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.

July 20, 2006 | Tags: business

comments

3 Responses to “LaFraise.com sold to SpreadShirt”

Anonymous on July 20th, 2006

blog.delaranja.com � LaFraise.com sold to SpreadShirt

Spreadshirt acquired Lafraise. Here is a nice little wrapup what makes Lafraise special.
The Spreadshirt Blog for Shop Partners » Blog Archive » news updates on July 27th, 2006

[...] News from the top: Lukasz says: 1. we acquired la fraise. (more on this here and from the now-former French CEO (in French) here) 2. mark seremet, our us ceo, will leave us soon. in fact, he already stepped down as a ceo and is doing some consulting for us (dealmaking, helping with teambuilding, interimsmanagement). 3. so, we (=spreadshirt) took some capital from accel partners (london office). that’s a big step for a bootstrapped company… the deal was closed last week and will be announced today or tomorrow officially. Accel invested a few millions and Harry Nelis from the London office will join our board. Point three also includes quotes from the spreadshirt managing directors that didn’t make the press release cut. Including a nice one from Lukasz: “We plan to spend the funds on things that are funny while increasing the valueation of the company at the same time - like our flagship offline store in berlin or throwing some more money at google.” (laughs) “We also hope to prevent wasting money for getting overpaid senior management that will leave us after six months with no effect but hefty severence payments. Please wish us luck.” [...]
hans on September 26th, 2008

Spreadshirt are so great and i love my Spreadshirtshop.

Many People earn a lot of Money with Spreadshirt and i hope that im also a winner of Spreadshirt marketing.

Best wishes Hans.