1SEWN Text-to-T-Shirt Puts AI Generated Images Onto Apparel
It's also offline due to high demand and not the first to market
1SEWN has a novel apparel idea: allow people to create one-of-one art using an AI image generator and add that instantly to a t-shirt, sweatshirt, or another clothing item. That means you have something to wear that is entirely unique, and you had a hand in creating it. Mass customization is here. Well, it was yesterday.
I came across 1SEWN because of a LinkedIn post by Michal Stanislawek over the weekend. He commented:
1SEWN is a print-on-demand platform that allows you to choose a style and just describe what you want on your t-shirt using your voice. Seems to be in early stages, but the use case is super fun. It uses Stable Diffusion to create the images.
Interesting how we are entering the 1-of-1 economy thanks to the AI services.
Text-to-T-Shirt
However, as of this morning. The company has stopped taking orders. “The response to our launch has far exceeded our expectations…For now, we are holding off on taking further orders while we make some improvements to our service.”
That’s the type of problem every company wants to face right after launch. I did have the chance to try out 1SEWN before the site went down. The text-to-image process was similar to what you would expect from Night Cafe. You were first asked to choose the artistic style by clicking a tile. Then you entered your request in natural language into a text box or click a microphone option and use a spoken prompt.
Looking at the comments in Hacker News and the launch notice from the founder, the microphone was initially the only way to make your request. The comments were not kind, as the speech recognition apparently was not delivering decent transcription quality. By the time I tried out 1SWEN, there was a text option that worked fine.
After the prompt was entered, an AI-generated image would then appear on a white t-shirt worn by a clothing model. You could choose your size and have the image appear on either a white or black t-shirt. There was also an option to have the image on a white or black hoodie sweatshirt. As I recall, the quoted t-shirt price was around $26 before the shipping cost was added. I did not purchase it, but that seems like a reasonable price for a 1-of-1 apparel item.
An Unstable Diffusion
The founder, Matt (let me know if you know who this is), announced his new venture on Y Combinator’s Hacker News. He acknowledges that he is using a Stable Diffusion image generator model, Printful, for printing and fulfillment, cannot ship to Europe, and that he was looking for feedback.
Matt received a lot of feedback, most of it negative. Or, maybe it was constructive. Most of the complaints were related to speech recognition or other user experience design choices.
With that said, you could enter a request in natural language, generate an image, select an apparel item, and place an order. That means the basic functionality worked even if the Hacker News commenters were not entirely pleased with the user experience.
More importantly, it appears that 1SEWN proved there is demand for this product offering. The demand was significant enough that the company needed to stop taking orders so it could focus on fulfillment and making improvements to the service. It may be a competitive risk if the service is down for too long, as the business model looks to be pretty easy to replicate.
Not the First Text-to-T-Shirt Service
It may be that 1SEWN is itself a copy of another text-to-t-shirt service that launched in mid-September called ThisShirtExists. That service offers shipping to a variety of countries globally. The process is fairly similar, as there is a text box to enter a description of the image you want to create and a drop-down box to select a style.
Pricing at ThisShirtExists is €29.99, and shipping to my home in the United States was a very reasonable €1.90 flat rate. A hoodie will set you back €49.99. The shirts and hoodies are offered in a variety of colors.
It is worth noting that there may be a learning curve associated with this business. ThisShirtExists was originally built using a Stable Diffusion model, but the creator, Marc Päpper, learned that the 512x512 pixel images were too small for printing at any decent resolution on t-shirts. Päpper writes on the website:
To get around the size limitation, I used another AI model (ESRGAN) which can make images larger while they still look very good. I tried it out and got very good results. Then the idea was born to put all this together to also enable everyone else to wear their favorite AI generated designs on shirts.
Text-to-X Shifts to Features
As I mentioned last week, there is a question about whether generative AI solutions such as text-to-image are features or products. The addition of text-to-image to Canva and Picsart makes a strong case that the near future of generative AI is a feature of broader solutions. ThisShirtExists and 1SEWN follow this same path. Text-to-image generation is an essential part of the value proposition for both companies. However, they are not image generation products. They are uniquely customized t-shirt products reliant on the text-to-image AI feature.
This is not to say that there is no future for text-to-x as a product unto itself. There will always be power users, and many may benefit from a focused solution. However, it appears the next phase of text-to-x adoption may be driven by solutions where AI-generated images, text, and videos are part of a broader value proposition.
