Isn’t TeeTurtle the company started after Ramyb got banned from Woot for stealing their shirt designs?
@Narfcake can give you the history.
Yes, it’s Ramyb’s company. No, the shenanigans were those of his GF at the time.
There was three major accusations from the critics here at the time: “phoning in” the designs, ballot stuffing (the derby votes) and sales manipulation to stay on the reckoning (now called the top 20).
The first accusation was that in which self proclaimed critics said “it looks like you barfed this out in an hour” – but that one wasn’t just an accusation. Some of his designs really were done in about an hour as that was all the extra time he had back then. He wasn’t the only artist to crank out designs that quickly, however, and such comments slowly faded away.
The second was cleared when one of his designs was chosen as an editor’s choice after not winning its original derby nor the double-take derby. Not only did it outsell all the other designs that week, it outsold all the designs from the double take derby. And those of the original derby it participated in. And it outlasted all those other designs in the subsequent weeks. This for a geeky non-kawaii design, not of his “signature style”, so it wasn’t something that would have even stood out as his. Wooters just bought it up! …
… which leads to the biggest accusation of sales manipulation. During the time, there was no back catalog; the only way a design stayed selling was to remain in the reckoning; 20 move on, the rest got relegated to the archives. Monday at noon was always a contentious time as there were often designs in 21st to 24th that suddenly jumped above 20 in the preceding hour.
I was convinced! For over a year, I tracked the daily sales of every shirt offering. The debut day sales and the daily sales – all of it fed into a spreadsheet I made that reverse engineered the calculations and showed how well a design was selling or not selling. And it allowed predictions for what will stay and showed just how close it can be. And it all proved … the opposite. For many weeks, the difference between 20th and 21st was just a few more sales over a span of 4 weeks. In one week, 7 designs sold exactly the same amount and a six sale span between 14th and 24th. Ultimately, it revealed that his designs were not suddenly purchased to keep it bumped up, that there were designs from other artists that did, and that shirt.woot sales were really really crazy back in the days.
All cleared! Sunshine and lollipops! And then, shirt.woot changed the blanks …
He has some great food designs.
I think I recall some of this back in the day. (Fun to be getting old enough to say that) I wasn’t on the previous iteration of forums much yet bought t-shirts and swag from here, Think Geek, and Threadless a lot.
The later used to also do contests and design submissions. They had to change a few things on the business end as other artists were (rumored) to have designs stolen. Some artists also do sell via Red Bubble, Etsy etc and multiple platforms so keeping dibs on design control is tricky.
Over decades now where artists are still fighting over trademarks and their work.
Is it interpretation, flattery inspired by or ripping off?
Just cause someone finds an image online via Google or whatever doesn’t mean it’s free. With AI the legal stuff is getting harder.
~ Don’t mean to rant. Topic brought a flood gate of memories and circumstances where creators/artists I know have fought over their creative image rights.
Four.
Shirt.Woot Catalog
On a different paw, back in the days, a number of derby rules were enacted for … .uh, specific reasons:
129: No bunnies.
130: No bunnies.
131: No bunnies.
132: No bunnies.
135: No bunnies.
138: No bunnies.
139: No bunnies.
141: No bunnies.
142: No bunnies.
143: No bunnies.
146: No bunnies.
149: No bunnies. No penguins.
151: No bunnies. No penguins.
153: No bunnies. No penguins.
154: No bunnies.
158: No bunnies. No hamsters.
159: No bunnies.
160: No kittens, bunnies, or penguins.
177: No penguins.
178: No bunnies.
181: No bunnies.
182: No bunnies.
183: No bunnies. … no kittens or penguins either.
184: No bunnies or penguins.
185: No bunnies. No penguins either.
186: No bunnies, kittens, or turtles.
190: No penguins or squirrels.
194: No anthropomorphic animals
195: No bunnies or squirrels.
212: No turtles.
(And to elaborate on my earlier “And then, shirt.woot changed the blanks …”, read the writeup here.)
Threadless was the pioneer in crowdsourced designs; shirt.woot came later. At some point, Threadless dropped artists commissions to as little as 25 cents – and so, artists left, never to return back. The diminishing quality with the blanks and print quality didn’t help matters either.
Design theft was an issue then, and an even bigger issue nowadays with print-on-demand sites. One aspect that has changed in the past decade is that both Threadless and shirt.woot no longer have exclusive printing rights by default, giving artists greater options.
No, man, they finally got banned bc of stealing a design. It was World Nom-ination with a cat gnawing on the earth. I remember this clearly, bc despite all the accusations, I just liked most of the designs and owned plenty.
The real problem despite switching from American Apparel on the blanks was, just as I lost my job and I had to stop my t-shirt buying habits, they were bought out by Amazon and they switched to print on demand. When I finally decided to chase down something from the back catalogue I missed, I found out that both the dailies and past works do this. The print sucks and that’s even if it doesn’t just crack and wash away.
He wasn’t involved with that design in context, however.
I feel your timeline is a bit off …
June 30, 2010 - Amazon buys Woot.
February 21, 2012 - shirt.woot changes the blanks.
February 22, 2012 - Ramyb starts Teeturtle.
November 2012 - Back catalog open to reprints via DTG … and quickly closed due with a 3 month backlog of production due to overwhelming demand. After production caught up, production limits were enacted. DTG was for back catalog only; dailies, top 20, and most plus sales were still screen printed.
March 23, 2013 - Last Ramyb derby entry design prints. FWIW, it sold 2,461 copies on its debut day.
July 2016 - All production moves to DTG. Prior to this, all dailies, the majority of the top 20, and some plus sales were screen printed.