4 ms·

ooShirts appears to be a fairly direct rip-off of a company I used to work for, CustomInk.com. Compare: http://www.ooshirts.com/ http://www.ooshirts.com/ vs ht

ooShirts appears to be a fairly direct rip-off of a company I used to work for, CustomInk.com. Compare: http://www.ooshirts.com/ http://www.ooshirts.com/ vs http://www.customink.com/ http://www.customink.com/. Maybe it doesn't take too much money to start up a company that is more or less ripping off another company. This isn't to say that competition in providing tshirts is a bad thing. But a profile of a company that lavishes praise on the cleverness of starting up an ultralight, while discreetly ignoring that his web application is a page-for-page knockoff of a larger company is fairly disingenuous. It's possible that the reporter didn't know about CustomInk. But that doesn't excuse Raymond Lei's profiting by stealing the inventiveness of another company.

muhfuhkuh 16y ago
So, how is customink.com different from, say, cafepress.com, which launched before? Or spreadshirt for that matter. Making your own custom t-shirts is not really a novel idea. And, it's not the idea that the story is focussing on anyway, it's the fact that it's basically a two-man shop with a 19 year old founder completely bootstrapping it while waiting to declare a major in college, and the grim economic realities nurturing these "ultralight" businesses.
- seanstickle 16y ago
  As a business, making and selling tshirts is no great innovation, I agree. But when the web application is a painstakingly detailed clone of another company's, I think that the virtue of "completely bootstrapping it" to be undermined, and reduced to little more than a "me too" business. I think that if someone started up a company called MacRonald's, specialized in selling cheap hamburgers, and had a clown mascot who wore a funny tophat, it wouldn't be praised much. Even if the founder was a 19-year-old.
  - c1sc0 16y ago
    What is the difference between me-too and competition? Or is competition suddenly unhealthy. If the original company is so much better than the upstart, they don't have anything to worry about.
ww520 16y ago
The two sites look pretty different. May be it's my lack of design sense that can't tell the difference.
sireat 16y ago
Google search for "custom t-shirts": 1. customink .. 6. ooshirts Obviously, ooshirts is not doing anything revolutionary, but that 6th ranking must have come somehow, not by just ripping off customink. Would be interesting to see, how Lei did it.
JoeAltmaier 16y ago
TShirts online? Didn't take much to reinvent that. They all pretty much HAVE to end up looking the same. A startup can have three kinds of IP: new product niche; new customer niche; new marketing niche. Innovation in all three is risky. Its safer to change just one. If this guy out-marketed the others, that's a fair win. Like Subway beat McD's.

muhfuhkuh 16y ago

So, how is customink.com different from, say, cafepress.com, which launched before? Or spreadshirt for that matter. Making your own custom t-shirts is not really a novel idea. And, it's not the idea that the story is focussing on anyway, it's the fact that it's basically a two-man shop with a 19 year old founder completely bootstrapping it while waiting to declare a major in college, and the grim economic realities nurturing these "ultralight" businesses.

seanstickle 16y ago
As a business, making and selling tshirts is no great innovation, I agree. But when the web application is a painstakingly detailed clone of another company's, I think that the virtue of "completely bootstrapping it" to be undermined, and reduced to little more than a "me too" business. I think that if someone started up a company called MacRonald's, specialized in selling cheap hamburgers, and had a clown mascot who wore a funny tophat, it wouldn't be praised much. Even if the founder was a 19-year-old.
- c1sc0 16y ago
  What is the difference between me-too and competition? Or is competition suddenly unhealthy. If the original company is so much better than the upstart, they don't have anything to worry about.

ww520 16y ago

The two sites look pretty different. May be it's my lack of design sense that can't tell the difference.

sireat 16y ago

Google search for "custom t-shirts": 1. customink .. 6. ooshirts Obviously, ooshirts is not doing anything revolutionary, but that 6th ranking must have come somehow, not by just ripping off customink. Would be interesting to see, how Lei did it.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago

TShirts online? Didn't take much to reinvent that. They all pretty much HAVE to end up looking the same. A startup can have three kinds of IP: new product niche; new customer niche; new marketing niche. Innovation in all three is risky. Its safer to change just one. If this guy out-marketed the others, that's a fair win. Like Subway beat McD's.