Cotton Bureau Custom
Before Cotton Bureau was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, Jay and I started a little web design shop here in Pittsburgh called Full Stop Interactive. This was back in early 2009, around the time of what some people now call “The Global Financial Crisis”. (No reason in particular to mention this.) Despite the dire times, our pitch to anyone who inquired about our services was simple: we make the best websites in Pittsburgh, period.
While our branding was locally-oriented, our ambitions were anything but. We felt our work was as good as you could find on the Internet. So when asked what we did, it was easy to describe and easy to understand. We owned a small business making websites. Jay was the designer; I was the developer.
Cotton Bureau 1.0
Fast forward to 2013 and the launch of Cotton Bureau. We now had a new thing, which meant a new way of thinking about ourselves and communicating that concept to others. Still, keeping it simple and in line with our principles, we weren’t shy about telling people who Cotton Bureau was for, and, equally important, who Cotton Bureau was not for. We helped designers and design-adjacent communities sell t-shirts, typically in two week pre-order periods.
A funny thing started to happen though as soon as we drew that line in the sand. Every time we told someone that we made t-shirts, they invariably replied “Oh? I need t-shirts.” To which we were forced to reply, well, I’m sure you do, but actually we don’t help just anyone make t-shirts. You need to be a designer.
The first time that happens, it’s just awkward. The next few dozen times it happens, at least you know what’s coming next and can steer the conversation appropriately. Once you get into the hundreds, you really start to dread answering at all. Eventually you begin to wonder, isn’t there some way that we could help all these people who clearly just need someone reliable to lend a hand?
Cotton Bureau 2.0
The story of the next generation of Cotton Bureau has been told before, so I won’t belabor it. In 2015, we sold our first on demand t-shirt, though at the time they were limited to kids tees. In 2018 and 2019 we fully embraced on demand as the future of online apparel retail.
Since then we’ve carefully vetted partners and expanded our catalog to include phone cases, totes, drinkware, mugs, and embroidered hats. The Cotton Bureau 2.0 era has now, impossibly, been roughly the same length as the Cotton Bureau 1.0 era. Pre-order campaigns were our entire identity from 2013–2019. The last six years has seen a migration to on demand and a diversification of product types.
Sitting here in early 2025, we still see several viable categories that make a lot of sense to add, and we have multiple projects in flight to bring even more high quality products to the lineup. Which is why it’s time to talk about the third evolution of the Cotton Bureau platform.
Cotton Bureau 3.0
As the list of offerings has grown, the conversations have, perhaps not surprisingly, continued to bewilder friends, family, and potential Cotton Bureau creators. While we insist on maintaining an exceptionally high rate of rejection (at least three quarters if not 90% of all submissions are summarily dismissed), we found ourselves wondering, isn’t there a way to let the parent-teacher association for your kid’s elementary school sell a t-shirt without it compromising the integrity of the website? If you need a dozen mugs for your company Christmas party, is it absolutely essential that the artwork adheres to our admittedly esoteric design approval standards? When you’re pulling hundreds of people together to run in a charity 5K, don’t you deserve the same unwavering commitment to quality that defines our on demand embroidered hats?
When we realized the answer to all of those questions was a resounding “yes”, it became clear that we needed to find a way to expand access to Cotton Bureau without sacrificing any of what mattered most: searching and browsing Cotton Bureau should showcase only the best designs. We remain fully committed to curating that experience. We believe a meaningful part of the value of Cotton Bureau is narrowing the aperture not widening it.
Custom
Which brings us to the major change to how Cotton Bureau works that we are announcing today. Previously, all accounts were manually approved by a Cotton Bureau team member before going live on the site. While that remains true for the core Cotton Bureau experience, we are opening a second point of entry to Cotton Bureau for those who don’t fit neatly into our design-focused audience.
Say hello to Cotton Bureau Custom. Custom offers access to our entire catalog of on demand and pre-order products. We’ve even streamlined the product creator. With no account approval required, you can now be live in minutes, possibly even seconds depending on how quickly you can drag-and-drop. If you want, you can make money selling t-shirts and other goods on Cotton Bureau Custom, but you don’t have to. Cotton Bureau Custom is free to use whether you are fundraising, team building, or making a one-off design for a private party.
Bottom line: whether you sell on Cotton Bureau or Custom, your account works the same, looks the same, and includes the same exceptional level of service you have come to expect.
What’s the catch?
While it’s tempting to say “no catch”, there is, in fact, a pretty big and important catch. All Cotton Bureau Custom products are unlisted. They won’t appear if you search Cotton Bureau. They won’t show up in our featured products on the home page or in the shop gallery. For all intents and purposes, Custom products are not “on” Cotton Bureau. Think of Cotton Bureau Custom as an alternate universe. It looks like Cotton Bureau, but you’ll need to travel through a special wormhole to get there.
You can link to Cotton Bureau Custom products, of course, and it’s even possible to view all the products from a single account on the account owner’s page, but when we say Custom is the backdoor to Cotton Bureau, we mean it. In some ways, it’s really more like a code to get into the garage, except the door to get in the house itself is locked and you don’t have a key.
We view this as an unequivocally Good Thing. Over the years there have inevitably been marginal cases that have been difficult to adjudicate. Does the notoriety and/or importance of the creator require a softening of the design standards? If the first design is good, but future designs are mediocre, should the account be removed from the site? When splitting hairs between “good enough” and “not good enough”, it’s inevitable that not everyone sees eye to eye. With Custom, we’re free to continue to raise the bar on Cotton Bureau without completely foreclosing access to the tools we have created for those who need them.
So. We’re pleased to finally have a simple answer to a simple question.
Yes, we make t-shirts. Full stop.
P.S.
We could really use your help. If you have someone in your life who is looking for a good t-shirt, tote bag, phone case, hat, mug, pint glass printing partner, your friends at Cotton Bureau are ready and able to assist.
It should go without saying that even Custom accounts must abide by the Cotton Bureau terms of service, and we reserve the right to remove any account at any time for content that is offensive or inconsistent with our principles.