LaFraise.com sold to SpreadShirt

Loic introduced me to the LaFraise concept about 2 years ago. It’s been a very interesting small business to follow and now it’s been sold to Spreadshirt. Congratulations to Patrice for his earlier retirement.

Basically, LaFraise is a t-shirt store that lets users submit t-shirts and earn money if other users vote and buy their t-shirts. But LaFraise is a great business and a well executed idea with a great community.

In the last 3 years, Patrice has bootstrapped this business. First by running it from his living-room and outsourcing some of his operations. He’s not a tech guy so, fo example, I remember him looking for e-commerce software options with support-contract to run his store.

Community
One of the things that helped LaFraise get much of the attention was the fact that Patrice was blogging about it. On the left column of the website there was a small Boss’s blog link that was an inovation at the time. Through this blog Patrice engaged in a conversation with its users. He got many suggestions, critical views and ideas but above all he engaged in a conversation that allowed the business to grow based on his users input.

He frequently used the blog to point to special designs or other things that he liked giving it a human side that people really liked.

Occasionally he published the results of his experience (like this A Guide for Startup E-commerce Entrepreneurs) allowing others to learn from him but also giving him an authority voice in his niche.

LaFraise is a great example of a great idea that used the power of the community to build itself into to a great small business.