more middle abs wants to bring their unique design philosophy to your project. Let them take your brainstorm and turn it into the next $1,000,000,000 app from ideas sketched on the back of a napkin to a final shipped product. Check them out at meta lab dot Co. That's metal lab dot And when you do get in touch, tell them damn the puppets. So at this point, I wantto actually want to have a couple questions that I want to ask every guest. Yeah, but you're

the 1st 1 So? So if it doesn't work, that I could just change the order. Uh, but I thought it would be cool. Like inside the actors studio style, we share some adventure activities stuff just following you on instagram. I see, like, right and Jakes doing some cool stuff. And he's, you know, he's in Chicago, and he's like, surfing or something. Yeah, or,

well, that's probably not accurate. But, um, really, I thought, you know, tell us about ah, recent adventure that you went on. Um, and it could be an adventure. Could obviously be ah mean anything. Really? Well, first thing that comes to mind is I was I was working from Colorado for a month over the summer, and our good friend of mine,

Lance Kerman, who works thread Lis came with his family, and one morning we woke up at three and we climbed Mount Massive, which is the second tallest mountain in Colorado. It was, um, while over two, it's only a seven mile hike. It's not that long, but over two miles of it you gain 3900 feet of elevation, and it was just killed me. Oh my God. But then you get a crazy thing about this mountain is you get to the top and the Ridgeline. The summit Ridgeline is three miles long. That's why it's called Mountain Full. So you I didn't even know this until after we got there,

and you get to you get to the top and you're like, Where's the summit? And you have to hike a mile and 1/2 along the ridge to get to the middle of ah, where the actual highest point. It's hard. Wow, it was awesome. How was the elevation like was that if I don't have a donor? So in Colorado there's something like 50 mountains that are over 14,000 feet, and I've been trying to climb all of them. But it's tough, like I think I've done about 15 and there are a few that require ropes. And I'm not really that good at that. I'd have to have a friend coming with that knows what they're doing or something. Right? Uh,

wow, that's impressive. In is the elevation. Does it affect you that I don't think I've been that high up before. So I'm always, like, terrified that I The air is very rose. Then up there. I mean, you're definitely breathing a lot harder. I mean, it's not like I think Everest is, what, 28,000 or something? $29? God.

So comparing is at It's crazy, but it's it's still, like, really I up there. Um and you're basically what? I mean, that's like an uphill like you're walking upstairs for hours. Yeah, this is we never needed ropes, but it's the steepest path without ropes that I've ever been on literally for like, two miles. Every step you take, you're gaining like a foot and 1/2 of elevation. Oh, I don't even understand that insane yet. Ah,

Mount Massive. Yeah, risible is of equal heights. And, uh, there's a 18 mile version of it. Most people take that because the seven mile version is just so steep. It's ridiculous. All right. So yeah, the 18 1 more gradual yet the same. Same elevation changes. Well, man, that for the first question, I asked that one.

That's I don't know how people gonna top that. You know that, Alice Crazy. We'll see. My next question is, what are you listening to these days? So you mentioned music being a ah, you know, inspiration for T shirts and stuff back in the day. And, yeah, there's some few bands in the rotation. I think I've been really into this band called Langhorne Slim for a while. Oh, actually, the Abbott Brothers Air doing a like,

three day festival concert down in the Dominican Republic in February, and I'm gonna go to that and wooing Horn is playing. So I'm stoked about that. Oh, my gosh, that sounds that sounds amazing. I love deer tick. And there's this artist Cyrus artist called Vincent McMorrow that I've been listening to a lot. Oh, man. Irish artist? Yeah, like traditional or no more like, um, I don't know, atmospheric.

And, uh, well said other types thinking it's it's funny, like my wife and I took the kids to Ireland, maybe, like three years ago. And we heard this song at a restaurant and we're trying to figure out what it was never did. And then, Sean, we have ah music venue just a couple blocks from us here in our house. And, uh, we went to whatever act was playing on her anniversary one year, like a year after that. And it was him. It was crazy.

No. So if that's a little that's a little cosmic. Yeah. I mean, that's crazy. She zam is great, right? Until it doesn't work. And that's really great. Yeah, exactly. If it's like, too loud somewhere not to use it at the time. Yeah, I I always forget to is it's one of those magical things that yeah, it's cosmic.

