silverorange stuff

I am in the process now of throwing together a store. As I feared thre is not much of a chance of big sales. At least I can make stuff for myself. :)

My biggest problem with the system is that all the clothing (well TShirts) are white. No choices.

The whole business model of CafePress is not about making stores... but in fact on the possibility to win money on shop owners and this is clever. You can imagine that every owner of a store, be also its first consumer. And so they will at least order one item. It doesn't cost so much when the interface has been set. The most expensive part being printing the material.

Well geckoWARE set up shop on www.cafepress.com yesterday and we placed our first order today. We placed a rather large order so we're anxious to see if everything comes through as easily as we're expecting. We look at it from the point of view of advertising. The more of our company logo and website that we can get out there in the world, the more visibility we will have. If you're like to check out the geckoWARE merchandise and maybe order something for yourself, just go to http://www.cafepress.com/geckoware We have quite a few cool things designed. Nothing too elaborate because we believe the white space makes it classy. I'll post another comment on here when we receive our order to let you know how it went.

We received our geckoWARE products and you can read a review of our products on my blog. We were generally please with our merchandise.

I was thinking about doing this. The review reinforces what I thought; no money to be made but an easy alternative to having to drop $1000 at a local shop to get anything done.

W

We are thinking of setting up a shop like this. But are there any cheaper/better alternatives to cafepress?

I am looking into setting up a shop to sell swag for my school. Are there any other shops that do this besides cafepress?

www.spreadsheet.com
www.99dogs.com

I have ordered from a Cafepress shop and the quality was not what I expected. The digital design seems a bit cheap and it washes off after a while. As mentioned by other users, the aftersale service is not that great. I have recently discovered Spreadshirt which is a much better alternative. They offer a wide range of products and they can www.spreadshirt.com . They do not only offer cheap digital printing quality, but also flex (smooth and shiny) and flock (soft and velvety) which lasts forever. Unlike competition, they can print on all kinds of colors. You can see a few cool shop examples here: http://www.spreadshirt.com/Spotlight_Shops.6.0.html I have set my own shop in only 15 minutes and I add new products every week. As opposed to my old Cafepress shop, my Spreadshirt shop seems very well integrated to my website. The customer service is great and they offer me assistance whenever I need it. Like Cafepress, prices are a bit high, but when you consider that it's quality customised merch, it worths it.

www.spreadshirt.com USA
www.spreadshirt.net Europe

Check it out!

Fred

No money to be made!!...%90 of the designs and shops are not very invigorating and/or inspiring. You have to be different and/or precise when speaking of the product design, web design/ and marketing techniques...as for the print quality, the market and/or individuals who are purchasing shirts online perfer not the traditional rich screen printed look/feel...a great designer can capture the negatives of the digital method and produce a hot(unique)product...and when dealing with catch phrase designs, folks are constantly looking for new sayings, while discarding the old...

...my only concern with spreadshirt.com was their customer service...my first call was returned in less then 24 hours and then they gladly provided a direct line and extension...thanks spreadshirt!

Hi all,

I'm currently looking for such a solution to setup a store for my Sci-Fi universe Hoshikaze 2250.

I already found CafePress and SpreadShirt. This thread confirms what I thought, SpreadShirt seems better, specially in Europe (I'm from France). I may write back when I've evaluated 99dogs. I also found Zazzle, but their site's French translation was so terrible that I didn't take a second look :(

For me the interest of CafePress would be for printed products and CDs, that SpreadShirt does not sell. So I'll keep on evaluating every such site and may end up with 2 or even 3 shops...

@+

Benoît 'Mutos' ROBIN
http://hoshikaze.net

Uh, well, haven't checked the licensing info on the other sites, but this is from Zazzle...

"Licensor hereby grants to Zazzle a nonexclusive, worldwide, transferable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, crop, reproduce, publicly display, sell, and distribute the Work and a Changed Work (if applicable) in various sizes and in any manner including, without limitation, via the Website, other websites, and/or through multiple levels of distributors and through retail and wholesale channels, in, on, or as part of Products made by or for Zazzle (the "License")."

