Over the past few years, Teespring has had to make significant reforms to its safety operations in response to criticism over apparel that promoted violence and racist messaging.

[6] When the popular, student-oriented Providence dive bar Fish Co. appeared to be going out of business in 2011, they designed T-shirts that said "FREE FISHCO".

[citation needed] Rhode Island angel investors Bill Cesare and Mark Weiner invested the first $600,000 in seed funding.

Within two weeks of finishing the three-month accelerator, Teespring raised another $1.3 million including $500,000 from Sam Altman, then president at Y-Combinator.

[10] A new manufacturing facility in Kentucky was expected to create hundreds of jobs[10] and by 2015, Teespring had expanded to around 300 employees in the United States.

[4] In May 2017, Teespring caused controversy by selling T-shirts that featured the words, "Black Women Are Trash," resulting in many Twitter users calling for a boycott of the platform.

Some assembly required" from its website, following a complaint from Radio Television Digital News Association, a journalist advocacy group.

[22] An analysis by USA Today found that the site was selling T-shirts reading "Hitler did nothing wrong" and one with an image of Bill Cosby paired with the slogan "drinks on me ladies".

[4] In April 2018, the company came under fire for providing items for sale that celebrated Dylann Roof, a neo-Nazi mass murderer.

[23] In June 2018, an article by Alex Dalbey in The Daily Dot detailed criticism on social media of Teespring for pulling a line of T-shirts featuring the term "TERFs" (short for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists).

[24] In 2018, a Women's March spokesperson told CNN that "many of these fake pages are used to sell merchandise, with the proceeds benefiting individuals instead of our movement.

"[25] Following the death of Caroline Flack in February 2020, Teespring received criticism for selling counterfeit versions of the "Be Kind" T-shirts created by Leigh Francis to raise money for mental health charity The Samaritans.