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There are thousands of small businesses on the internet and every once in a while, a new startup gets us excited. ShirtsMyWay is one of those startups although the idea of custom made shirts ordered over the internet is not new.

The site lets you design your own dress shirt in just a few clicks. With the user friendly design panel, shoppers can choose the fabric of their choice and quickly customize the collar, cuffs, buttons, buttonholes, monogram, and many more details. The site is very well designed and the interactive experience is truly satisfying as you get to decide every detail in creating your own custom “designer shirt”. The shirts are custom made in China and will cost you between 75 and 95$, international shipping costs included.

ShirtsMyWay claims to have more than 1 trillion design combinations. What began as an idea for expressing individuality has evolved into a blend of fashion and technology. The site has gained some good visibility since its launch in February this year. Founders Peter Crawfurd and Michael Yang say they haven’t spent anything on marketing and are already profitable. Over 90% of their customers are from the USA while Norway comes in second.

Reading this post on TechCrunch, looks like the biggest challenge is to make those custom made shirts fit to perfection at the very first attempt. Going for a second attempt just to arrive at the perfect fit would be asking for a lot of patience from the customers. It already takes upto 15 working days for a standard delivery once the order is processed. Once you find your perfect fit however, ordering online should be a convenient option. One thing is certain: they only have one chance to win over a customer. Do it right and you might have a repeat customer. Mess it up and you have the irate customer all over the place airing his (not her.. yet!) negative experience. But again, that’s true these days for all businesses except for a few exceptional and innovative companies who have already built up a mountain load of positive karma.

If this whole experience takes off, it won’t be surprising to see brand names and designer labels launching their own similar online initiatives. Perhaps then, going to a shopping mall and trying out a new shirt in real time will be a good reason for brands to justify charging more than what they offer on their online stores. But that will only happen if the challenges of such an online operation are overcome in a meaningful way. In the meantime, it will remain a niche business, not very scalable, but at the same time very profitable for the owners.

From a consumer point of view, if you are a male and you wear shirts, you certainly got to give it a try.

And to make it easy for you to do just that, ShirtsMyWay has agreed to give the readers of Loogic a 10% discount till Sunday, 16th August. To avail the discount, place your order as normal and send an email to support@shirtsmyway.com with your name and promo code “Loogic 10%” within 1 hour of placing the order. They will refund you 10% of the total bill.

The race continues between Privalia and BuyVip. On this occasion, the competition is not in the growth of users or revenues, but in the amount of funding received. A little more than a month ago, we covered the news of the investment of 14.9 million euros in BuyVip by Kennet Partners and now we get the news of Privalia receiving 8 million euros from Insight Venture Partners and Highland Capital Partners.

Our take on it: Two American investment funds investing in a Spanish startup is a great news for us. This investment confirms the fact that the business of online outlets is perhaps the most promising internet business in Spain today.

Amongst the initial investors who betted for the project are Luis Martin Cabiedes who confirmed me that he has sold his sold his stake in the company, something that fits well with his investment philosophy: “I think that a business angel should know when to enter and exit”. Luis participated until the third round of funding which was also participated by Nauta Capital and fetched 4 million euros. Now we expect that with the returns from this exit, he will continue to invest in internet startups, something that he has done with a lot of success until now.

Seen in Expansion.

Revenues of Buyvip in 2008: 28 million Euros
Revenues of Privalia in 2008: 22 million Euros
Revenues of Vente Privee in 2008: 23 million Euros

Doesn´t it seem strange that the three main Online Outlets that operate in Spain have very similar revenues? Considering that Buyvip operates on an international level and the figure presented is from global revenues, it´s fair to think that the figure is actually lower and closer to Privalia and Ventee Privee.

How can it be that all three have such similar revenues?  and why don´t any of them publicize their profits? It seems that the race between the three “big ones” is to obtain the maximum users possible and the biggest sales figures. However, on the inside, what surely should be of concern are the profits. Unless their goal is to create more jobs than to earn money.

My impression is that the sales figures are so similar because these private online shopping clubs have similar users, in other words, one user most likely makes purchases on all three sites, including some others. Also, let´s keep an eye out for Vipventa that still hasn´t publicized their revenues, only number of users which isn´t too bad.

The other interesting point to consider is why there are such pronounced highs and lows in the traffic of these sites, as seen in the graph above?

Didac Lee gave a talk at last month’s First Tuesday in Madrid, and it really grabbed my attention when he talked of Scubastore, an online shop that sells scuba diving material all over the world.

Frankly speaking, I thought that this Scubastore project was just a hobby for Didac and it didn’t generate a lot of profit, unlike I supposed the other companies belonging to his group Inspirit. But the truth is that this shop of scuba diving products is tremendously successful earning revenues of 3 million euros a year.

As I didn’t understand how they had such revenues selling neoprene suits and glasses for scuba diving, I asked Didac Lee what was the secret of success of Scubastore, and I learned that the reasons for its success were quite clear. They started selling on an international scale in the year 2000. At that time, the dollar-euro exchange rate was very profitable for selling products from Spain to the US (Correction: the euro was put into circulation in 2002). Almost 90% of their sales are made outside of Spain.

Specializing and selling on an international scale has been the secret of Scubastore, something that can be achieved by many of the e-commerce companies that operate out of Spain. And one more thing to add: the website of this online shop is not shabby. Many people are of the opinion that to sell on the internet, ugly sites do better. This is not the case here.

Oportunista.com is a showcase for all those companies that want to publish occasional offers to attract new users to their establishments or to promote certain sales. The service is specialised as it functions on a city by city basis, for now only available in Madrid and Barcelona, with plans to launch in rest of Spain and then in the most important European cities. The offers made by companies are on a local level.

The business model of Oportunista.com is very interesting. They charge the companies 1€ a day for each offer published, which is not a big cost for the companies, hence facilitating a good supply of offers on the site and attracting a big number of consumers looking to make the most of these opportunities. The offers are mainly related to food, events, shopping, … products and services that have more possibilities to change their prices in function of the demand of the users.

In the launch phase of Oportunista.com, they are offering the publication of offers free of charge to companies in exchange for their suggestions and opinions with respect to improving the service.

Oportunista.com is a project of Rodrigo Giménez-Rico and Alexandra Klein of the company Nexst.