I give this advice because I care about Cafepress and because they have been good to me. This advice is as follows … consider it sort of an open letter to Cafepress.

Cafepress:

You have begun doing some things that are upsetting a lot of people that helped make you what you are today and getting in the way of them continuing to help you grow. Previously you limited premium shop sizes to 500 sections, increased base prices on some items and now are rearranging the way commissions are being pay with one obvious goal – to increase revenues on the backs of those that are your lifeblood.

As an entrepreneur, I understand the need for Cafepress to make money and turn a profit. Businesses do not survive without doing so. But this series of major changes has me worried about your future especially when you seem so cavalier about making changes that greatly effect your shopkeeper base.

This most recent change, more than any of the previous, has a serious chance to cost shopkeepers money and people who use you, at least those that are entrepreneurially inclined, to sell product will adapt and fight against loosing money in a variety of ways.

Perhaps you may not beware of the way entrepreneurs think, but one of those ways many of us will pursue to recover lost profits from our own pocket is to continue to increase our presence on other one-off t-shirt sites like Printfection, E-Shirt, Spreadshirt and Zazzle. This will enable us to make up the money we are loosing from this change by making more money with them.

However, this will come at a cost to Cafepress. As we increase our presence on these other sites, they will grow. As they grow, your competition will get more fierce. As your competition gets more fierce, your advertising costs to maintain your current position will increase even more and accelerate an already upward spiral which you are helping to feed by forcing those of us who support your service to spread out to other services and grow our market share to bolster our own bottom line.

I bring this up because one of the reasons for the recent change of not providing commissions on sales from the marketplace is due to advertising costs making it cost prohibitive.

What you have basically done is pointed a gun at your own head. If you think that advertising costs are high now, just wait until your competitors double, triple and quadruple the size of their own marketplaces as Cafepress shopkeepers work hard to supplement their income by expanding and adding new revenue streams through your competitors.

The only thing saving you right now is that that gun you have pointed at your own head isn’t loaded. At least not yet.

In my opinion your ownership needs to be looking long and hard at the people you have making decisions like those as of late and questioning their sanity and business skills. Short term gains are often a goal of those at the top of any company hoping that they will be on their way out the door before the long term consequences of those gains come home to roost. Your marketplace wouldn’t be making you a dime if it were not for your shopkeepers who work hard and this is how you repay them? By cutting their profits to increase you own?

You are welcome to do that. Private enterprise does certainly require companies to make decisions and chose which path to take. But it is my opinion that is path is a path to sure suicide. No company can expect their employees to remain loyal when they announce salary cuts while other companies are paying higher and higher rates. By this same token Cafepress cannot expect the shopkeepers, who have made your site a cornerstone of their business, to remain loyal when you cut their profits.

Plus, dropping bombs like this in the manner in which you have done, barely a week before they are to go into effect, is not a very good way to gain trust with those who are essentially your business partners. You might have avoided criticism and backlash by keeping it secret until it was announced, but now you will have a tidal wave ten times worse coming down upon you by taking this approach.

I would seriously suggest those in charge at Cafepress do some self examination as to whether or not this is the path they want to keep following. Because it is clear to where it leads. Biting the hand that feeds you, brings in your revenue and that is the continuing source of your greatness has ruined companies much larger and more prosperous than you.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have some expansion plans to make and some other revenue streams to begin to grow to compensate for this change.

Sincerely,
J.J. Jackson, shopkeeper