Weekly Site Review | 200 Nipples

I know what you're thinking. And, no, I haven't gone off the deep end. This post is actually quite "˜G' rated. 200 Nipples is an inventive new web site that uses a unique pricing concept for selling in a very, very saturated market: t-shirts. So what makes 200 Nipples worth checking out, especially when anyone can have a halfway decent shirt made at the ever-popular "˜Do It Yourself' giant, Café Press? Each month, 200 Nipples sell just one style of t-shirt and they only sell one hundred of them. What's with the weird name? I thought you'd never ask. Well, if they sell all 100 t-shirts in a given month, that means they should be covering a total of 200 nipples. Works for me.

Once you arrive at their site and once you decide that you like the design of the month, 200 Nipples gives you a pretty weird option. You get to decide how much you want to pay. You are shown a grid that has a rectangle for each of the 100 shirts, along with its corresponding price. Shirt #1 is $1, Shirt #2 is $2, and so on. You can choose any price between $1 and $100, providing that someone has not already purchased that specific shirt. Green rectangles mean that the shirt is available, red ones mean that the shirt has been taken, and yellow one mean there is someone currently considering it (they have 5 minutes to decide before they lose their spot). As you might imagine, the cheapest shirts are among the first to go. That said, I've been watching 200 Nipples since its inception, and there are always a handful of buyers who "“ for whatever reason "“ snatch up some very expensive versions of the shirts.

ABOVE: Pick your own price at 200 Nipples.

All shirts come with a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee. They screen shirts on demand and finish them off with a unique, numbered graphic that corresponds to the number you picked from the grid. You can get an email or RSS reminder when the next design is about to be unveiled so that you can increase your chances of scoring a dirt cheap shirt. They use high quality, preshrunk, tagless shirts whose designs don't deteriorate instantly in the wash. And at the end of the month, the screen is destroyed and the limited edition shirt will never again be available from 200 Nipples.

ABOVE: Each limited production t-shirt is numbered on the back.

200 Nipples isn't perfect. They're almost brand new - they're only on their third month of nipple-covering operations. In my opinion, their shirt designs so far haven't been that interesting. Their site could be a little prettier. It's unclear as to whether paying top dollar for a shirt actually goes to supporting the artist versus supporting the people behind the site. And their blog needs to be updated more often with fun design-type posts.

But what's really missing is community. I'm not recommending that they go for the status quo and add fifty of those "˜Share This On Your 25 Favorite Social Networks' modules on every page. By community, I mean a well done discussion board that's easy to register on. It needs to be a key element of the site and one that encourages up-and-coming designers to submit their work. There needs to be a sufficient amount of trash talking between users. 200 Nipples needs to use an enthusiastic user base to help them decide which kinds of designs to feature. They need to give their featured designers a quarter-page spot on the home page - complete with photos, links and other portfolio works. After all, as a young web site, they need to encourage submissions.

Despite its shortcomings, 200 Nipples is a cool idea and, given how new it is, they're understandably still dialing in their site and their concept. They hope to soon begin offering one new t-shirt design per week, instead of one per month. It's a win-win situation for both t-shirt dorks and starving artists. This site gets a "˜thumbs up' from me and I'll be watching them every month to see if they can bring in some must-have tees in the near future. So go ahead and subscribe to their RSS feed because 200 Nipples might just take off. And if you want to have the coolest - and maybe the least expensive - shirt in the room, you'd better keep on your toes and keep tabs on this interesting site.