Oh, which brings me to my next question. Is there life on other planets? I mean, I I personally feel like there has to be like, there's no question, because I mean, I'm losing face just goes forever. I mean, all possibilities must be there, right? Yeah, I'm with you. That's that's I agree. That's my That's my take on it to you, right?

And if you define life is like, you know, not necessarily people walking around, but you know. Yes, right? Exactly. There's gotta be. Yeah. There's got to be stuff out there. Yeah, it's kind of creepy. Oh, it is. Actually, I'm like,

is this a good question for the podcast? I don't know. I think I think it is in that a seat. I'll I wasn't to get some perspective on things Sometimes when things seem weird. One thing I was asked. All right. I think I saw this on a TV show or something. This stat kind of blew my mind. Where if you had a road go straight up into outer space and you were driving at highway speeds, how long would it take you to get get to outer space? Like, outside of our atmosphere And a little well, guess like, you know, how many days and or weeks even But it will take you, like,

less than an hour to drive straight up in hours to get out of the Amazon. That's insane. Ah, that's crazy. I didn't know that. I mean, I think like, you see, like a shuttle launching or whatever, and Yeah, I don't even I don't think I even know how long those trips are. But those must be like super fast, like you're probably out of the average or within a few minutes on a shuttle with a few minutes, right, A few minutes and then you're in space. How man?

See, it's right there so fragile and in my sort of my last question for you. Maybe it's a harder question. I don't know, but so I'm using this podcast to kind of share stuff I've learned. And then I want to sort of turned the table on Dhe, find out from the guests like what they've learned. And I just thought maybe if you had one thing to share that you've you've learned something, something important that you've learned over the course of of your career, which has been a long stretch. Now, what would that be? Um, I mean, a few things Like, I guess the first thing that comes to mind is Ah,

I think I touched on earlier in the podcast is just how there's always a creative solution to every problem. Um, I think I'm struggled a lot with like, um, you know, you have this something like an issue in front of you and you can't see through it. And just knowing that there is a solution somewhere helps me deal with that. Yeah, Um and even within a project, like if something's taking too long, like, I think there's creative ways, toe speed things up or to think of it in a new way. And, um so I just like to know that there was options and then also, this might be a little dark,

but like, you know, you're not gonna die. Like if your company doesn't do well or something like, um, thread. That's what went bankrupt. Where would I be? Like, it's kind of impossible to even company and and then, like, probably actually be just fine, right? Different but frying Or exactly. I'm curious What your I love anything to share there, too,

with your recent, you know, with retiring from dribble. I think that last one you just said I totally agree with and that was always something that I would ask myself, like in the middle of a a really stressful time or whatever, trying to solve something that seems seems like everything's going wrong and, um and and I would always say They're no lives at stake here, you know, and he like and the oftentimes like. And this goes on with client work. To where, at the time, Sometimes it feels like this is the most important thing ever. And it's a crisis. And you're working overtime and you're getting calls in the middle of the night or whatever it is like and and then, you know,

later on, it's like it doesn't matter. Thing that we're working on is gone or something, and it's like, redesigned whatever it is. And I just I I think I've learned over the years like to keep that in mind and a CZ critical of something seems at the moment it's probably gonna be replaced by something at some point and not to lose sleep over it. Yeah, that's such helpful advice, I think for people like seems like the guy in front of you is just everything sometimes. But actually nobody really cares about this, right? Yeah, that's yeah. Exactly. Yeah, And not to say that like we should discount everything is being not important. But I think I think too often and especially the Web and creative

world, like like you like what you just said. It's sometimes this thing seems like everything, so yeah, but often times it's not right. Right off. Jake. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. This is fun.

I'm excited to be a

long time listener. I'm hoping I'm hoping to make that possible. And I just thank you so much for being being the first guest and playing along way. Can't wait to see what the next 20 years of Jake's creative journey is. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having. Ah, that's a wrap. Thanks for listening, Everyone thanks to Jake Nickell for being the first guest thanks to metal ad for being the first sponsor. Help me out by subscribing to the simple bit show on apple podcasts

or wherever you listen to podcasts Rating. Review us. That would be amazing if you have feedback. Just want to say hi. Guest ideas, sponsorship enquiries, that kind of thing. Shoot me a note at Dan. It's simple bit stock. Calm would love to hear from you. Thanks again and see you on the next episode.