Andy Seifert

It would’ve been difficult, even frustrating to find the new but sign-less Threadless retail store in the Lakeview neighborhood if there hadn’t been a few dozen scruffy-looking college-aged kids patiently sitting outside, calmly waiting for the uber-popular Web site’s first store to open its doors. "We toyed with the idea of possibly opening up in whatever city has the most Threadless customers … the idea being if it’s even somewhere in South Dakota, we’d go there," Retail Projects Manager Ursula Arsenault says.

Around half of the store’s first customers are here for the shirts; the other half anxiously waits for free tickets to the Hey Mercedes/Anathallo Threadless-celebration show, though that crowd browses as well. Matt Strysik, a member of the Hey Mercedes-first, Threadless-second function, says he is "willing to sell my soul for tickets. If I didn’t go to the show, I was going to kill myself."

Inside, the store immediately draws the eyes to LCD screens sitting above each t-shirt design, displaying specific aspects of the shirt as seen on the Web site, like numerous pictures and comments from users (predictably positive). Large, graffiti-like paintings hang on the walls prominently, each featuring snippets of the shirts currently being sold at the store.

"It’s got that new Threadless smell. It smells like when you open up the box," says Nabeel Shaikh, who’s submitted some designs to the site (all denied) and was the first person in line. "That giraffe, I can’t get my eyes off of it. I made a shirt like a giraffe, remember?"

"Ooh yeah! But this is way better than yours," says friend Christie Luechen, as they comment on a design that hypothesizes there are little men operating a giraffe from inside a control room.

(2007-09-18)

Also by Andy Seifert

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