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A quick chat interview with former Threadless CEO/now CSO Jake Nickell
I chatted with Jake Nickell briefly today and asked him about his recent decision to bounce as CEO and take on a role more focused on strategy and business development, along with what moving to Colorado will mean.
Chris Cardinal: so you decided to sidestep and bring someone else in as CEO?
Jake Nickell: yes so i can focus more on the fun front-end, community stuff, making things awesomer rather than spending so much time figuring out things that are mostly operational problems that have already been solved before.
JN: i’m pretty stoked about it
LT: that’s pretty cool
LT: how are you going to balance the colorado thing?
LT: rather, are you already living in CO?
JN: not till about october probably … and there’ll be a good 10-15 folks working from colorado with me… production, customer service, fulfillment, a lot of tech and all that will still be in chicago … colorado will be more for concepting new initiatives within threadless and advancing/starting other projects.
LT: interesting
LT: that’s real exciting
LT: really looking to finally push some not-so-threadless things, then
JN: yea we’ve had to focus so much the past couple years just trying to maintain our growth and haven’t been able to do as much new stuff as we’ve wanted to. it’ll be nice to separate the maintenance from the new a bit.
JN: as for the not-so-threadless things, N&A definitely will see some major work put into it, we’ve already been working on that like crazy about the past year. and some new, unreleased stuff too… but really the majority of even the colorado office’s work will be threadless things
Johnny Shirtwearer said,
May 26, 2008 @ 11:07 am
Holy shitballs. No wonder Threadless has been taking a dive recently. Their famous slim inventory system seems to be going off the rails (since they have had numerous sales of lackluster product recently) and the designs that are actually being printed these days do not seem to be designs approved by the community. They are making shirts for no one now. Die, Threadless. Die!
Johnny Shirtwearer said,
May 26, 2008 @ 11:44 am
I knew it. They are now focused on selling out big-time… from an article at Inc.com:
In addition to expanding to children’s clothing and retail, Threadless will begin selling prints and posters online. And later this year, the company will add a range of products, including handbags, wallets, and dinnerware, under the brand Naked & Angry. Each item will be adorned with patterns submitted by users, with a new product launched each month. “I think Naked & Angry, if handled properly, has the potential to be way bigger than Threadless, because we have the flexibility to do everything,” says Kalmikoff, who envisions moving into high-end clothing as well as housewares. Jeff Lieberman, managing director of Insight Venture Partners and a board member, is even more bullish. “To say it’s just a T-shirt company is absurd,” he says. “I look at it as a community company that happens to use T-shirts as a canvas.”
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080601/the-customer-is-the-company.html