Yikes! I guess I have to go through the process of signing up to get to the legal text, and finding this was a little hard to find, but CafePress has this to say on the matter:

"Please be clearly advised that you retain any and all rights in and to any content that you upload through the CafePress.com service. Please read the CafePress.com Terms of Service and the Shopkeeper Agreement, both of which make it clear that you would retain any and all rights you may have in and to the content that you upload. However, you do grant CafePress.com a limited license, which enables us to create and market your products."

I'd be curious what, exactly, the limit is on that license. If it's anything other than "until I remove or request removal from the site," I wouldn't go for it. I thought about putting some of my art on some things, but if I can't maintain control of how my work is used, I'd never do it. Also, these prices are a tad steep. And when I say tad, I mean a LOT.

Spreadshirt appears to have their terms of service written in partial legalese, to a point where it doesn't really make sense as a legal text nor a layman's explanation of what a legal text would mean. Their statement is: "(1) Possible copyright or additional rights of the Partner to use the print designs that the Partner wishes. The partner gives Spreadshirt the right of use for created and transmitted designs. This includes the right to print the design on the product and to sell the products through the shops created by the Partner. Spreadshirt does not have the right to sell Partners’ designs in its own shops, or in shops of third parties or other distribution channels without the express permission of the Partner."

It doesn't really say what happens to the right of Spreadshirt to use designs after either party terminates... just that either one can at any time. So...

I guess my whole point is to make sure you know what rights you're giving away before you sign up. Looks like everyone's too expensive to make much money at it (a string thong for $11.90 base price at Spreadshirt? It better come with $5 stapled to the tag...) but it's a neat idea. If someone could do it at about half this price and seamlessly integrate it into a site so 95% of people wouldn't be able to look at your markup, you could do a lot greater volume, and I think everyone could make a load of cash.

CafePress is great, but almost unusable for international shoppers (specifically Canadians) due to high shipping costs.

The price for CafePress shipping is OVER 4 TIMES more expensive than the comparable US mail rate to Canada. The price for CafePress shipping is $20 more than UPS next day air, yet CafePress takes 6-8 days to arrive.

There is no reasonably fast shipping option for Canadian orders, yet UPS delivers here just fine and you ship UPS to US customers upon request.

Their rates are an obvious cash grab, at best, or very poor work on the part of selecting couriers, at worst.

Cafe press has horrible service. I have now tried them twice, and would never do it again. The service is extremely slow....it took over 2 months to receive the first item, and the second one was ordered on November 1st, and I still haven't received it. I have placed several calls to the company, only to be told that this happens frequently and I would need to follow up to see if it has finished production. In the end, I cancelled the order and vowed never to use this company again.

I have encountered nothing but negative situations with cafepress.com. I know for a fact that they promote and sell imaged products that hold copyrights. I've been banned from their messageboards because I use my own brains, instead of siding with the clan. Their "Tos" gives them the right to use your work for profit without giving the artist the credit or compensation for the work.
I'm looking for a better company.

I just recieved an order that I made 3 days ago for my son.
The colors are dull and not professionally done.
I'm again not satisfied with cafepres.com's services!

First let me comment that Cafe Press is a better alternative to Zazzle. They have been doing it longer and seem to havge worked out the kinks in the software and printing. Whatever you upload you can remove--today or a year from now. They are not trying to license your art--merely handle fulfillment--and they have a good support community and do some PR.

NOW|ZAZZLE-

I am so happy to finally see someone comment on the zazzle contract! I have been outraged by it from the momet I read it.

In a nutshell-Zazzle is robbing ARTISTS!

Just look at the contract. You would have to be crazy to sign that! You are signing your art -- your logos -- your livelihood away to them...no artist signs a licensing contract with any manufacturer or agent for more than 4 years let alone an amount as miniscule as 10% on anything they sell to a third party! NOT TO MENTION Why would they give Zazzle perpetuity? And the right to do what they want to your art--cut -- crop -- put it in a blender if they want?

