Beam out to the world with your T-shirt designs

"Cluster X, JLT", despite the sound of intrigue, is an actual address in Dubai, as anyone who lives/ works/ frequents the free trade zone area of Jumeirah Lakes Towers (JLT ) might know.
On the 35th floor of yet another one of these ivory towers in Cluster X, there is the office of an e-commerce business called Souqueen - an amalgamation of souq and queen, with the 'ueen' standing for "unconditionally empowering entrepreneurs now'.
Souqueen was officially launched a fortnight ago, after the National Day holidays. What the site/ company aims to do is boost creativity and help entrepreneurs get a head start with no investment of their own. So say you're a creative sort, a designer who wants her designs to go viral, appear on tee T-shirts, mugs and billboards etc.
As a designer, you register with souqueen, create a profile/ a dashboard. Souqueen offers a zero investment and 20 per cent profit-sharing deal. Upload your designs on Souqueen (souqueen.com) and customers - online shoppers - can browse online and if they like what they see, have your designs customised to their liking.
Laila Othman, the Managing Director of Souqueen is out of town on business. But the co-founder Abdulla Awad, an entrepreneur also of several other businesses, is very much in town, and welcomes me into the office. The office décor is in orange and purple - company colours - and has a spectacular view of the Emirates golf course.
Palestinian-American Awad shuttles between Boston, Dubai and Palestine. He has other businesses, too. But for the moment the talk is about only the first product of Souqueen, custom T-shirt printing using digital printing.
It's not a T-shirt company, he says. It's an "empowering creativity" company that then wants to help contribute to the local economy. All this while having empowered artists and given them a portfolio, and with any luck, a platform for launching their own business in future. T-shirts just happen to be their first product.
For the recent National Day celebrations, Souqueen printed (all digital - no screen printing) 500 T-shirts for one company with a National Day theme. The logos on the shirts were an Emirati man, a colourful typography of Dubai Culture, and one of Burj Al Arab, with Arabic letters around it.
The price of these T-shirts varies, starting from $9.99, approximately Dh37. But that's for unlimited text. There's no upper limit of how expensive they can be. The more designs you add, the more you pay.
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com

One of the T-shirts with the Burj Al Arab logo