Cafepress Taking More Control Of “Contributor” Designs
I am not really certain what to make of the latest announcement from Cafepress regarding even more changes to their terms and conditions of their Seller Services. Here is what the email explicitly says:
* CafePress may help determine what products your designs will be available on in the CafePress Marketplace and may automatically add your designs to additional products for you. For example, if a customer wants your design on a sweatshirt, and you don’t offer a sweatshirt we can add your design to a sweatshirt.
* To improve the printing quality, CafePress may automatically modify your designs. For instance we may clean up JPG artifacting, adjust colors for optimal printing on different printers and products, and adjust placement on different products.
Lots of red flags are popping up in my head all day as I have been looking at it off and on thinking that if I just let it sit and then look at it again I will be less annoyed/concerned. These two items alone just bother me on so many levels however that each time I read the email I do not get any peace.
First of all, I can understand and wholly agree with Cafepress that their marketplace is their marketplace and that they can put the products someone has created and submitted to appear there up as they see fit, even choosing to not show certain ones if that is their preference. But what I certainly DO NOT agree with is Cafepress taking carte blanche liberty to put my designs on products I have expressly NOT put them on for whatever reason.
For example, many of my old designs (before the whole dark t-shirt option) are simply not suitable for display on such products and would have obscene white space showing. I honestly DO NOT care if a customer wants one of these designs on a dark t-shirt, I DO NOT WANT THEM ON DARK T-SHIRTS! The customer might be perfectly fine with the awful presentation but I, as the owner of the design, would not be and if it reflected badly on my company you can bet I would get pissed!
Also, can you imagine a shopkeeper trying to run a family friendly shop and establishing such a reputation having Cafepress begin slapping their images on thongs? Yeah, I do not think Cafepress has thought this little maneuver through very much. But hey, what else is new?
The second change is equally disturbing in that I have placed my designs as I want them on the product. If Cafepress starts moving designs around because, let’s say, someone wants an image centered on a mug opposite of the handle but I purposefully design so that it is on one of the sides what happens when someone else sees the mug, likes the mug and goes to my storefront because, I assume Cafepress will not crop out my address, copyright info, etc., and finds it a different way? Then I start getting emails asking for the product different ways and spend time hunting through my image basket to find that design and make another version? Or what? Tell them to go directly to Cafepress and I get only 10% commission?
Yeah, not liking this idea very much. Although I do think that it is smart for Cafepress to do color adjustment because this is one of my biggest gripes with their service in that images designed within gamut and that other PoD services print just fine seem to come out a little funky at CP. I have more than a few designs that I have had to adjust especially for CP and their printing style because for some odd reason a color no one else has trouble printing cannot be printed properly by CP.
Stay tunned, and keep and eye on where all this leads.
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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Here’s what I’ve gathered based on CafePress Shopkeeper’s comments and a few other “pieces of the puzzle” in the company’s behavior:
1. Shopkeepers are pulling there higher priced items, like clothes, Siggs, etc. off the marketplace, leaving only the lower priced products, i.e. stickers and buttons. They are selling their higher priced/higher profit products in their own shops. Because of this, the CafePress’ marketplace’s quality of products are diminishing. CafePress institutes a new policy – if your design is in the marketplace regardless of the product it’s on, we can sell it on anything else we make. Effectively negating the shopkeeper’s attempt to control what is sold in the marketplace and what is sold in their own shop.
2. CafePress is hiring salespeople (http://www.cytiva.com/cphire/ext/detail.asp?cphireGBO-002). Why would CafePress hire salespeople to “execute cold calling campaigns into target markets to identify, qualify, and cultivate new sales opportunities.” In my opinion, they are changing their business model to that of a licensing model. The process started in June with their shopkeepers, and now it’s clear that they are targeting businesses/groups that have brand, product or service to promote. They are already doing this with Discovery Channel and Twilight. This is big businesses and these businesses already operate on the licensing model, not to mention having the potential of bringing hudreds of thousands if not millions of potential consumers CafePress’ marketplace. Why do think Zazzle has a “World Famous Brands” tab? Afterall, how hard would it be to put a CafePress shop on a fan website?
3. It costs a lot of money to store billions of images that the shopkeepers upload. So getting rid of shopkeepers that aren’t really producing serious revenue is not a bad thing. In fact, “losing” those shopkeepers is actually a “good thing” for CafePress and increases their profitability, without impacting their top line significantly, and since they’ve increased their profits margins on the marketplace sales, they are in effect increasing their revenue and decreasing their costs simultaneously.
4. Last but not least, and this comes from the cynic in me: I’d be very surprised that their “truly” top shopkeepers, meaning those shopkeepers that are generating six (maybe even 7 figure) figure revenues for CafePress are probably getting a “different marketplace” deal that the rest of the shopkeepers. Why would I say this, quite simply that in the “real world” of business, your best customers always get “special treatment”. Why would CafePress be any different. How much do you want to bet that CafePress made sure that their top shopkeepers weren’t going to leave (and had them sign an non-disclosure agreement). I have no proof of this, but, like I said, I’m a cynic, and that’s what I’d do if I were CafePress.
5. CafePress’s web traffic is down and Zazzle’s web traffic is up. No matter how you look at it, that’s interesting. Not sure if that means Zazzle’s revenues are also up and CafePress’ revenues are down, but I’d be surprised if this isn’t the case. Check out Alexa.com for a comparison.
So what does this all mean, just that CafePress is trying to figure out how stay alive in an industry with increasing competition. They were the POD of choice for so long, maybe not so much anymore.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:08 am
Clarification: What I meant to say that I’d very surprised if the very top shopkeepers weren’t getting “special treatment”. Meaning, of course, that they are probably getting more than 10% commissions off their marketplace sales. Again, no proof; just makes sense to me.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I agree with you. You make a good point about people with family friendly designs. That is exactly what I am selling. I do not put thongs or even spaghetti strap shirts in my shops. If someone sees my designs on a thong then it looks like I’ve been lying about being family friendly. It also defeats my purpose.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I just found out he hard way that Cafepress uses your original designs in their market place, sets their won prices and keeps the money minus a 10% commision fory the designer.
Ther are definitely copyright infringements here. Ther was nothing explaining that. They never had my permission to sell my designs as theri own and keep the money. Cafepress is nothing more than corporate crooks stealing designs from people and selling them for their own profits. We get nothing more than a 10% commision on whatever price they decide on.
Criminal!
December 20th, 2009 at 2:34 am
[...] Liens connexes : comment on cafepress taking more control of “contributor” designs …clarification: what i meant to say that i'd very surprised if the very top shopkeepers weren't [...]
December 29th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
i love your blog !
January 25th, 2010 at 2:01 am
Even if you are on the right track- you will get run over if you just sit there.