• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 5, 2011

Threadless, the artist-inspired online T-shirt marketer, is working with Coinstar on a test that places T-shirt transactional kiosks in several Chicago-area locales. Coinstar, known for its kiosks offering cash for change and Redbox, approached Threadless about the T-shirt-selling initiative because it appreciated Threadless' passionate fan base, according to Cam Balzer.

“We don’t know where this will go," Threadless CMO Balzer said at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit. "It’s a pretty capital-intensive way to sell T-shirts.”

He does hope it expands nationally (the kiosks are selling other Threadless products as well), but beyond direct revenue, Threadless, which has used social media as a marketing boon, finds the brick-and-mortar opportunity is an extension of that.

“The machine itself almost becomes a word-of-mouth tool for Threadless,” he said.

Coinstar has made noise about moving Redbox, which rents film DVDs, into the booming world of online streaming and has said that the boxes provide a huge marketing opportunity should it move in that direction.