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Presenting Submissions for Spreadshirts 1st API Contest – Part 1

We promised to take a close look at the submissions for Spreadshirt’s 1st API Contest. Today we present 8 of those submissions (grouped thematically). These apps all have their own answer to the question: how do I get content onto clothing in an easy and unconventional way?

Topic 1: How do I bring existing content from various sources to clothing?

In this area, the Spreadshirt API was used to access information about Spreadshirt clothing, upload photos, create products and add those to the shopping cart for purchase.

ShirtGraph – Pictures from Photo Network Clouds on Clothing

URL: http://shirtgraph.com/
Screenshots:

Description:

Shirtgraph takes photos shot with a smartphone using Instagram or Picplz that are saved in the cloud and simply adds them to clothing. ShirtGraph is a very nice mashup that brings customers’ photos to shirts using a number of different APIs. The wizard in ShirtGraph is really innovative, as it helps you choose the right images and layout so they appear correctly on the product. Read more

14 Submissions for Spreadshirt’s 1st API Contest

Spreadshirt’s first API Contest came to an end on 31 May. Since the beginning of April, we’ve had some creative developers working with our API to create new apps. We were happy to see 14 submissions for the contest – each going for the prizes of €3,000, €2,000 and €1,000 for first, second and third place. But, before we reveal the winners, we want to introduce all of the submissions.

The projects center around the following topics, which incidentally fit very well with our API strategy (see our CEO Phil’s interview with Exciting Commerce):

  • How do I bring existing content from various sources onto clothing, e.g. images from a smartphone, images from social networks, texts from an SMS?
  • How do you create interactive content for clothing, e.g. QR codes, drawn images?
  • How do I integrate content from Spreadshirt into websites, e.g. WordPress or Facebook?
  • How do I create my own shop front-end, e.g. custom layouts, more SEO optimization?
  • How do I create generic shop software for other Spreadshirt shops, e.g. as a shop hoster or reseller?

Many were most likely inspired by the Simplomat examples on the Developer Blog, where we showed how easy it is to use HTML, a little Javascript and the Spreadshirt API to bring images and text on clothing. The Simplomat code was also available for developers to use in the contest.

We will take a closer look at the 14 submissions in two parts over the next two days. Stay tuned!

Apples? Bananas? Cherries? No, More Guava!

We Want More Variety

We’ve got a lot of fruit on our Marketplace and customers have certainly searched there for their favourite produce. Perhaps they were hungry, but we’ll go out on a limb and assume they wanted to have a fruity shirt shirt with fruit on it. And just like any smart fruit and veg seller, we want to offer our customers a wide variety of designs. That’s where we need your help.

Which topics (fruit aside) do you think we need more variety? Post your ideas in the comments below. We’ll select a few topics and let them loose in the Forum for you to add your new designs. Looking forward to your ideas!

An example to prove our point: construction vehicles and equipment. We have a few excavators and cranes (there could certainly be more!), when it comes to jackhammers or cement mixers, customers go away empty handed.

Goodbye Sparkle Colours, Matte-Gold and Matte-Silver

In the next few weeks we are going to deactivate some of our flex foils. All sparkle colours as well as matte gold and matte silver are going to be removed from our system. Why, you ask? We’ve had continued production problems with these specific foils due to their thickness. This leads to quality issues, and we’re sticklers for quality.

We are adding 2 new glitter colours (green-glitter and black-glitter) to cover the change. All current products with these foils will be changed to the following colours:

silver sparkle -> silver glitter
gold sparkle -> gold glitter
champagne pink sparkle -> pink glitter
red sparkle -> red glitter
blue sparkle -> blue glitter
green sparkle -> green glitter
black sparkle -> black glitter
purple sparkle -> deactivated
rainbow sparkle -> deactivated
matte silver -> silver metallic
matte gold -> gold metallic

As you can see “purple sparkle” and “rainbow sparkle” are not going to be replaced with a glitter colour because our vendors don’t offer them (yet). If articles using these two colours aren’t edited before deactivation, they will be removed from your shop and the Marketplace. We plan perform the update on Monday, 20 June. Set loose your comments, questions, opinions, rants and raves below.

Summer Fashion Trends 2011: Flowers, Animals and Shorty Shorts

Summer Trend 2011

It’s getting warmer and I took the opportunity to see what people are wearing (and not wearing). This season luckily it’s not only all about stripes. I will give you an idea of what “do’s” you should definitely have a look at:

Patterns:

Patterns are a sure hit: you really can’t go wrong with some experimentation. It does not matter whether you try floral prints, animal prints, cherries or Asian styles or any other revival from the 70’s! You will definitely be a fashionista when wearing one of these styles! Read more