SpringLeap to victory, fame and fortune

It can be understated or LOUD! Objects of art or comfort. Sexy enough to sleep with or merely fit for workouts. Vintage or new. It can be funny, punny or provocative. Something to team-build or conform, or shocking declarations going against the norm. Famously trademarked and branded, or an obscure, private joke. It can be gratuitous advertising. Or it can be declarations of love to places, or people, or odes to icons. You can have it blinged out or plain. Designer or no-name. It can be tie-dyed or leave you tongue-tied.

It has breached class systems and borders, gender and race, age and body types. Royalty, models, the poverty-stricken, the rich, the famous, infamous and unforgettable… even dogs have been seen with it. The oh-so-trendy-and-hip in-crowd has been caught alive in it… and yes, in fact… sometimes even dead.

When you’ve been there and done that, you normally say that you’ve got one. Chances are, you have. It is the one item that can be found in all wardrobes across the globe…

It is, of course, the humble t-shirt.

A South African e-commerce venture called SpringLeap is striving to take the simple garment to new, artistic heights.

Every month, SpringLeap invites anyone who thinks that they have a cool t-shirt design idea to submit it to the SpringLeap website. And really, they mean anyone. You don’t have to be a professional designer, artist, or trendy fashionista to enter. All wannabes are welcome too.

Like most of the greatest ideas in the world, the premise is simple. Designs are submitted to the site via an easy-to-use image uploading template. Visitors to the website then get to exercise their democratic right by voting on their favourites.

After a month of voting, the top 21 designs are picked, produced, printed, pimped and sold, not only at the SpringLeap site, but also at Big Blue (link to site) and eSquared Fashion, an über-cool clothing store co-owned by Eric Edelstein and Eran Eyal, the same guys who are the brains behind SpringLeap.

Apart from getting the great exposure of having one’s art and name showcased in a public domain, and the bragging rights of winning, the most popular designer also receives a R2 royalty on every t-shirt sold, while the 20 runners-up all receive a R1 royalty fee.

Eric and Eran dreamed up this latest venture as a way to discover and nurture new and existing design and art talent in South Africa: “On the one hand we have artists who desperately need to be empowered, earn cash and who deserve recognition for their work. On the other hand we have the vendors who want a really special product that they know will sell. What better way to promote designers, suppliers, South Africa as a whole and fulfil the needs of the economy, than to make everyone a winner.”

And they mean it. In a display of absolute marketing genius, SpringLeap has cleverly seduced the local blogging community into spreading the word about the t-shirt design contest with a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) contest. Whichever blogger/copywriter manages to boot SpringLeap from their current number one Google search ranking, will receive R2,500 for knocking the site of its top spot. The author of the site that takes the number two spot will receive R1,000, and number three will receive R500. The judging will commence after the closing date, on 1 April 2008.

But if you’re not an artist or a blogger, you can still enter SpringLeap’s Karmic ‘Positivity’ contest. Everyone gets to submit a positive, uplifting message that the community then also votes on. (Yes, indeed. SpringLeap takes democracy seriously.) The positive message that rocks the most votes gets printed in the hem of each shirt and the winner receives a bunch of that month’s shirts.

Although the t-shirt design contest is open to the international community as well, the end products will be produced locally in order to keep it authentically and ‘Proudly South African’.

Unfortunately local doesn’t mean cheap. A SpringLeap t-shirt will retail online for a hefty R160 (excluding VAT and postage). But customers will get great quality in exchange for their hard-earned cash, because according to SpringLeap, all the fresh, winning designs will be printed on super-high, export grade, 165 gram South African combed cotton t-shirts, cut to SpringLeap’s specific slim cut pattern, and with the artist’s name and title of the creation printed on the back of the t-shirt.

With such fantastic exposure, fame is sure to follow suit… or shirt!