A San Diego company, Collarfree.com, has found an innovative way to spark involvement in the 2008 election by launching an online t-shirt competition in the month of September called “Keeping Politics Positive”.

Graphic designers around the world submit stylish, pro-candidate t-shirt designs into Collar Free’s voting system on a daily basis. The public votes on their favorite shirts for either Obama or McCain.

Then the shirts are ranked and displayed based on their win percentage, calculated by totaling the positive votes for each design. The founders Jimmy Hendricks, 27, and Patrick Dillon, 29, call the process “Democratic Design”

“We wanted a way to promote the election but stay true to our company values. Our company slogan is Fashion for Independent People and one of our core values is positivity, so we chose the campaign name, Keeping Politics Positive. We have encouraged our designers to submit stylish, pro-candidate shirts and everyone loves it” – Jimmy and Pat

The company is awarding two $250 cash prizes for the top Obama and top McCain shirt plus a 10% commission on any designs sold to the designers.

The business model used by Collar Free is a new trend among online communities called “Crowd Sourcing”. Companies post design competitions recruiting designers both domestically and internationally and then allow the public and consumers to select the products they love best. The process increases demand, reduces risk, and engages customers, frankly because it’s fun.

In a recent NPR broadcast, MIT professor Eric von Hippel, an expert in innovation management, says online design is becoming a substitute for in-house research and development while voting takes the place of conventional market research.

“This is really the biggest paradigm shift in innovation since the Industrial Revolution,” von Hippel says. “For a couple hundred years or so, manufacturers have been really imperfect at understanding people’s needs. Now people get to decide what they want for themselves.”

 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93495217)

The “Crowd-Sourcing” model is getting a lot of traction and appeal from consumers, but the challenge is turning fun into profits. Regardless of the outcome, it looks like Collar Free has found an exciting way to get involved and enjoy the process.

Collarfree.com is a San Diego based founded in April 2008. They currently are an e-commerce community, but they are quickly expanding into retailers and are providing custom design for companies.

For more information visit http://www.collarfree.com  or

Contact: Jimmy Hendricks, jimmy@collarfree.com, 619-795-2993.