As we’ve said before, we know that we’re not the first t-shirt community out there. What we’re hoping will help set us apart is how we’re really raising the bar for the definition of community by sharing ownership in the ideas!

Original photo by Bryan Loar

In the Choice100, it’s not just about a group of designers working with each other to create awesome t-shirts and explore the realm of t-shirt design, but also about a group of designers being given an opportunity to be decision makers for the future of ChoiceShirts. That’s pretty awesome, for an established company with a successful business model like ChoiceShirts’ to give up some control and realize the power of the empowered.

Our exact method of sharing ownership is still being defined (want to help? check out the question of the day at the bottom!). The goal is to have an enlightened and empowered body of talent not only as a resource for the ChoiceShirts, but use the resources that Choice can provide (marketing, sales, and low overhead direct-to-garment printing) to the benefit of the designers that participate. This is a mutual type of ownership that is unique, in our opinion, since it lessens the chance for designers to feel like they are being taken advantage of and really puts the focus on letting them shine. Our thought is, if you do well, we can do well. So why not do whatever we can to help you do well?

In other contest-driven sites, where designs simply get voted on to decide if they go into production, a designer may make it through the gauntlet once, have their product hit the market, and regardless of successful or poor sales, never make it back again. What we hope is that, by fostering a sense of pride from ownership in the process, designers will continue to return with high quality work over and over. Furthermore, the owners will be diverse, lending to a highly diverse decision making process and hopefully, a higly diverse (and therefore increasingly more popular) end product.

Original photo by L. Marie

Think of it this way: how interesting is a community of designers who are all creating the same types of designs? Wouldn’t it be more fun if a designer known more for craft-related tees were commenting on the blog of a designer known for making motorcycle enthusiast tees? I think we’d have some pretty neat commentary coming across the wires!

I think we’re about to discover some people’s hidden passions and interests, just by engaging a diverse community who are all after the same common goal: the success of the Choice100!

And with that, the Question of the Day!

If you could make one decision for any company that you buy from, what would it be?
And get creative, no “I’d tell Apple to give me free computers for life!” answers.

Thanks for your input everyone!