Bu Yi Hopes the One-T-Shirt-Per-Day Formula Will Work in China

The idea of starting an e-commerce site that just sells one thing a day isn’t exactly new. Nor is the idea of making that thing a t-shirt. But can the formula be successfully copied to China? The self-described “design nuts” behind Bu Yi, a new Chinese shirt-a-day startup with a user-generated design twist, are hoping so.

The site (pictured) is what you’d expect: a few pictures of the day’s design and a fun Q&A with the designer lower down on the page. All the shirt designs are user-submitted and handpicked by the Bu Yi team. Unlike some sites like this, Bu Yi really means business with its one day restriction: when the day is over, that shirt is no longer on sale, and will never be sold again. Users can submit their own shirt designs via email or through Douban and in return receive “a share of the profits” if their t-shirt design is chosen and actually sells. The size of that share, though, is not clear. Bu Yi also allows designers to keep their design’s IP, but they do have to sign a contract that gives Bu Yi exclusive rights to use the design. So basically, if you send Bu Yi your design and the company chooses it, you can’t ever use that design for any other product. That’s not very cool.

So, are the shirts actually selling? Well…sort of. The site has only been around a few weeks, and has only offered ten designs. Days one and two saw 23 and 17 sales respectively, but since then, the site has yet to break double-digit sales on any design. Whether that’s a problem with the designs or a lack of interest in Bu Yi’s isn’t clear. It could also be a price issue, at 65 RMB ($10) they’re somewhat cheap by Western standards, but in China that’s a lot to pay for a no-brand t-shirt.

Frankly, I think the execution here is not great. The site looks slick and is very easy to use, so that’s nice, but the designs they’ve had so far are nothing special, and for a company that claims to love design, they sure seem interested in screwing designers over. If you really love design, why not make it clear what share of profits designers can expect? And why not ask them to grant Bu Yi non-exclusive distribution rights so that when their shirt’s one day on sale ends, designers can use their design elsewhere if they want (maybe not on t-shirts but on something). Exclusivity is cool, but when you’re only offering “a share” of the profits on such a tiny number of sales, what’s in it for designers? And without good designers, how is the site ever going to grow?

It’s also worth asking how these shirts are being produced. Given that they’re selling in such small numbers right now, I can’t imagine that they’re being screen-printed, as that costs a lot of money and thus is usually done in bulk. If they are screen-printing each day’s design, that means Bu Yi is probably losing a good deal of money, and stacking up more unsellable t-shirts each day that some shirts go unsold. But made-to-order shirts produced with heat transfer or other cheap one-time printing techniques aren’t as long-lasting, and can wear out after a few years of washing. Bu Yi doesn’t really make it clear how its shirts are printed, but the company does promise the shirts are 100 percent cotton and aren’t poisonous. So I guess that’s something.

The urgent nature of one-day-gone-forever sales could work well in China, and mixing that with user-submitted designs is kind of cool, but I can’t help but feel like Bu Yi is going to have to be a bit more clear about how its shirts are made and a bit more straightforward with designers before this startup can really go anywhere.