laFraise Heads for the US

laFraise – a French company purchased by Leipzig based Spreadshirt about a year ago – announced that they will enter the US-market next week.

laFraise is an ongoing T-Shirt contest where the winning designs get printed in a limited edition. Currently they are shipping to Europe and Japan only, but

American people have been asking if we could also start shipping to the US. Apparently they like our shirts a whole lot – then again, who wouldn’t? After dozens of requests we decided that we just can’t keep teasing them anymore. So on the 15th of August, the laFraise invasion force will land on American soil.

Observing American Politics is the humorous motto of their first theme competition:

I mean, they only have two parties (the symbol of the first is an animal best known for being stupid & stubborn and the symbol of the second is an animal from another continent), their presidents keep getting into all kinds of embarrassing situations, one can win the presidential election having less votes than the opponent… Need I continue? Sometimes it just feels like a 24/7 sitcom and it seems that even Americans themselves find it more than a little amusing.

It will be an interesting challenge to enter the US since there are many competitors around – 900 pound gorilla Threadless, Design by Hümans, recently launched shirt.woot the derby and many others, but this is no zero sum game and laFraise can build upon a large existing community (it is market leader in Europe) and already has a large pool of excellent designers. Vice versa Threadless is looking at going international and putting a distribution center in the UK or Germany.

(via Exciting Commerce)

(This article originally was written for blognation Germany. Since blognation is gone I have reposted it here)