Teespring

Teespring, known from 2021 as Spring, was a social commerce platform that allowed people to create and sell custom products. The company was founded in 2011¹ by Walker Williams and Evan Stites-Clayton in Providence, Rhode Island. By 2014, the company had raised $55 million in venture capital from Khosla Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. In 2018, Spring launched its merchandise shelf integration in partnership with YouTube, enabling creators to sell their products directly below video content, and expanded this business model with similar integrations for Twitch, Instagram, TikTok, etc. in the years following. Over the past few years, Teespring has had to make significant reforms to its safety operations in response to criticism over apparel that promoted violence and racist messaging. In 2019 Chris Lamontagne became CEO of Spring. In 2021, Teespring was rebranded as Spring.

Teespring, known from 2021 as Spring, was a social commerce platform that allowed people to create and sell custom products. The company was founded in 2011 by Walker Williams and Evan Stites-Clayton in Providence, Rhode Island. By 2014, the company had raised $55 million in venture capital from Khosla Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. In 2018, Spring launched its merchandise shelf integration in partnership with YouTube, enabling creators to sell their products directly below video content, and expanded this business model with similar integrations for Twitch, Instagram, TikTok, etc. in the years following. Over the past few years, Teespring has had to make significant reforms to its safety operations in response to criticism over apparel that promoted violence and racist messaging. In 2019 Chris Lamontagne became CEO of Spring. In 2021, Teespring was rebranded as Spring.

2017

In May 2017, Teespring caused controversy by selling T-shirts that featured the words, "Black Women Are Trash," resulting in many Twitter users calling for a boycott of the platform. Teespring's director of seller success, Brett Miller, responded, "Once we learned of the error we immediately took steps to remove all content in question and ban the offending seller from our platform. We have since fixed the issue." In August 2017, Teespring was blamed for selling products claiming to "reclaim" the swastika, considered a symbol of hate. KA Design listed rainbow swastika designs on Teespring in an attempt to rebrand the contested symbol used by the Nazis. Jewish groups called for a boycott of Teespring following news of the controversial products. Another T-shirt offered on the site in October 2017 bore the message "Eat Sleep Rape Repeat". In November 2017, Walmart removed a shirt bearing the words "Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required" from its website, following a complaint from Radio Television Digital News Association, a journalist advocacy group. The shirt was listed on Walmart's website through Teespring (as a third-party seller). Time magazine reported that at the time, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, there had been 35 physical attacks on journalists so far in 2017. An analysis by USA Today found that the site was selling T-shirts reading "Hitler did nothing wrong" and one with an image of Bill Cosby paired with the slogan "drinks on me ladies".

2018

In April 2018, the company came under fire for providing items for sale that celebrated Dylann Roof, a neo-Nazi mass murderer. In June 2018, an article by Alex Dalbey in The Daily Dot detailed criticism on social media of Teespring for pulling a line of T-shirts featuring the term "TERFs" (short for trans-exclusionary radical feminists). The most notable design stated "Fuck TERFs". Teespring said the T-shirt "violates our Hate Speech section of our acceptable use policy". In 2018, a Women's March spokesperson told CNN that "many of these fake pages are used to sell merchandise, with the proceeds benefiting individuals instead of our movement. The efforts to capitalize on movement work isn't new, but it is frustrating, particularly as we make an effort to only sell ethically sourced and produced merchandise — a rule these imposter pages don't abide by."

2020

Following the death of Caroline Flack in February 2020, Teespring received criticism for selling counterfeit versions of the "Be Kind" T-shirts created by Leigh Francis to raise money for the mental health charity The Samaritans. Teespring received criticism for allowing the sale of the counterfeit T-shirts to go ahead, preventing the charity from receiving funds. In August 2020 Teespring reported that the word 'antifa' was in violation of their acceptable use policy.

2021

On January 6, 2021, the US Capitol was invaded by rioters. In a viral photo, one rioter is wearing a Camp Auschwitz T-shirt. On January 11, 2021, Teespring removed and apologized for the sale of Camp Auschwitz shirts on its platform.

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1378805303 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.