How does Threadless work?

You are Threadless. You make the ideas, you pick what we sell, you're why we exist.

We love helping art unknowns become art totally-knowns. From our commission-based award system to featuring artists in interviews and tweeting their names to the world to helping them start their very own independent store with our newest endeavor, Artist Shops, we support our artist community in every way possible. Lots of our artists have even gone on to start their own companies, and that’s a huge success in our book.

What started as a t-shirt company has since expanded into a full lineup of apparel, accessories, home decor, and now footwear canvases. We seek out these canvases to give artists more ways to feature their work and for fans to choose the best art, the weird art, the geeky art, the beautiful art. Every time you buy from us, you're supporting great art and artists.

From design challenges to Artist Shops, we are always finding new ways to give creative minds like yourself more ways to get your art seen, to succeed, and to achieve our ultimate goal: to make great together. With our design challenges, all designs printed on Threadless are voted on and picked by the community. Users can submit designs to Threadless, which are then voted on for a 10 day period by other users in the community. Once the scoring period has ended, the design receives a score from 1 to 5. This is used as a gauge by Threadless to decide what gets made into a tee. Artist Shops is the best and easiest platform sell art, allowing you to create hundreds of products in a customized online store for free. It provides all the benefits of a fully functional e-commerce store and none of the hassle, just create art and spread the word.

We're based in Chicago and have been since we opened our doors in 2000, and we couldn't love our hometown more.

Wall Mural by Suburban Warrior; Photo by Annaleah De Masi