Zazzle is just plain GREEDY and there are better options out there for artists!

It's obvious if you look at the zazzle portfolio of designs that they are getting just crap because of this!

Anyway-here is the contract.
http://www.zazzle.com/policy/nonexclusive_license_agreement.asp

This is the JUST first paragraph!!

Grant of Rights:
Licensor hereby grants to Zazzle a nonexclusive, worldwide,
transferable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, crop,
reproduce, publicly display, sell, and distribute the Work and a Changed Work (if applicable) in various sizes and in any manner including, without limitation, via the Website, other websites, and/or through multiple levels of distributors and through retail and wholesale channels, in, on, or as part of Products made by or
for Zazzle (the "License"). Zazzle shall not have the right to sublicense third parties to include part or all of the Work as part of Products to be manufactured by or for the third party for sale
under the third party's name.

blahblah more perpetual...irrevocable....

Greats site i like it!!

Cafepress, has some issues, however, there is a way to make tons of money without even having to make a t-shirt. You can become an affiliate, this is new and anyone can do it, even overseas (there are some restrictions for overseas clients but I think Canada works just dandy). The way it works is you become an affiliate, they give you an affiliate number, you find the stores that you like and link to them from your blog. You make 20% of any sales you promote. If you click on my web address above you can see and example of how it works.

Good Luck

We have been with CafePress for a year now and have made over $1500 profit. It's not enough to live on but it will buy a nice computer. Most of that was in the last 4 months. Now that we got thing going I think we should make double that this year.

Check out the Cafe Clash and vote...
http://blog.detourdesign.com

I have had nothing but great service from Cafepress. Out of several orders I have only had 2 items I was not happy with and both times just a simple phone call corrected the problem. Both times they sent me a new product with in 2 days at no charge and told me to just keep the one I was not happy with. This company is #1 when it comes to support and customer satisfaction.

Cafe Press seems to have more limited design functions than Zazzle, but their response time to inquiries has always been very prompt for me. I have not ordered any items from the but started designing some products as an alternative to Zazzle, but did not like their process. To their credit, they do offer a number of products such as clocks, bumper sticker, etc., that Zazzle does not.

I have had awful experiences with Zazzle. At first, there was a problem of them just deleting products and not even bothering to inform the designer. The designer goes back later to order the product, but it's not there! That finally got fixed, but now they inform you they are deleting a product and delete it. If they have made a mistake, which is often the case, the designer has to go through the entire design process again and repeat all his work when they should be the ones restoring the design and taking responsibility for their mistakes. I have had a whole account with over 200 designs deleted because of their mistake. I had another account deleted due to someone else's trying to claim they owned a copyright to maps hundreds of years old! (Nobody owns a copyright for anything before 1923!) Did they just delete the few products in question? NO - they deleted the entire account with hundreds of designs! When placing an order, let the buyer beware. I have tried take advantage of a special and received the message "success!" implying that
I was receiving the discount, when I was not given it. This conduct is misleading to say the least, and some would label it as fraud. I have placed many orders with Zazzle, and most are shipped within 24 hours as advertised, but I have had some that were not. It took one shipment 4 days to be shipped! No discount was given and no apology offered!

Zazzle makes frequent upgrades, some questionable and some with great ideas. They do not test these upgrades enough before going online with them. If you you catch an error, they may tell you it does not exist when it is obvious it does. Then they say it will be fixed in a few hours or in the upgrade next week, but the error continues for weeks. I have even been told I have a bad attitude for reporting problems.

I have spent thousands of dollars with Zazzle and contributed thousands of designs. I was even told by a Zazzle employee that I was their largest designer. They don't care! They have no respect for a designer's time and work.

With Zazzle, the designer cannot modify a design or delete it. He must email support to have it deleted, but often support does not delete the product even after emailing you that they will! If you think of a way to improve the design, you can do it, but the old version stays out there. If you make a typo (Who Hasn't?), it stays!

