The Winner in Threadless' Department-Store Deal: Nordstrom

Hip crowdsourced T-shirt company Threadless is testing out selling its tshirts in Nordstrom (JWN) stores, the Chicago Tribune reports. While expanding this deal would be great for Nordstrom, it could backfire on Threadless, eroding its credibility with its artsy-designer community.

While Nordstrom has been doing well in recent months, all department stores generally have the same problem: Lack of unique merchandise. They also struggle to connect with younger shoppers.

The Threadless deal helps Nordstrom with both of these issues. Because Threadless puts out a lot of new designs -- their goal is seven per week -- Nordstrom should be able to offer an ever-changing array of T-shirt styles, which helps its apparel department look fresh.

Of course, Nordstrom will have to carefully evaluate the designs Threadless wants to ship them to avoid offending anyone. This is a tricky area, as it's often hard to tell who'll be offended by what. Perhaps some communist shoppers wouldn't like last year's most popular shirt, The Communist Party, which shows Mao and other leaders wearing party hats. Probably not, but you never know.

The upside for Threadless could be a massive ramp-up in sales, if Nordstrom rolled out the brand to all its stores. But this kind of mass-market success probably isn't a good fit for the Threadless brand, even though company marketing vp Cam Balzer recently told Forbes the shirt designers are open to the idea.

If the community is happy to sell more shirts, that's great -- but that doesn't solve the problem on the consumer side. Teens buy Threadless shirts because they're not in stores. They're more one-of-a-kind. Once hundreds of copies of a Threadless design are selling in Nordstrom, they're just another T-shirt everybody at school will turn up wearing.

Maybe Nordstrom can solve this problem by only selling a few of each style at each store and selling a wider variety of styles. That approach would create some real merchandise-management challenges for Nordstrom, but would keep the exclusive feel for shoppers. That might allow the Threadless addition to be a real win for both sides.

Photo via Flickr user Hans van de Brueggen
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