TSHIRT ENTREPRENEUR ONLINE

So here I am, tracking the effect of the so-called great changes being made over at Cafepress. You know, where they are going to set the commissions we can make off marketplace sales, ostensively lowering shopkeeper profits and raising their own BUT where they are (they promise) going to make great changes to their market place search algorithms to help out their valued and (previously) successful shopkeepers like myself? (more…)

Cafepress is plowing ahead with plans to make uniform pricing throughout their market place and make all designs equal. I think this is a bad idea. Cafepress knows that I think this is a bad idea. It is a bad idea because Cafepress will be setting the prices of a t-shirt that has a single word in Arial font across it the same as another that has a complex graphical work. (more…)

Well, December is wrapping up and the Christmas shopping season is for all intents and purposes over. Several months have passed since Cafepress decided to rework its volume bonus structure and then abruptly dumped the news on shopkeepers that marketplace sales would no longer count when calculating it. The furor was terrific as Cafepress was caught with their pants down. (more…)

With the economy having slowed, I thought it would be a good time to discuss some of the unwise (some may call them “stupid”) things that business owners do.  Whether it is because of panic or just idle hands, these are things that you really should try to avoid.

1) Don’t Lay Off Employees Just Because

It is tempting when business starts to slow up to start cutting employees to save money.  Here is the downside to that approach however.  If you start trimming employees now, ask yourself what you are going to do when things start to come out of the current downturn?  When requests and orders start to come back in how will you scale back up to handle the demand?  Odds are that those people you laid off are not just going to sit around and wait for you to call.  If you spent time and energy training people letting them go can mean them slipping to you competition who will benefit from your hard work. (more…)

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. (more…)