I give Zazzle an A for the quality of the products I have ordered from them and a F for customer service and sense of fairness.

Zazzle is an example of what is wrong with customer service, especially with large companies. They lie to you, mislead you, and even trhreaten you with the deletion of your work on which you have spent thousands of hours because THEY do something wrong and you have the nerve to speak up about it. The CEO of Zazzle should be taken out and lynched. I would be ashamed to be the head of a company that treated clients and customers the way they do. Their day is coming. Sooner or later someone will realize the huge potential of combining Zazzle's excellent disign features with honesty, integrity, and good customer service. Many people probably have great experiences with Zazzle, but if you have a problem, expect awful service and even mistreatment and threats!

I don't like Spreadshirt at all.

Printfection may become an option in time. They have limitations but seem to be making progress. I have ordered a shirt from them and the quality was probably even better than Zazzle but design features aren't all the way there yet.

Cafepress has always been to sell products with prices on the higher side. I understand that they make products in low quantities since they are in demand, and hence the prices are likely to be high, but then as a seller you do noy get to convince such a huge price,and also such a long time to receive the order to the buyer. I hence conclude that Cafepress is likely to convert very less, atleast for smalltime sellers..

All these prices are way too expensive for resale. Not thrilled with the quality I have seen so far from cafe.

Cafepress now offers two print methods on clothing:

Heat Transfer - the stiffer kind you can feel, but the colours are more vibrant.
Direct Printing - ink soaks into the shirt so no transfer lines, but colours are less vibrant.

Once I bought a white camisole with black text and forgot to specify it to use Heat Transfer, so the black text looked rather washed out. (In this case the shopkeeper probably should've allowed "Heat Transfer option only". I called up Cafepress to issue a return, and the service was prompt and friendly. It was much more painless than I had expected.

I own a Cafepress shop too, and I buy and wear stuff from my shop. They usually turn out well. I've gotten 1 return in about 150 sales. The shirts do cost more than a graphics tee in a store (especially if you add the shipping cost for Canadians), but sometimes the shirt is so clever or fitting it's worth it. Besides, I imagine many customers are shop owners too. They most likely have some CafeCash to burn :)

Tanya

It's difficult to get an idea of which companies are the best...some people say CafePress is the best there is, others say the complete opposite...I guess it's a matter of trying it out for yourself and making your own mind up.

People who have had shops on CafePress for a long time say they have been working hard to improve their quality control, so perhaps comments dating back a long time are not valid any more...?

I've recently opened my store on CafePress and am waiting for a delivery of items which I have ordered as a tester: The Wild Web Store. My designs are mostly inspired by my love of colour, shapes and nature...

I'll report back when I receive them!

:)

I am a shop owner at cafepress.com I use my shop to promote my bands merch and cd. I like the idea of being able to design your own stuff at no cost to you. I dont have a problem with expensive prices. I markup all my items by one dollar. You dont have to spend your time buying the materials, pressing, printing, or fulfilling orders. They do it all so its only fair that they make most of the profits anyhow. But I like just to be able to get my bands stuff out there and promote it. Every bit of advertising helps you get your name out there. Our shop is www.cafepress.com/17confessions and our myspace is www.myspace.com/17confessions

Just received my first order ever from CafePress. Having done my own silkscreening before, I have to say that the quality of the prints is pretty awful. Color prints on black shirts have an incorrect offset - the white pre-print shows next to the top color print. The colors themselves are really washed out - it seems like they're skimping on ink or something. The one heat transfer shirt I got has a border around it that is not even cut out straight...

I was considering selling my setup because it is a lot of work to make your own screens but after seeing this crap I may have to reconsider... $100 worth of shirts I might just be too embarrassed to wear :-) Definitely my last purchase there...

