CROWDSOURCING AND THREADLESS :
In today's world, everyone is using a digital platform for a everything. Today, the concept of digitalization has gained importance in our life. By considering the same, many of the businesses started creating their online reputation. Because the concept digitalization is useful not only the customers but also the businessmen and entrepreneurs. By taking this into a consideration, Jeff Howe defined a concept of "CROWDSOURCING". Now let's see what is Crowdsourcing?
In simple words Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet. In 2006, Joff Howe defined the concept of Crowdsourcing and then in the same year a small scale T-shirt printing firm Threadless, incorporated in 2000, made $18 Billion of profit and 35% of it was from this new concept called Crowdsourcing. It also sold 60,000 T-shirts a month in a same year. Let's see how Threadless exactly implemented this strategy of crowdsourcing and how did he make a success.
By taking the concept of Crowdsourcing in consideration, Threadless started posting an ad for customers through the website containing an offer to suggest the best design and win a cash prize. The biggest advantage is a firm gets a readymade design for their product and they also wins customer satisfaction and loyalty. In year 2006, when Threadless implemented Crowdsourcing strategy, they received 150 design submissions a day and had over 400,000 registered users who voted on which shirts would get made. In 2007, the owner of th firm noted, “every design printed has sold out” since the site launched, and the company opened a Chicago retail store. Threadless’s 10th anniversary in 2010 resulted in a retrospective book and fast company noting: “the T-shirt company has capitalized on a buzz that never seems to fade.”
When an artist submits a design, they tell everyone they know to go vote on it, and then those people join the community and it snowballs. At first, the cash prize was $750 plus $250 in free T-shirts from the site. Now the prize has rose to $2,500 in cash and merchandise.
Though this concept seems to be very useful, it also has some disadvantages. Threadless selects only one design over 1000 submissions. So there is a great risk of the dissatisfaction of a customer whose submissiong are not getting selected even if updating it for many times and thus may result in loss of customer loyalty. This is one of the biggest challenge in crowdsourcing as it may badly affect the business. But it is always said that a profit is nothing but a reward of taking risk and a good entrepreneur always run a business by managing its risks and making continuous innovations. And this is a reason why Threadless, a small scale startup is now a successful business firm.
Comments
Post a Comment