Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless were the featured guests for Business of Design II, held on May 13 at the Alliance Française. Joseph Michael Essex was the moderator.

Threadless is a locally operated, community-based t-shirt company. “Without you baby, there ain’t no us!” reads the Web site, where designs are submitted and scored by the public. The highest scores are then voted on by all Threadless staff members and evaluated by a brand-maintenance committee (to check for copyright infringement and keep the selections fresh). The final say for any given submission comes from Jake, CSO, and Jeffrey, CCO. Winners are paid a nice stipend. Nine new t-shirts come out weekly.

The company began eight years ago when Jake began doing it as hobby. “I didn’t start Threadless as a business” he said, “but it’s great to see how it has snowballed into a pathway for artists.” What began as a sideproject is now a full-time job for 60 employees, with 90,000 shirts sold each month. Recently, the duo hired a CEO. “We don’t fool ourselves into thinking that we’re the smartest people alive,” said Kalmikoff.

Neither one of them went to business school, but grew Threadless using “a lot of common sense,” said Nickell. “Although,” added Kalmikoff, “that’s not to say there weren’t failures.” While learning along the way, they remained benevolent in their approach. The two talked about being responsible to their customers and their employees while stressing the importance of community feedback, knowing their audience and being true to the project.

Notably, the company does no outward marketing and the R&D aspect of their business is built right in. What’s more, Web-savviness has served them well: the key to their success is proprietary software that keeps the process streamlined. However, an intuitive sense for what’s cool surely doesn’t hurt.

To learn more about Threadless, shop for t-shirts or submit a t-shirt design, visit the Threadless Web site.