Who we are
Built by an apparel brand. For apparel brands.
ThreadzShops is the storefront platform LiftThreadz built for itself — and now opens to every operator who wants their own brand without the warehouse, the inventory, or the logistics headache.
The origin
We were the customer first.
LiftThreadz started in 2024 with a question that should have been trivial: build a beautiful, branded apparel storefront, in a weekend, without hiring an agency. We tried Shopify with seven themes. We tried Printify with three integrations. We tried Big Cartel. We tried Squarespace. We tried building from scratch on Next.js.
Every path was either too expensive, too generic, too slow, or too brittle. Shopify wanted us to pay enterprise prices for features we'd use weekly — multi-store, role-based admin, AI mockups, real automation. Printify took 30-40% of our margin in markups. Big Cartel hadn't shipped a meaningful feature in three years. Squarespace was designed for service businesses, not apparel.
We realized we weren't looking for a better e-commerce tool. We were looking for the tool an e-commerce operator would build for themselves.
So we built it. Twenty-one templates, each one a real storefront with its own signature feature — not skinned variations of the same hero. A visual editor that lets you push the brand into every surface in minutes. A pipeline that turns a logo into a fully-themed storefront in 90 seconds. A Utah warehouse with one print partner so margins stay yours instead of getting eaten by a marketplace.
Then we noticed something else. We were using Claude Desktop to operate the platform for ourselves — "add three black tees," "update the palette to match the new logo," "show me orders this week." If we were doing it, other operators would want to. We open-sourced the MCP server so every store on the platform could be operated by an agent, by a human, or by both at once.
That's ThreadzShops. The storefront platform a creator would build for themselves, if a creator could afford to build a storefront platform. You don't have to. We did. It's open now.
What we believe
Four beliefs that show up in every shipped pixel.
Fulfillment is the moat.
Templates are commodity. Branding is commodity. Anyone can hand you a Shopify theme. We win because we ship — every order, every day, under your brand, from a real warehouse run by real people in Utah. The relief of not touching a box is the product. Everything else is decoration.
Generic templates kill brands.
Most platforms force you to pick between “use a template and look like every other Printify store” or “pay $20K for a Shopify dev.” We ship 21 distinct templates — each one a real, hand-designed storefront — plus a visual editor that lets you push your brand into every page without writing code.
AI should disappear.
You don't think about Photoshop when you use it. Same here. The AI mockups, the brand-in-a-button, the auto-styling — none of that is the point. The point is your store, your customers, your revenue. AI is the elevator, not the destination.
Speed is a feature.
One afternoon to a live store. 24 hours to a first order. We ship platform features every week and publish the changelog so the proof is public. We host on edge infrastructure so your store loads under 1.5s on 4G. Compounded over thousands of customers, those seconds are the difference between a brand and a wishlist.
The team
Small. Honest. Shipping.
Devin Oakes
Founder
20 years selling apparel and software. Mesa, AZ. Owns LiftThreadz, the company that built this platform for itself first.
John Trinka
Co-founder, Operations
Runs the Utah print + ship operation. The reason your malfunction returns get handled in 48 hours.
Claude + the agents
Engineering force-multiplier
Most of the platform is shipped by a small human team pair-coding with Claude. The MCP server exists because we use it ourselves.
Build with us.
The platform a creator would build for themselves. Open now. Ten minutes to live.