TSHIRT ENTREPRENEUR ONLINE

Cafepress announced this week that it is adding a new option for designers – embroidered apparel!

This new option will feature patent pending technology to allow a completely different type of design to be placed on select merchandise through shopkeeper stores.

There are however some limitations apparently such as the size being limited to those that you already find on their buttons and magnets (2 1/4 – 3″ round or rectangular stickers).  Based on the examples, backgrounds are required which means round or rectangular design results and no custom outlines.

 Read more about this new offering here.

Cafepress is introducing gift certificates.  But not for shopkeepers to sell.  Seems like a flaw in the slaw there if you ask me.

Gift Certificate 1.0 Details:
  Buyers will be able to purchase Gift Certificates from these 4 places:
  1. A banner on the CafePress homepage (this is not a permanent banner, it will be used intermittently for promotion, holidays, etc.).
  2. A text link in the left-hand navigation bar of the Marketplace.
  3. A banner on the “failed search result” page.
  4. A text link in the footer of all CafePress “branded” pages (These are the pages that have a green bar that runs along the bottom of pages, such as CafePress Corporate pages and Basic Shops. Actually, there’s one at the bottom of this page).

Gift Certificates will not be available for sale in Premium Shops.

During the Gift Certificate purchase process the buyer can add a personalized message to the recipient.

They come in many denominations, starting at $10 and going all the way up to $1,000.

Purchased Gift Certificates are delivered to the recipient via email. See screen shot 3 and 4 below.

Our Unique Gift This Cart™ feature allows a shopper to pick products they think the recipient will like and send a gift certificate that features those products. The recipient can then choose to buy those items (and choose the right sizes) or pick different items. Note – this feature will NOT be present in Premium Shops. See screen shot 4 below.

Seems like an end run around their own shopkeepers. I personally cannot understand why they are not going to be allowing shopkeepers to sell gift certificates through their premium shops. It makes no sense. I certainly won’t be promoting them knowing this.

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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.

At least when it comes to letting people name their commissions.  The set commissions that Zazzle paid was a huge reason why many people who run t-shirt stores online, myself included, have only treated Zazzle lightly over the years either supplying them with only limited numbers of products or no products at all.  Now that finally seems to be changing.  No more pathetic payouts that make it hardly worth your time?

This comes as part of what they are terming a “relaunch” of their service.

The next generation in on-demand retail is finally here! We’ve just re-launched our site with a fresh new look, a major partnership with MySpace, and an amazing set of new technologies. To commemorate this huge milestone, we are giving away special, limited edition re-launch shirts. So, the first 2,000 people to order apparel today as of 10AM PST will receive this official, Zazzle re-launch t-shirt for free.Zazzle limited edition t-shirt
Be sure to check out Merch to the Masses partnership with MySpace, and see why the #1 Social Networking site in the world chose Zazzle to be its official merchandise platform:

* Exceptional Dark Apparel – Our new printing technology is the first ever on-demand manufacturing of top-quality dark apparel and is available in an endless number of colors.
  * Model Realviews – It’s the real 3D deal. Now you can design a t-shirt and see what it looks like in real life! Zazzle is the first ever to let you design directly on a real person’s curves, shadows and everything.
  * Name Your Royalty – For those of you who are or want to be contributors, you can now make lots more money by easily setting your own royalty rate on your products, from 10% to 99% of the base retail price.

I’ll be considering Zazzle a little more closely if, as they say their new printing technology is as good as it says. Despite claims made in the past, their quality has not been as good as other companies like Cafepress or Printfection or Spreadshirt when I have ordered samples.

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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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That’s the official word from Cafepress

:Direct Print improvements and transitionsWhen we opened our doors in 1999 print-on-demand printing options for T-Shirts were limited to Heat Transfer. Then, a little over two years ago we introduced a revolutionary new method for printing on T-Shirts and other garments: Direct Print. For the first time we were able to print ink directly on a shirt; it was as close to screen printing as you could get without actually screen printing!

We launched it in Beta while we worked to fine-tune the process, and we continued to offer Heat Transfer because our new process was great for some designs, but not others. We knew that improvements in Direct Printing quality would one day make Heat Transfer unnecessary.

Continued investments in refining the Direct Print process have led to amazing increases in quality, increased customer satisfaction scores and a decreased demand for Heat Transfer, telling us that we’ve reached that day!

As a result most garments (see FAQ below for exceptions) are now offered in Direct Print only. And, we’re so impressed with the levels of quality Direct Print is turning out that we’re removing all Dark T-Shirts from Beta!

The best news of all is that these changes require no work on the part of Shopkeepers, Heat Transfer has been removed as an option.

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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.