I just received my first order of my own Cafepress products. As the purpose of this order was to test the products, I tried to order a selection of different items, with designs which (IMO) would be the most challenging to produce. My feedback is as follows:

TILE COASTER: Absolutely beautifully produced - precise sharp printing, vibrant colours, bleed right to the edge - love it.

LARGE MUG: Beautifully printed - great colours. It's quite a chunky mug. I'd like to see CP's ordinary mug to compare, as I find the large mug quite chunky for me...nice and heavy though - doesn't feel cheap...

GREETING CARDS: Lovely. Vibrant colours, nice stock, good finish. I was also happy with the accompanying envelopes - one would think that if CP were trying to "skimp" somewhere, they would do it on the envelopes but no - they're decent envelopes.

CAP-SLEEVE T-SHIRT: Love the T-shirt itself. The printing (direct print) was OK on the front, but blurred on the back (a smaller image). I asked them to send a replacement, as it was the only thing marring an otherwise impressive selection (and from the print quality on the front of the shirt, I can see there must have been a "glitch" with the back). CP immediately sent a replacement which had decent printing front and back. I'd like to also order a heat transfer printed t-shirt, to compare the different print methods.

Efficiency: CP turned my order around in 36-48 hours, which I thought was pretty good!

All in all, I am happy to recommend CP to others, and feel comfortable about the products I am selling in my shop: http://www.cafepress.com/wildwebstore

Tanya

...Have any of you consireded buying in bulk from a [conventional] t-shirt and/or novelties shop -- at possibly a reasonably low investment -- where the quality of color and artwork would be truly superior. And the cost-per-shirt/mug/whatever would allow for much better profit?

I'm going to start looking around Google now. Apparantly, if you can afford it -- and have a reasonable fullfillment plan -- that's the way to go. But I can understand that some people would probably want virtually "no hands on" at lower profit.

Regards,

John

I received my mousepad rather quickly, but the colors were terrible. I emailed customer support for a replacement and they answered me within 24 hours. We'll see if the 2nd one is any better than the first. I'm encouraged by the quick response time, though.

I think cafepress has improved dramatically in the past couple of years. I have found service to be quick and products of good quality. I like the way that stores like mine can produce products that are usually only available to the masses. For example I have have gifts for same sex parents and families, presents for civil partnerships and gay and lesbian weddings, ideas for gay and lesbian hen and stag do's. We can offer products that cannot be brought in the shops so a big thums up from me!

I've had a CafePress shop since 2005. We cater to actors, writers, directors, producers and other entertainment industry people with t-shirt designs relating to showbiz, film, television, theater and acting in general. I have ordered a LOT of different products from my shop (from t-shirts to books to coasters and more) and have never had a problem with print quality or product quality. Also, I'm based in Australia and products arrive here within 14-18 days after being ordered, which is about right time-wise for bulkier packages coming from the US.

I also use my shop for merchandising for my theatre productions and film projects and have found this the most cost-effective way to create specific merchandise for productions cheaply and efficiently. The bulk discount of 35% for 15 or more items ordered from your own shop helps with the cost of doing this too - obviously.

And I've also self-published my first play, with the next one due in July, and the quality of the printed book is extremely high - to the point where I've had compliments from book sellers who want to know who printed them so they can refer other self-publishers to the service!

CP's customer service has always been excellent from my experience. And their support for shopkeepers is fantastic. I would have thought being on the other side of the world would mean I'd have trouble getting responses, but they always email back within 24 hours with a personal reply and an answer to my questions.

And I make money from the shop. Enough to pay my rent every month, with a bit over and profits are slowly increasing, so I have absolutely no complaints about the Cafe Press service and recommend it to anyone looking to create their own unique designs for t-shirts, etc and do it without a huge initial financial outlay.

-------------------------------
Incognita Shop
Gifts for Showbiz People
www.cafepress.com/incognitashop
-------------------------------

I think perhaps this review should be updated to reflect the efforts CafePress is making to improve their product quality, and the introduction of new colorways and new items, while "weeding out" the less successful products - it's important to keep the store streamlined like this (and they still offer a wide range of products, even after phasing out some of the items recently).
So far, I have only had good reports from my customers. You can visit my store at http://www.cafepress.com/wildwebstore - why not affiliate me while you are there? It's easy, it costs nothing, and it earns you easy money!

