After over 100 shirt designs submitted and printed, RIPT Apparel is stepping up their game by hiring a staff of curators to seek out new and original artwork for RIPT Tees.
“So far, the artwork submitted to RIPT has blown my expectations away,” explained Design Director Paul Friemel. “After 100 completed designs, we have decided to employ the help of some of our more prolific site members.”
Introducing RIPT Apparel’s first four curators:
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Jaden Kale – Jaden is well known amongst the online tee-shirt community. As one of the most consistent and vocal visitors to riptapparel.com, Jaden was an obvious choice due to her reputation and commitment to the online community as a whole.
dreamingattwilight.blogspot.com/ -
Sean Naylor – Sean will spearhead RIPT Apparel’s search for fresh art from the West Coast of the US. He also is the brains behind DCAY Design/Illustration/Apparel.
D-CAY.com -
James Whitworth – Hailing from the Chicago’s Albany Park, James is the lone curator that has previously had a design printed at RIPT Apparel. Originally from the outdoor wilderness of Idaho, he ditched his car and moved to the Windy City with his wife about 3 years ago.
thejcw.blogspot.com / TheJCW on Flickr
RIPT curators will be scouring the internet but also taking to the streets to help make unseen masterpieces appear on tees worn across the world. RIPT curators will also have the benefit of being allowed one design per month, which is more frequent than artists are typically allowed to have a shirt for sale at RIPT Apparel.
Be sure to watch the “curated by” section that is now added to all RIPT Apparel tees to see whose tastes most closely match yours.
Leave A Comment for RIPT Apparel adds curators to their artwork acquisition process
Stick-A-Thing
James is an awesome artist and very nice person. Great to have him as an curator here on RIPT :)
Paul
Thanks SAT. He also created one of our favorite tees. Love that Echidna!
the_JCW
Hey, thanks for the nice words S.A.T. your a nice person yourself with amazing art so of course you had to be curated!
Mike
yeah, congrats, james! glad to see, that someone picked you because of your talent! well deserved! nice artwork, nice communication = nice curation !!
the_JCW
:) thanks to you too Mike
DCAY
Woo-Hoo!
Dana Cordova
Very cool idea, definitely going to send you guys something!….
SkekTek
Wow. Jaden Kale as a curator. Congrats!
AdderXYU
In the month since this announcement, the quality has already seemed to increase. I haven’t really kept track of what has or hasn’t been curated, or by whom, but having new eyes will hopefully, at least, prevent more shirts with dogs sniffing each other from getting printed.
Just don’t fall into the trap that certain other curation-driven sites have. You chose artists to help you drive sales. Let them select art. It is what they know.
that said, new eyes for print selection and higher quality work is all fine and good, but you need to look for a way to draw more people toward the site, too. 1200 registered users is really not a lot if you consider that a place like woot has over a million and still sells shirts that fall short of 1000 copies sold. By comparison, that’s like you guys selling 2 shirts. So as you integrate the curators more, use the time that is being saved from doing all your own curating, and spend that time contemplating advertising. All the awesome designs in the world won’t sell if you don’t have enough people interested in checking in night after night.
Paul
Thanks for the thoughtful comment Adder, but what’s wrong with Dogsniff??? :-)
formatbrain
it´s nice to know people like ript apparel team, thanks for the invitation of today´s big selling!, hope one day i can be a curator too!!!, jejeje, cheers!!!