This post was contributed to Degardener by Shahar Even Dar. I strongly encourage you to visit Shahar’s writing here and here (in Hebrew).  Shahar is a long time friend and thinker.

This is the first in a series of posts in which I try to look at the long tail theory from a critical angle and check it limits. It seems nearly impossible to overestimate the impact of Chris Anderson’s long tail theory, and it is surely inadvisable to underestimate it. And yet, one can find examples for both types of wrong reactions. I am not worried, in any sense, about old media corporations trying to dismiss the new reality and I will not shed a tear while watching them drain millions before waking up. It is the over estimators, Chris Anderson naturally being the most prominent one, that worry me.

It seems nearly impossible to overestimate the impact of ’s long tail theory, and it is surely inadvisable to underestimate it. And yet, one can find examples for both types of wrong reactions. I am not worried, in any sense, about old media corporations trying to dismiss the new reality and I will not shed a tear while watching them drain millions before waking up. It is the over estimators, Chris Anderson naturally being the most prominent one, that worry me.The long tail theory was quickly adopted by many people who found it to be the perfect tool for analyzing the new emerging online economy. Those people now tend to look at the long tail as the only possible model for online commerce, and strongly object to any contradicting evidence. In a recent post in Anderson’s blog, for example, he was startled by the claim in a NYT article, that the DVD market is hit-oriented. For Anderson, the mere thought that a niche market does not follow his famous model is a blasphemy. Furthermore, if you are looking at online success, you must think in long tail terms. You either try to become a long tail supplier like amazon or try to carve yourself a respectable niche somewhere along the tail of an existing market by using SEM and SEO. While these two approaches are viable, one should remember that other options still exist.

The most striking example for a success that does not comply with Anderson’s theory is the online T-shirt vendor, Threadless. Threadless, for those who don’t know it yet, is a niche store aimed at T-shirt aficionados. Aspiring designers are invited to submit designs for the open contest (as well as for periodic topical contests), submitted designs are uploaded to the site, to be scored by Threadless registered users. Winning designs are printed in rather low quantities and announced twice per month. Many of the designs get sold out rapidly, leaving users with the option to call for a reprint. In other words, Threadless artificially and on purpose chooses a path which Anderson would regard as crazy; it cuts its own tail. And yet, this is the exact reason for the success story that drives Threadless. This is why there is such a buzz in the blogosphere about Threadless, why people rush to buy the new designs as soon as they get the biweekly newsletter, and why people get emotionally involved with a T-shirt store. Many times artificial scarcity works!

The Threadless success could only happen on the internet, of course, it is based almost only on viral marketing through blog reactions, its customers are T-shirt fans scattered all over the globe, and the online voting process has a major part in creating the customers’ emotional involvement. But all those factors do not make Threadless a long tail company, as I said earlier, quite the opposite is true.

Some people might argue that Threadless simply found a respectable niche within the overall long tail market of T-shirts, in which Gap, for example, is located at the hits end, and Threadless, as well as others is located somewhere along the tail. I beg to differ. Anderson’s model is based on the idea that the availability of information lets each buyer find exactly what he or she was looking for instead of settling for some default hit. Threadless uses the availability of information to create an almost opposite effect, to generate a will for something you did not know you wanted. Instead of relying on infinite shelf space and back catalog, Threadless forces its customers to be aware of the very limited shelf space, and the merely nonexistent back catalog, and manages to do it successfully.

The lesson to be taken from this example is that as powerful as the long tail is, there are still many other paths to success and to exploit the advantages of the online economy, as long as you keep an open mind.

Full disclosure: This post was written while wearing a Threadless “Technology Ruins Nature” shirt.