Threadless Case

Threadless case

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Threadless' business model

Threadless uses community business model in its strategy. Community business model is also crowdsourcing; it is a new model applicable in business. Crowdsourcing is a web-based model it focusses on utilizing the advantage that comes out with a distributed network of individuals. Therefore, crowdsourcing can simply be defined as the act of a company or business institution taking of an idea or function that has been performed by its employees and distributed it to a huge network of individuals using open call form.

It can also assume a different form like peer- production, this happens when the job is through collaboration. More often, individuals have also done crowdsourcing. The prerequisite that identifies the use of this model is an open call format system and the distribution to potential laborers who are often huge in number and forms a network like system (Borst 2010. pp. 43).

This method is advantageous in business. It not only helps in creating very high levels of loyalty among the working laborers but also tries to tap the skills and the intelligence of creating innovation from the workers (Vuković 2009. pp. 686–692). This helps in creating and establishing a strong base of users. These users tend to have a sense of pride in them and hence mobilize participation among other users to generate and come up with great benefits and advantages ranging from innovation and marketing.

Crowdsourcing also acts as a method through which alternative ways of solving market research problems can be provided using very low costs. James Surowiecki coined it as “Wisdom crowds” in his book in 2004. If given the right environmental circumstances groups tend to be more intelligent than before and are considered smarter than the people who are operating it from inside. Crowdsourcing is from this idea where problems are averaged to get solutions (Surowiecki 2004. p. 89).

There are millions of desperate ideas in the world; hence, the presence of the internet perfectly serves to provide the best platform where these ideas can be into a successful enterprise. This is what Threadless was able to work on and accomplish. It worked hard to tap the power that was hidden in the crowd that led to a remarkable decline in the expenses of the business resulting to a general decline in costs and increasing the loyalty of the laborers. This method, crowdsourcing, helps in providing a problem-solving model that is in most business. This model can be generalized and used in various industries and business to solving very huge as well as complex tasks (Sharma 2010. pp.1–22).

For the selection of designs, Threadless best makes use of the projects that are community-driven. It works through the asking all its visitors who visit the website to make a decision on the types of designs