PleaseDress.Me
As of today, the results count for a search on "tee shirts" is 8,090,000. Make that search more specific — say, for “glow-in-the-dark tee shirts” — and the numbers narrow to 682,000. Make it really specific — “neon pterodactyl Christmas tee shirt” — and it shrinks to around 200. In other words, if you have five days to find the perfect tee, then don't worry, you'll find it.
Early this month, a site launched that hopes to consolidate, organize and energize that process, and with the team behind it, there's a good chance that it will.
You've probably heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, a fireball of a cewebrity whose teenage takeover of a family business turned it into an industry leader. You may also have heard of Joe Stump, Lead Architect at Digg, and AJ Vaynerchuk, Gary's younger yet equally enthusiastic brother. Twelve days ago, the three collectively launched PleaseDress.Me, an aggregated search engine that allows both retailers to upload their shirts and shirt-seekers to hunt them.
It started with a simple yet shared thought: Shirts are great. Gary was known for his off-kilter collection; Joe was an avid fan; and AJ — well, AJ was in college, and what else was worth doing laundry for? The initial concept belonged to AJ and Joe, but ever the entrepreneur, Gary was soon on board along with his considerable skill in social networking and marketing. They started building on July 30th, launched on Memorial Day, and have just stepped into the area endearingly referred to as "the rest is history."
Here's how it works: Let's pretend you woke up this morning and really desperately needed a shirt with a hamburger on it. You could hunt for hamburger tee on this baby, or you could plug that search term into the PleaseDress.Me search box. The former gives you words and links (all great ones, to be fair), but the latter gives you links and pictures — and pictures (when T-shirt stalking) make all the difference. Not only do they make the difference, they make the decision, which is exactly why this site is so useful.
The shirts come to the site through a variety of means, most notably through an easy vendor sign up. The vendors load shirts, the boys tag them, and the search grows. You search "Hamburger," you click on your favorite option, and voila, there's your shirt. Simple*.
Interestingly, consolidating tees is a not a groundbreaking phenomenon. We've actually written about a few similar ideas — albeit alternately executed — before. But what makes PleaseDress.Me different may ultimately come down to its founder's vivid approach to marketing, because this baby of a start-up has already reached grown-up levels of recognition. Using an arsenal of social interaction tools, AJ, Joe and Gary have assimilated a dorkily passionate fan base — one that has kept the positive feedback pouring in (and the constructive criticism addressed with a superpower speediness). The key, according to the founders, is to focus on community, but not in the way that most other entities are doing so. Constant contact, status updates, and friendly communication comes standard at PleaseDress.Me, but the mission centers less around encouraging users to communicate with each other as it does communicating with them directly. By creating frequently updates touchpoints (twitter) and plenty of opportunities for sharing (StumbleUpon etc.), AJ, Joe, and Gary have created an instant, transparent, and tangible structure for some heavy relationships.
We'll probably have to wait until — oh, day 16 or so — to see where this is going, but in the meanwhile it is safe to say that PleaseDress.Me is a case study worth following, bookmarking, and watching like a hawk. Ooh yeah, a hawk.
*However, if there is one complaint to be made for the site as it stands today, it would be the slight frattyness of the current collection. I've been assured it is dehyper-masculinizing as we speak. I'm inclined to believe them.
