I always like hearing about online stores that manage to get big enough that they can set up traditional brick and mortar stores. Inspiration for the budding entrepreneurs toiling away online. Online clothing retailer Yackfou will be opening a retail store in Berlin on July 5th. The press release says they’re running a special on opening day - 50% off. I’m not clear whether that’s online ‘in-store’ or online as well, but seems like more than a good enough reason to check out there stuff.

A few good summer sales underway. One from Cotton Werks who’s featuring tees for just 8 bucks and the other from the ever popular Busted Tees. Cotton Werks is blowing out inventory, so the sale may last, but the Busted sales is a day only - TODAY. $13 for any tee.

Hey, word to any of our RSS readers. You probably found a butt load of drug and/or porn links filling your feed over the last couple weeks. Sorry about that. Seems the TSW headquarters suffered a security breach. Damn hackers. And big thanks to reader J. for the heads up.

Few picks for today you should give a look. From the top:

Dead Metal Clothing - The name itself tells the story pretty well. Wicked illustrations and no shortage of cranial containers.

Split Reason - Random tee from a batch of new stuff from Split Reason. Always something to address our inner geek.

Hans and Fras - Newly launched, these guys are printing all of their stock by hand.

Human Giant Threadless Contest - Collaborative contest tee designers should not pass up. Deadline is April 15th.

We’ve brought back our 125×125 ad units. If you’re a shop owner and would be interested in advertising on the site drop us a line at advertising @ tshirtwatch.com. We’re offering a second month at half price for the first four buyers.

It’s leap year - what you are doing with your extra day? How about launching an entire clothing line? Sounds a little ambitious for us, but that’s exactly what Thriving Ink is set to do. We got a sneak peak at the entire collection set to go on sale tomorrow and it’s nothing short of amazing. Couple peaks after the jump and make sure you hit em tomorrow during your leap year festivities.

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One of those site news posts for the handful of loyal followers. Are you all still out there? Anyway, I’ve been buried again and feeling guilty for not posting in what, almost two weeks? Yikes. Well, it is what it is. Good news is that I think I’m back on track. My inbox of bustin’ out with lots of cool stuff. And I’ve got a few fresh tees on my desk you’ll soon be seeing.

If you’re a shop owner and haven’t yet see the giant ass blue button that’s been living at the top of every page on the site - then get some glasses and click it. The directory is slowly coming together and you might as well get in early. Keep the great suggestions coming. Always happy to hear from you guys.

Calling all shop owners! We’ve finally gotten around to creating our own directory of t-shirt sites. I have no clue why it’s taken us so long, but better late than never I guess. So, if you happen to be a shirt shop owner and would like your web site listed in our directory than click here to get the party started.

We’re planning on getting a basic directory launched at the end of this month. So early adopters will benefit from a lack of competing listings. (Please don’t let that stop you from spreading the word). As we have more entries (an time), we’ll be doing some refinement to the search mechanism. We’re also planning on have a few shops randomly featured each day in some kind of sidebar link scenario. And of course we’ll promote the directory in general throughout the site.

We get so many requests for reviews and posts that it often takes us a while to get around to everyone. The directory should allow just about anyone to quickly get included on the site. And of course owners are still encouragement to shoot us an email to request a formal review, pass on coupon codes and sale information.

I stumbled across this story over at Boingboing. Blogger Scott Beale at Laughing Squid got himself in hot water with Best Buy’s lawyers for posting on a parody shirt. The shirt, shown above, features the ‘likeness’ of the Best Buy logo tag. Scott received a cease and desist letter for merely posting on someone elses shirt. Seriously. You can read the letter on his site. Best Buy lawyers initially claimed he was ‘promoting’ the shirt, which they deemed to be an infringement upon their copyright and trademarks. Fortunately after a little back and forth their lawyers issued an apology to Scott stating that while they object to the unauthorized use of their logo, they ‘respect the First amendment rights’ of bloggers.

A revised version of the shirt is for sale at Neighborhoodies. It looks like they’ve removed the yellow color on the tag - likely to keep themselves out of further legal trouble. $5.99. View the original Laughing Squid post and the yellow tag version of the shirt here.

Pretty lame misstep on Best Buy’s part. Regardless of issues of fair use, a cease and desist for mere reporting on an event is absolutely ridiculous. No doubt the original prank pulled off by Improv Everywhere (which featured the shirts in question) was covered by countless local newspapers and television stations. Did they receive cease and desist letters for reporting the news? Somehow I don’t think so.