‘Nice Shirt! Thanks’ made me a nice shirt. Thanks!

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A few years ago I started phasing graphic T-shirts out of my wardrobe. They had served me well, but I felt it was high time I graduated to clothes that require ironing. Then Nice Shirt! Thanks‘ customised T-shirts went viral on TikTok, and I decided I had to get just one more.

Launched last year by friends Hayden Rankin and Mason Manning (also known as Uncle Mason), Nice Shirt! Thanks is a small business that follows one simple ingenious premise. Provide a short written prompt to the good folks at Nice Shirt! Thanks, and they will design and print you a T-shirt based on it. Descriptions can be as detailed or vague as you wish, however you will have no idea what your fevered writings have wrought until your new garment arrives at your home.

“We wanted to monetise art and comedy, which is two things that we’re really big into,” Rankin said. “Finally, through a bunch of tweaking and adjusting, we finally came up with this idea that we thought was perfect.”

It’s a fun mix of chaos, art, individuality, and memes that seemed destined to go viral — and it did. A simple search for #niceshirtthanks on TikTok will unearth numerous clips of customers gleefully reacting to their T-shirts for the first time, and the company has been inundated with orders.

“There’s a comedic apparel market that I just don’t even think has really been tapped into,” said Rankin. “We’ve seen that a bunch of people like stupid apparel, they like funny shirts, they like garbage like that, and it’s this college group that we’ve really hit into that we really understand because we’re just a bunch of college meatheads.”

How to order from Nice Shirt! Thanks

Shirts currently range from $25.99 for a short-sleeved shirt to $30.99 for a long-sleeved one, plus an extra $2 added on to each if you want to upload your own image. Standard shipping within the U.S. costs $4.90, though Nice Shirt! Thanks ships around the globe — it’s just a matter of if you want to pay for it. Nice Shirt! Thanks provided my review sample, though shipping to Australia would generally cost $17.34.

Unfortunately, you can’t just order a nice shirt whenever inspiration strikes. High demand has caused Nice Shirt! Thanks to restrict sales to 150 shirts per day, with orders opening every day at 12:00 a.m. CT. Rankin and Manning eventually hope to increase the number of orders they can take, but for now they’re still busy working through the thousands still in their backlog.

If you’re fortunate enough to nab one of those coveted 150 daily spots, the ordering process is easy. Aside from the length of their sleeves, customers must also choose a size ranging from Small to 5XL (all measurements taken with the shirt laid flat), and from colours including “White,” “White again,” and “We only have white shirts.”

Finally, once the shirt is in your cart, you have to type out a short prompt from which Nice Shirt! Thanks’ designers will draw inspiration, just as the old masters of yore were inspired by scripture. The business has a roster of over 400 designers, all of whom can access a database of prompts and choose to work on ones that spark their imagination. (Rates started at $5 per shirt, based on the cost of hiring a designer from Fiverr, but Rankin told Mashable they intend to raise prices further in order to better compensate their workers.)

The text I supplied for my prompt read: “My friends keep calling me a Space Lawyer. I am not a Space Lawyer. Please help me convey that I am not a Space Lawyer.” For context, I have a law degree and sometimes write about space. This does not make me a space lawyer, and nothing I say should be considered legal advice, space or otherwise. If you ever meet my friends, please tell them this.

I had very little idea of what design this prompt could possibly inspire, but I am not a designer so that was not my problem.

How long does it take for Nice Shirt! Thanks to ship?

My shirt took four weeks from order to arrival, which is on the shorter side of expected delivery times. Nice Shirt! Thanks’ website warns that it can take a minimum of four to six weeks from the time an order is placed to the time it’s simply shipped, with both the deluge of orders and the coronavirus pandemic slowing down operations. Then you have to wait for it to actually make the trip to you, which could add on even more weeks. Keep that in mind and consider a backup plan if you’re ordering a shirt for a specific occasion.

When my nice shirt finally came…it was genuinely the first thing to make me smile that day.

However, once mine did arrive, I found it worth the wait. I was having a truly awful week when my nice shirt finally came, and it was genuinely the first thing to make me smile that day.

Nice Shirt! Thanks doesn’t mess around with fancy packaging, which is good for keeping costs low. Shirts arrive folded in a mailing envelope, the only other contents being a print out of your prompt. It’s fairly handy, since the lengthy time between ordering and receiving means there’s a reasonable chance you’ll forget exactly what you asked for.

For my space lawyer prompt, I received a shirt depicting someone floating through space in a white suit and astronaut helmet, one fist holding the scales of justice and the other cocked back to punch. Next to them, the shirt has text that reads “Call me a space lawyer one more time.” I love it.

What’s the quality like?

Though Nice Shirt! Thanks’ shirts are well chronicled on TikTok, there hasn’t been much discussion regarding the actual quality of the garments. I’ve had bad experiences with other customised T-shirts in the past, so I expected my Nice Shirt! Thanks order to be more of a novelty than a practical addition to my wardrobe. Worth a few wears, but not likely to stick around for long.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by my shirt’s quality. The label indicates the base T-shirt is from Hanes, made from 100 percent cotton, and it’s comfortably soft enough to sleep in. The printed design wasn’t plasticy as I’d feared, so there’s no danger of peeling, though it was the tiniest bit stiff when it first arrived. Fortunately it softens right up after a wash, which Nice Shirt! Thanks advises you do before your first wear.

That first wash did cause the design’s colours to slightly fade, but not more than would be reasonable or expected, and it isn’t something I expect to be a long-term issue. While I can’t definitively say Nice Shirt! Thanks’ shirts hold up in the long run, the look and feel of them indicate they probably will. I do wish I had gotten a size larger for a looser fit, but generally I found it true to size.

Thanks!

I was eager to surprise my friends with this shirt, and their delighted reactions did not disappoint. However, they also enthusiastically interpreted the shirt’s text as a request rather than a threat, so technically it failed the brief. I’m willing to let that slide though, because art is subjective and my friends will happily ignore authorial intent if it means I will suffer.

Of course, with so much of the shirts’ designs left to interpretation, there is always the risk that someone genuinely won’t like what they receive. In such cases, Nice Shirt! Thanks’ policy is to stand by their designers, and customers just have to literally wear it. Even so, there has been the occasional exception.

“The policy is that we don’t do refunds,” said Rankin. “But there have been times where people have emailed us and we’re like, ‘alright can you send us the shirt,’ and sure enough, it was something that I probably cleared that I shouldn’t have cleared. It just wasn’t up to par. And so there’s been times we’re like, you know what, I think we’re gonna go ahead and send you a new one.”

The very nature of internet meme art is that it is “bad,” but there is a difference between silly camp and just uninspired. Rankin and Manning have created a business out of knowing where that line is.

Though they could theoretically print as many nice shirts for themselves as they’d like, Rankin only owns one: an image of a cabbage below the word “cabbage.” So far, he’s had six people ask him where they can get it as well.

“That feels so good to have somebody ask that,” said Rankin. “It’s the most abstract stuff that people are just like, ‘That makes no sense. I want it.’ And I’m like, I couldn’t agree more.”

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