CafePress : Screw you, shopkeepers!

I won't be able to monitor this thread but I thought those of you who are CP shopkeepers or buyers might like to know about their latest shenanigans (plenty of links enclosed) .

go under. This is a great opportunity for another business to step in and fill in the vacuum.

Don't complain to the bastards. Just let them fail and let better business folks capture the industry.

we are being screwn by cafepress. what used to be something that we were able to make 20% or whatever we set our charge for an item to, is now going away because cafepress is going all socialist on us and forcing all shopkeepers to a flat 10% commission from a pre-set price THEY will determine for items on June 1st. The only way to get whatever rate we want for our items is to direct people to our shops through direct ads, otherwise (which is over 90% of sales) people go to cafepress through direct typing of the address or search engines and find our designs and buy them from the "marketplace" search, and through May it will be the standard deal of cafepress charging, say, $15 for a shirt and us charging any amount we want for a markup, but on June 1, they will raise that shirt price to $25 and give us $2.50. The site has recently been very harsh on shopkeepers profits (they removed a bonus tier late last year) and it felt like new financial decision makers were squeezing us for all the profit they could.

I will see a decrease of about 75% in my profits from my designs, and there is no guarantee that on zazzle.com that I will make those sales, but I'm hoping, and I will transfer my designs and remove them from the greedy arses at cafepress. 10% isn't worth my effort of maintaining and uploading new items and designs onto the shop.

Sayanara cafepress, hello zazzle or wherever won't tell me I get 2.50 for my design on a shirt, while they get 22.50. That 25 buck price is a tad high anyhow! I think they're going to kill the site, maybe in some business way, that's what they want for reasons we don't know, or they want to get rid of regular shopkeepers now that they're a big site (344th in the US according to alexa.com) and have branding with major media outlets (like branding for Twilight movie, and cartoon characters like Snoopy, which was not something they did a few years ago, since their creation in 97).

many who will buy that when there are many other options on the net to get similar items at far less amounts. It reminds me of the crappy ebay changes a while back that hurt them.

Promptly went to their forums, read all of the complaints... still stewing, basically. I will be putting my stuff on other sites, most likely. If they want to screw the little guy (or gal in my case) screw 'em right back.

I am outraged at CP and their money-grab.

I know practically nothing about the print on demand business, other than from the consumer perspective. But if I have it right, these are the services offered by the parties:

Designers - design, marketing (i.e., driving people to your products in your own space, like a blog)

CafePress - manufacturing, shipping, transaction services, marketing (i.e., drawing people to products using search and SEO)

Is there any copyright involved on the designers part?

Much of the creative I see on gear through CP is simply pithy remarks ("Jesus is not a Republican," etc.). So what should the commission be for someone who simply came up with a design like that?

The seller was (once?) allowed to mark their items up from that base price. For example, the Cafe Press base price for a finished/shipped t-shirt was roughly I don't know, $12.00, maybe? The seller could then, offer that t-shirt for $17.00, thus garnering a five dollar profit.

Maybe time to switch venues there? Skinner? EarlG? Elad?

I think it's just for t-shirts but it's still a resource.

It is a juried site, though the payoff is quite nice if they do pick up your artwork. something like 5k for the first run..

I own about 35 Threadless tees that I will take to the grave with me ;0

I checked it out briefly a few months ago and signed up but never submitted any designs because my art isn't really very edgy.

It still seemed like a cool resource, but thank you for correcting me because I had forgotten the juried thing!

and dont be swayed by not being edgy enough.. they cover many bases over their with whimsical and cute being high up there.. how I love Threadless, let me count the ways ;0

I will have to work up my confidence and submit something.

The selection of blank items isn't as varied as Cafe Press but Printfection may sell better quality units. I chose Printfection after researching comparisons of affiliate print-on-demand shops.

http://www.printfection.com/

zazzle. I understand they also makes T-shirts and things.

ok, I know what I'll be doing for the next few days.
http://www.zazzle.com/custom/skateboards

I started a skateboard and had a little trouble with positioning my design (this is a typical issue for me) so I haven't gotten back to it, but I thought that was really a great idea to offer them.

:)

I have never had any problem with zazzle and I believe you can put your markup at any level that suits you.

I didn't find cafe press to be very easy to use either.

I was going to set up a CafePress store for my blog. I won't be doing that now.

Any recommendations on where else to go???

Any experience with these guys?