About Us
We started with a simple idea to manufacture custom designer clothing that everyone would love to wear... clothing that had your design and your name on it.
No buttons, no mugs, or promotional mouse pads. No gift cards, stamps, or plastic promotional key chains. We were in the fashion business and the word promotional would be a taboo.
We wanted to be the best at one thing… independently designed clothing. We would do shirts, blouses, pants, bags, purses, belts, wallets, hats and even a few dog clothes for that little person. I guess that's not exactly, “one thing”, but if it could be worn, pulled over your head, or hung out to dry… we would do it, and we would do it with the designer's design on it.
Our simple idea would grow, however, into a more grandiose undertaking, one which would take us on a journey of creating fashions, contests, voting logarithms, ranking modules, election batching, feedback scoring, blog forums, gift shops, shopping carts, instant templates. Myspace layout generators, fan clubs, point redemptions, gift certificates, all in a mashed up design community filled with designs and designers.
As our simple idea grew and so did our line of fashions. Categories began to expand into sub-categories. We added wet, women, men, kids, and hood sub-categories to the t-shirts. We added tote, messenger, laptop and shopping sub-categories to bags. Each category began to take on new meaning, heightened possibilities and exciting new looks. Each giant step became a gravity defining bound forward.
We began to see each new garment added as a platform that would stimulate unique and individualized experiences for our designers. The word, “promotional” would never be echoed in our office hallways; to the contrary, we would dedicate ourselves to fashion.
To make things more uniquely individualized, all fashions would be manufactured on demand in our own factory. Every fashion, from t-shirts to handbags, bandanas to skull caps, wallets to belts, would not only contain personalized designs by our designers, but also contain a personalized garment label with the designer's name on it. That meant cutting, sewing and printing fashions with the names of each of our designers sewn directly into the fashion.
It would be challenging, yet not impossible, and nothing would match the individuality we dedicated to each garment. For the first time over the internet, for the first ever on planet earth, individualized items of clothing would be created on demand. And, throughout the universe, designers would be heard saying, "See that label sewn into that shirt. It’s got my design on it. It's got my private label on it, too!"
Tell me about your development?
Most web sites have one backend, one front end, a core concept you might say.... a shopping cart, or a blog, an affiliate system or a personalized web space. ClothinGift, however, is a mash.
Not just one module, component or concept can be used to explain our web site. ClothinGift has been mashed together by its developers using a crosscut from the internet.
Not one backend....but two, not one blog....but many, not one way to earn.... but over twenty-five ways to earn, not just one voting system.... but a logarithmic ranking system, not just a few free instant layouts.... but a way to generate hundreds of layouts, not just a gift shop.... but a gift shop offering creative collections and not just a web site.... but a web site with an experienced enhancer. ClothinGift came together as a simple idea, but the passion of those who envisioned it, developed it into a mash of thoughts and ideas, revolving around one simple idea.... fashion and design.
This story begins with the team.... the Dream Team. This is a story of our beginnings, already several months into development. At this point, we are working on the two back ends.... one for administrative functions and the other for our production and shipping. All code has been written by the Dream Team, homegrown code as they call it.
The main characters of this story are Boss, Dream, Nutcracker, Lightning and Mann. Boss has been instrumental in overseeing most of the development to this point, while Dream and Nutcracker have done the majority of the coding, with the codes integration into the production department overseen by Mann.
Most all the blogs, personal, product, design and blog central, were written primarily by Nutcracker. The team at this point is debating on using blogs as a way to integrate the sites of the community and the designer's gift shops. We wanted to develop our blogs, not only for designers to express their opinion in a specific forum, but also integrate the blogs in such a way that participation in specific forums would be mashed into all other areas of the site.
The blog tab (blog central) would be planned to integrate all individual blogs into a real time forum with distinct categories and subjects. No matter where on ClothinGift the blog originated it would show postings in the blog central forum. Individual members could then monitor their postings throughout the community in one central area within their account profile. Members could then also monitor all blog postings for each of their individual designs and products in their account profile.
Our competition and voting module has been developed mainly by Dream. We decided that although a one through five numbering system, often used by other sites, was simple and fast, winners were often determined by other than the members of the community. We can assure you that winners at ClothinGift are determined by a technical points system based completely on the opinions of members of our community. We decided that we'd create a voting system that would elect winners, according to specific criterion, do it fairly in public view, and do it totally dependent upon the community participation.
Dream and Nutcracker developed a logarithmic system that would be combined with a weighted ranking system to determine the overall score. They developed the Five Star ranking module utilizing not just one, but four individual criteria for determining the highest score. We did this based on the belief that community members, willing to leave comments, should be given a higher value than members just clicking on stars.
