Interview: Stardoll Announces Partnership with Spreadshirt for User-Created Clothes

Stardoll revolves around an environment where users can dress up their avatars and customize them to their hearts' content. Now, with a newly announced partnership with Spreadshirt, users can take some of those designs to the real world. "What the deal represents is that when you look at Stardoll and think about the environment that we have kids playing in, we're playing with garments and clothes," Matt Palmer, Stardoll Executive Vice President and General Manager, told Virtual Worlds News. "We know through our research that kids would love to get their hands on them. The opportunity allows us to experiment with what we can take from our world that's a simple idea that kids can customize, get made, and have sent to them. That sort of translation of virtual world to physical world—I view this as that first step in looking at what that could look like for us."

The deal right now is fairly simple: Users can take logos or graphics from the virtual world's labels (e.g., Pretty in Pink or Folk) and add them on to t-shirts, hats, and other items in the real world. Palmer says this is just the beginning, though.

"I think what you'll begin to see unfold is a variety of images and graphics that come from the wide inventory of graphics that kids can put on their shirt," he explained. "What we'll do with avatars and who we do that will be our next step. In a partnership with Spreadshirt, this is the engine we're working with. Exporting things kids have created into the space is really the next step. We could go as far as that at some point and we'll continue to enhance their ability to design on the site."

The site has many ties with celebrities and major brands, but Palmer doesn't want to step on their toes by allowing users to right away take those brands and make them their own.

"That will be something we begin to explore once we have an idea of how this will work," he said. "Many of them have their own line of clothing, and we've talked about creating things together and selling them virtually ore in the real world. There's a whole other world of opportunities that we'd love to explore, and we will, once we get past this initial step."

He couldn't discuss the details of the business arrangement other than to say that "we're in it together to make some money," but Palmer did emphasize that both parties are interested in seeing where this sort of partnership can lead. There's no official launch date yet, but they're ready to experiment.

"It's a first step, but we really see a big opportunity here," said Palmer. "It'll be interesting to see how it unfolds. We see opportunities to merge the real world and the virtual world because we know our users are interested in that."