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Public Art
By: Tama Swan, Associate Editor
Issue: 2010mar

A sportswear supplier looks to consumers for on-trend, can’t miss t-shirt designs.

The practice of crowdsourcing is a phenomenon that few businesses saw coming but many are now facing head on. Essentially, crowdsourcing is inviting anyone to submit ideas, solutions or product and software designs and then producing and selling them back to those who thought of them in the first place. It’s the basis for offerings from t-shirt giant Threadless.com and Apple Computer’s App Store, and it was even the genesis for Proctor & Gamble’s popular broom, the Swiffer.

But nothing has been influenced by crowdsourcing as much as the t-shirt, and no one has been as influential in the movement as young people. In fact, these two groups are the focus of Bay Shore, New York-based supplier MV Sport’s (UPIC: WPMV) new venture with internet start-up firm VoteForArt.com. Together the two companies work to give college students and sports fans the opportunity to design t-shirts for their favorite teams and then vote for the best design, which is then printed and sold in the school’s bookstore.

“It gives fans of the university and students a chance to really choose what they would want to wear,” says Jeremy Parker, founder and president of VoteForArt.com.

The agreement between the two firms has Parker working with the website, artists who submit designs and the voting public. MV Sport’s responsibility is to use its existing relationships with schools and their bookstores to get licensing permission and to produce the shirts.

“There are certain things you can and cannot do with a college logo, and we understand those,” explains Byron Reed, marketing director for MV Sport. “We go in and prep the schools ahead of time, explaining what we want to do and getting the art approvals.”

The first school to participate in the program was Indiana’s Purdue University, which welcomed its first crowdsourced tee in December. Parker says the launch couldn’t have gone better in light of the rush deadline the school needed. The process of soliciting designs and voting on a winner typically takes 50 days. Purdue had its shirt design in 10.

“Despite the short time frame, we got more than 200 design submissions in that 10-day period,” Parker says. “And the winning design was featured on the front page of the student paper.”

But the best design gets more than press and bragging rights; VoteForArt.com and MV Sport give each winning designer a cash award and two percent of profits from the sales of their shirt on the website.

Since the program started late last year, Parker says five major schools have signed up, including Arizona State, the University of North Dakota and Oregon State.

How A Crowdsourced Tee Is Born
1. A university or college gives the program the green light.
2. VoteForArt.com solicits design submissions.
3. MV Sport works with the school to narrow down the designs to 15-20.
4. The school-approved art is posted on VoteForArt.com for voting.
5. The top five designs are reviewed by school officials, MV Sport and VoteForArt.com.
6. A winner is selected and the shirts are produced and sold at bookstores, sporting events and on the web.

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