Threadless: Still beloved

Well I can only imagine the folks at Threadless must be pretty darn happy with their recent Inc. cover story. I mean, “Most Innovative Small Company In America,” it doesn’t get much better than that! If you somehow still are not familiar with Threadless, and why it’s so popular among democratization-of-everything biz theorists, the piece offers a comprehensive and extremely positive overview. (I attempted to make some different points about the Threadless model in this 7/8/07 Consumed.)

A few minor things interested me the most, though they were not the focus of the piece:

1. There’s passing mention of the break between co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart; the latter is still on the board but “no longer works at the company,” and declined to be interviewed. I wonder what the story is there? Has someone else written about that and I missed it? The article says DeHart “had lost interest in expanding Threadless.” Why? This made me curious about what he’s up to, and I sort of wished for a sidebar about him.

2. The company’s Naked & Angry sub-brand or spinoff or whatever it is, is described as coming “later this year.” This idea has sort of been in a beta mode for an awfully long time. I’m sure curious to see what it develops into.

3. On a related note, I either didn’t know or had forgotten that Insight Venture Partners has a stake in Threadless. I wonder what this implies about the brand’s future? It doesn’t sound like they would have needed venture money, since the story says they’re making 30% margins. And by and large, venture capitalists are looking for blow-out growth, or rather blow-out valuation increases (and “liquidity event”). Threadless has started opening stores, and according to the story is open to other retail arrangements (including Urban Outfitters under the right circumstances). No doubt Threadless is a good business, but I don’t see it being an IPO candidate unless they make some pretty radical steps.

None of this is meant to suggest I see any particular trouble on the horizon for Threadless. I don’t. But they do seem to be reaching a crossroads of some kind. It’ll be interesting to see which way they go.

(Related: In addition to the aforementioned Consumed column, I did a Q&A here on Murketing with Threadless star Glenn Jones about his own brand.)