Militant Geek Custom Shirts

200 Nipple’s Latest Limited Edition Shirt: “Things Younger Than McCain”

Recently I wrote about a new T-shop on the block, 200 Nipples. They only make 100 shirts at a time and then sell them until a set time is up (until now 2-4 weeks) or all tees are gone. What is unique is that the shirts are priced $1-$100, corresponding with their number in the limited run. At the time I was fairly negative about the startup - going so far as to pitch their idea into the ‘Failed Shirts’ category:

Its an interesting approach and I applaud the guys at 200 Nipples for trying something different. And I could have completely underestimated the interest in a limited run of shirts. But, at this point, I don’t see how this is a sustainable model for either t-shirt buyers or the company.

That was more than a month ago. Yesterday a regular reader pointed me to a Sitepoint piece recapping the company’s runaway success:

The first design sold 36 copies, and second sold 56. But even though the lowest numbered shirts are sold at a loss, the expensive shirts make up for it fast if they sell — and they have been selling.

This month’s design has already sold four shirts above the $80 threshold (including numbers 99 and 100), and half the shirts are spoken for. And if they sell out all 100? Well, their revenue on a sell out t-shirt would be $5,080. The cost to print 100 t-shirts is probably not more than $600 (figure $5 + $1 for the labor to screen print each shirt) and since each is printed on demand, they’re not printing any more than they’re selling.

Are we talking Bill Gates levels of success here? Hardly. And the Sitepoint article correctly points out that there are some daunting scaling challenges of such a model. However, the early success shows that I’ve severely underestimated the number of people willing to pay $50+ for artificial scarcity. I’m not sure whether that makes me happy or sad. Until I figure it out, however, my foot is firmly in my mouth. Congrats to Wade and co.