After those first months, we decided members should also be rewarded for their participation and involvement in the community. Those members that got involved in the community should be given free merchandise for their support and efforts. A points system that revolved around gifts and certificates began emerging.
Wow! Site creativity was heating up and we all could feel that something big was coming together. Boss at the helm, Dream and Nutcracker right and left, Mann heading up the point, Lightning taking up all the slack in the end, the team was becoming receptive to nearly any idea Boss could mash together.
Feelings grew strong about the rewards and the idea that members should receive gift certificates as rewards emerged. That meant, they should be able to redeem their gift certificate for merchandise. So, the project went to Wolfman and he began to develop a point system that would give a value to our merchandise in dollars, euros and points, along with creating a reward system that would credit members' accounts for their participation in the system.
But, it had to be real time, that was Boss's desire, no member should be left waiting to redeem their points days or weeks later. So it was Wolfman who delveloped the code that would be tied directly to a member's account so the member could redeem points immediately at checkout. This involved integrating over twenty-five different activities to accumulate points.
During a normal day with the Dream Team, you can feel the energy reverberating from the walls. We all work together in one work area. None of us smoke and most of us have a bottle of water sitting by our monitors. Boss is constantly in and out of the room attending to production along with the daily affairs of the business. We all get along tremendously and it's almost a miracle how we all work on separate modules and yet come together to create this unique and exciting website.
Within a few months into the project we began developing the gift shop area for the members. Originally it would be a simple area for members to track gift certificate points and view the results of the voting. However, as most of our ideas would emerge, the gift shop soon began to take on it's own personality. The Myspace Layout Generator would just be another example of mashing another cool module into our site. With it we would give designers the ability to transform their gift shops into awesome galleries showing off their individualized designs.
Fan club, blog, products, collection creator and layout generator would all begin to give our members endless possibilities in personalizing their gift shop. The ability to save layouts spurred the idea to create code compatible with Myspace, giving the designer the ability to blend the two spaces into one homogeneous presentation. We all grew excited as we began to see the creative powers we were giving to our members.
With the addition of collection creation we began to see that not only could designers create their own collections, but that we could give non-designing members the ability to promote the designs of designers. As we continued to write more gift shop code we could see each gift shop was taking on its own personality. It became apparent that the more power we gave our members, the more individuality it would promote and more members would tailor their gift shops into distinct personalities.
So far, we've been talking about the development of our website and how it came together.
At our ClothinGift factory, we manufacture every order after we receive the order. That means, we cut the fabric, send the pieces to our screen printing department, make the custom label, then sew all the parts together. This happens within hours and the product is ready for shipping.
We calculate the shipping with an automatic API directly to Federal Express on the checkout page. It defaults to Ground automatically, but you can change it and recalculate your price without the necessity of regenerating the page.
What software do you use?
We are running our own code on dedicated servers developed primarily using ASP, CSS, lots of JavaScript, little widgets of flash, AJAX for many of the graphic directories and a backend developed in ASP.NET. All of our code is homegrown, written primarily by Boss, Dream, Nutcracker and Lightning. Additional features have been added by Wworks in both Firefox and IE.
We have tried to optimize the pages for IE, Firefox and Opera, testing regularly in all three. We like Firefox for development and its additional add-ons such as; Web Developer 1.1.4, a developers tool bar; iWebtool 1.0.05, a webmaster tool kit; Handy Xtra Stuff 1.4, another tool bar add-on; KGen 0.2.1, a key word snooper; and Session Manager 1.0.6, a recovery add-on for when our 20 different windows and 400 different tabs crash from the overload of open windows on our workstations.
Our 128 Encryption Security Tunnel was written also from bottoms up, mostly by Wolfman and based on Boss's vision of a two page cart-to-checkout, you're finished, concept. Our cart runs on four API one to Google Checkout, one to Paypal Express Checkout, one to our own credit card processor, and one to Federal Express for shipping. We tried to develop the checkout procedure into two simple steps for our members, plus include Google and Paypal checkout to further the convenience. We make use of ISAPI rewrite so our URLs are user friendly and SEO optimized....it also helps with security.
If you are a member, we tried to make the ordering process as painless and secure as possible by filling your order information automatically on the checkout page using a 128 Encryption Security Tunnel while at the same time keeping your credit card information safely and securely encrypted in our MS SQL database beneath three layers of passwords.
On top of that mountain of security, we encrypt both your card number and the table in which it resides, within our database for an additional line of defense. Basically it's all unreadable by even the best of the FBI or CIA decoding experts....We can't even get into the card information if we lose the keys.
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Boss
I'm recognized as the guiding light, mentor, confidant and jack of all trades for the Dream Team. They call me Boss, not out of policy, but because I think they don't want to call me their second Dad.
