STRENGTH & WEAKNESSES OF THREADLESS

STRENGTHS
~Threadless makes use of electronic means (by creating a website) for marketing their products to break down geographical barriers where anyone in any part of the world (who has access to the World Wide Web) is able to view, purchase and participate in their activities at any given time. This allows their products to be known world-wide and thus, able to distribut their tee shirts internationally.

~ Threadless has a product focus that is the design of their shirts (which are designed by almost anyone!) and this provides product differentiation. This gives them an edge over competitors in similar industry and hence they are able to capitalize on this edge and sell their tee shirts at a relatively cheaper price compared to shops that sell designer tee shirts.

~ With reference to the point made above, Threadless's website creates a platform for budding designers to showcase and publish their works. At the same time, their works will be critiqued by members of the community which then can be used by the designers to improve on their works. And winning design entries are entitled to cash prizes. This may provide the designers as a source of income and will spur them to produce more designs. In addition, such designers may get 'talented-spotted' by design companies and offered careers.

~ Threadless also provides reasons on why they had to, on some occasion, reject the some of the submitted designs. This form of transparency helps users better understand the decisions that the company makes.

~ Threadless engages users to participate in their activities, besides submitting designs and buying of tee shirts, which is one of their strengths in keeping many users interested as they can rate shirts(on a scale of 0 to 5), give comments, submit and rate slogans, and even take a photo of themselves in a Threadless tee shirt!

~ Threadless's website is well organised and this makes finding things a whole lot easier and faster. It is also easy to understand as there are step-by-step instructions and help guides that make browsing the website (like ordering tee shirts, submitting designs etc) a breeze.

~Threadless also provides measurements of their shirts' sizes so that customers are able to wear them after buying. Hence, this reduces the cost of returning the goods back if the shirts do not fit.

~ The website categorizes their stocks (by line, styles, tees) and provides a search engine, making browsing easier for the users.

~Threadless sends out newsletters to customers (who choose to subscribe to their newsletter when making purchase for tee shirts) as a form of customer retention. This allows customers to be reminded of the website every time they receive an email from Threadless. The website also sends out emails to users when a shirt that they have chosen (in their shopping cart) is limited.



WEAKNESSES

~ Shipping costs are not stated clearly as users have to go through the process of ordering for them to know how much is the shipping costs.

~ Threadless only accepts credit and debit cards. No other payment schemes like Paypal are accepted by the company.

~ Theadless lags in corresponding with customers enquiries and feedback since they may receive large volume of orders at certain periods of time and sent a vague auto-reply which does not satisfy users' queries. This may caused some customers to lose faith in the company as they might feel that the company is not concerned about their customers.

~ Designs can be copied without the designers nor the company knowing, even though they have copyrights law stated in their website.