Design 101
In November 2011, as the market was heating up, 101.com.tw launched with a marketing campaign involving a T-shirt design competition offering big prizes.
101.com.tw was the brainchild of tech company ADDCN, which operates a range of websites well known in Taiwan in areas as diverse as real-estate rental listings, car sales, and online-game time sales. Unlike the other sites, though, 101.com.tw sells directly to consumers rather than matching buyers and sellers.
Wu Congxian, general manager of ADDCN, admits that the success of lativ was what got them thinking about the feasibility of online clothing sales. “We basically already had a potential customer base in the form of the 3-million-plus members of our websites.”
To avoid going head to head with the already well-established lativ, ADDCN decided to focus on T-shirts specifically, something popular with the younger people who make up the bulk of their user base.
Despite breaking into the market relatively late, it already had the capability and financial strength to stand toe to toe with its more established competitors, and by making use of its network of sites to promote the competition, ADDCN enjoyed a long reach both in marketing and in its ability to bring on board more designers.
When the site was ready to go live, it already had gained tremendous exposure through advertising on online portals, on primetime television, on the sides of buses, and in busy pedestrian areas. To maintain freshness and variety, every two months they hold another large-scale competition to get submissions, with the winning designer receiving between NT$60,000 and NT$200,000.
Currently, 101.com.tw’s T-shirt design competition is in its fifth iteration and has received over 10,000 submissions so far. However, once the designs have been assessed by professionals, only 10% of them will actually become products, although every finalist is paid between NT$3,000 and NT$5,000 for the copyright to their designs.
The T-shirt designs offered by SOFU are creative products of the highest order. The designs pictured here are the work of (from top to bottom) architect Andy Lin, artist Suzy, graphic designer Jier, and drummer Chen Jindong.