I started early in life liking to compete in everything and learned fast the benefits of hard work. During my early years, I won numerous county fair ribbons, trophies and awards in dairy, poultry, bees and agriculture. Even though I was a ranch boy, I ended up being elected best dressed senior at 17, championed aerial ski acrobatics at 18, and raised a few thousand Christmas trees to help pay my way through college at 19. Then in my 20s, I gathered a bit of business acclaim by building a campus pizzeria and small burger stop-and-go which helped me finish the remainder of my college.
I designed safety equipment clothing for a large company and later turned to designing beach clothing. Also along the way a few of my inventions required my time and efforts. I got totally absorbed in the beginning of the internet and rode a wave of small internet start ups through my 30s. I pooled my knowledge of internet and fashion and began manufacturing clothing overseas in my late 30s. All this has added up to a wealth of experience to pass down to a team of young, intelligent, ambitious and dedicated programmers and managers who I call.... the Dream Team.
We don't want to be good at what we do....we want to be great! We hope that our members appreciate our passion.
Dream 
I was raised on a steady stream of pulp fiction, comic books, ipods and hip-hop. I was born to a farming family, where it became clear that I didn’t want to spend my life getting up when it was still dark. You can imagine my parents' surprise when I showed them my first page of code! My father didn’t think it could be to useful around the farm, so he sent me off to a school nearly three days drive from our home. As I left he said,"Son, Your vision will become clear only when you look inside yourself. Look outside for your dreams, look inside to awaken to your reality.” After that school, I jumped on a bus for a long stint honing my skills in college, and obtaining a degree in Computer Science. I landed a job with my college professor, but after deciding that I wasn’t cut out to be a lab monitor for freshmen, I packed up and found my first real job with the Boss at ClothinGift.
I am easy going, kind of serious, like to laugh at the Boss’s jokes, do a lot of thinking before the starting of a new project and am not too opinionated. I have no cats, or even a dog. I like to spend the weekends with the guys from the Dream Team and I call home each week. Yea, Dad still can’t figure out what I do, but thinks it’s great that looked inside myself and figured out I needed to find a good paying job.
Mann
I am the trusted ClothinGift logistic and production coordinator. I love to laugh, slide down our marble halls and talk loud so information is disseminated throughout the office without holding many meetings. I find fun in meeting our member's expectations, reducing stress by finding solutions and keeping production, shipping and programming all coordinated and doubling as Wonder Woman. I love chocolate,and I love dogs. I love eating and I love sleeping. I love being lazy on my days off and I love working at ClothinGift and being with the Dream Team.
My true satisfaction comes from creating productive systems of communication between the programming team and the production team. Knowing what to do is not enough. I must find ways that it is applied effectively. I am always trying to find ways to increase production, quality and dependability.
We are the Dream Team. We are all something, but none of us is everything, which makes me feel really happy playing a very important role here at ClothinGift.
Lightning
A long time ago, a young boy got kicked in the head while walking too close behind his pony. Upon falling to the ground he had a vision of someday being a great designer. Many years later he shaved his head due to the stylish new look of men who were losing their hair, only to notice that lucky horse's shoe print was still engraved into the left side of his cranium.
How lucky I was and that somehow my luck turned into my destiny and I turned to designing, rather than something involving analytical ability. My horse loving days are gone, but I enjoy a telling horse tales and even have horse tails growing in my back forty. I find as a designer, my happiness lies in the joy of achieving a harmony between shapes and colors, yet I love to mash things up.
I am a design magazine junky and read hundreds of pages of Interior Design, Print Magazine, How Design, Eye Magazine and Artistica looking for ideas and inspiration. The designer works I most admire are Frank Lloyd Wright and Salvador Dali. In fashion I admire how Calvin Klein, Guess Jeans, Guccio Gucci and Gert Boyle of Columbia Sportswear all became famous brands. And I love working with the Dream Team.
Nutcracker
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows, so I take the approach that I know absolutely nothing to nearly nothing. I know very little about any of the following, but I am good at card tricks, winning at Black Jack, 7 Card Stud and Texas Hold’em, downing kegs of warm beer from German steins, wearing ten gallon cowboy hats, fixing leaky water pipes, wearing too baggy of jeans, using my Swiss pocket knife to solve most all office emergencies. I like experimenting with others codes and expecting they appreciate the results. I like collecting java games, using huge amounts of disk space, dispensing of large amounts of TP while reading technical books and daily boring my beautiful wife with all the cool stuff happening at ClothinGift. There’s so much more I should know about.
Oh, I do know a little about writing code. I have one dog named Beta and a cat named Test. I don’t like to sleep in past 5:00 AM. Normally I’m the first one to work, except for Boss, and can go the entire day on a Snickers. Of course, that’s only after my beautiful wife has sent me off with an unusually high energy Programmer’s breakfast. Yes, I like being on the Dream Team.!
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