Tanya
http://www.cafepress.com/wildwebstore
http://www.dezinedesign.com
http://dezinezone.imagekind.com

are there anyone here who have either a shop with cafepress.com or spreadshirts.com? my question is what everyone here wants to know. HOW LONG HAVE YOU HAD YOUR SHOP? HOW MUCH PROFIT HAVE YOU MADE AND WHAT IS YOUR ESTIMATED MONTHLY PROFITS?

I ordered Xmas presents from CafePress on Nov 19th- well they sent them to me (in Canada) in about 10 days. Problem was they only sent HALF the shipment.All the stickers/magnets made it but the larger items were "forgotten". The resent them on Dec 1st, but apparently they are either:

A- on their way
B- not been mailed yet, would you like us to resend it "free of charge"
C- stuck at customs

depending on who I get on the phone. It's now Dec 18th, so if they don't get here by the 21 I'm getting a refund and going shopping :(

their shipping is stooooopid. :(
LAME :( :( :( :( :(
paid extra for fast shipping only to get shafted.
bought monday, left warehouse on friday (and everything was in stock)
makes for sad christmas

For some time now, I've been looking for an alternative service which is in the UK. It seems a company called Creative Craving has started-up so I thought I'd share my find with everyone. They look pretty good. Has anyone else seen them?

At Berkshire Boys Designs you'll find images ranging from animals to foods and wine bottles to finance combined with funny words and phrases. We create fun and unique t-shirts, clothes, coffee mugs, gifts and more. At Berkshire Boys, we have fun and clever designs that make you think - but not hard enough to break a sweat.

Just came across Daniel's post. I joined CreativeCraving.co.uk about 6 weeks ago and I'm really impressed with the products and the print quality, they use DTG Direct to garment I'm told. I had a lot of designs I've been using on CafePress and uploaded them to CreativeCraving quite rapidly. They noticed this sudden influx and offered me a promo discount and a slot in the featured section. They are small at the moment but growing. This £8 handling fee for collecting the import duty and VAT, that was added last year is a real pain for uk customers of CP Zaz. I'm re-directing uk customers to CC.

My CafePress store remains my fastest selling online store. I've now been joined by a group of other artists, and we're all selling under the Dezine Design banner.
Check it out! If you want to affiliate our store, please see our affiliate banners here.
Thanks,
Tanya

Cafepress seems to be doing a good job of increasing quality and variety of products. Its a great place to start your own t-shirt store. I have a couple including Remix Athletics sportswear.

I purchased polictical bumper stickers and buttons, they have not been delivered, don't trust these guys, its a scam

Cafe Press was a HUGE disappointment. My order took 5 weeks to arrive. I was disappointed in the product and wanted to reorder, but only if they could deliver in a timely manner. They could not guarantee faster shipping and one week later, I'm still waiting for customer service to call me to discuss the shipping problem.
I ordered from ZAZZLE.COM instead. The order arrived 5 days later...5 DAYS from Zazzle, 5 WEEKS from Cafe Press. Zazzle has a new customer!

I just received my first order and while it actually arrived in a timely fashion.......just over 1 week, I was VERY disappointed in the quality of merchandise.
My shirts were the cheapest shirts made, I would have never purchased shirts like this in any store had I seen them in person. The shirts are so light weight that when you hold them up you can see right through them.
The logos.... are iron on transfers and I have done a better job from my own printer and iron than what I have received. The colours of the logos do not match the photos that I ordered from and I expect the logos to peel off fairly quickly.
Fortunately I ordered a small quantity to see what I would get. Good thing too, because I was planning on using this service for a lot of products but now that I've seen the poor quality I will NEVER order again!
Buy at your own risk.