Kanata t-shirt start-up vies for Canada Post e-commerce award

_ This story originally appeared on our sister site, StittsvilleCentral.ca . _

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Tees for the People , a Kanata-based start-up with Stittsville owners, has been nominated as a finalist in Canada Post’s e-commerce innovation awards.

The company is nominated in the “Most Innovative E-Commerce Platform” category. Winners will be announced at a gala on September 23 in Toronto.

There’s also an online voting component for the “Consumer Champion Award”. Tees for the People is up against some big names like Best Buy, Aldo, MEC and Walmart. You can vote here.

The company was founded earlier this year by Pat Sullivan and Derek Donaldson. It’s an off-shoot of Creo Marketing, a company they run on Edgewater Street in Kanata.

Tees for the People is a fundraising business that helps charities and non-profit organizations raise money by selling t-shirts online.

Users can upload a t-shirt design and sell the shirt online. Tees for the People keeps a small amount of every sale to cover the costs of the shirt, with the rest going to the group that’s doing the fundraising.

For example, a fundraiser could sell t-shirts at $20 each, with Tees for the People taking a cut of about $6 on each shirt. If a company sold 100 shirts, they’d earn a profit of $14 per sale or $1,400. Tees for the People handles all the logistics of printing and shipping.

“We saw a need for something like this when we were working with charities,” said Sullivan.

“Our biggest challenge right now is generating awareness so that people know who we are and see how simple the process is. We see the business moving into different product offerings in the near future,” he says.

Clients include charities like Ride for Dad, Support Our Troops, and Canadian Blood Services.

“We are a streamlined organization and simply don’t have the resources to spend on time-consuming fundraisers. Tees for the People was remarkably easy to staff. It took one person about 2 hours a week to raise thousands of dollars,” says Rachael Wilson of Curling Canada, one of the company’s customers.

You can learn more about the company by visiting http://www.teesforthepeople.com **

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  with up to 10 colours.

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** ** See also: ** Ottawa Business Guide

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