I’ve been chatting with some fellow disgruntled Cafepress shopkeepers about what the next shoe to drop over at that site will be.We’ve already had premium shops limited in size, price increases on basic items (strange because other companies are not following suit), and now the retooling of the volume bonus among other things that hurt shopkeepers while bolstering their bottom line.

Again, I don’t disparage Cafepress for wanting to make more money. What I disparage them for is doing it on the backs of those of us that make them successful and giving no significant notice of these changes for the most part. Call us “employees”, call us “business partners”, call us “independent contractors”, I don’t care which. The fact is that whatever you call us, we are Cafepress.

So in the wake of these recent changes and in the interest of brainstorming so that shopkeepers can think about what perhaps the future at Cafepress holds, here are some other possibilities as to what that company may have in store for us and to help bolster their bottom lines.

Please note, some of these are serious and some of these are presented as humor and I have denoted each as to where they fall.

1) Premium Shop Fee increase (serious). I think that it is stupid that Cafepress charges a fee for you to make money for them. I have always said that the shop fee should be waved once a shop hits a certain level of sales to avoid people opening massive, resource hogging stores that don’t sell a darn thing. But if Cafepress is looking to make more money, then consider a $3.00 per shop per month fee increase a real possibility. This new cost structure will be named something fancy with the name “incentive” in the program somewhere – because it is believed you will be “incentivized” to sell more to make up the money you lost!

2) Completely ending the Volume Bonus even for shop specific sales (serious). Hey, if Cafepress wants to increase its bottom line, this only makes perfect sense. Why pay any bonus at all regardless of where the item is sold? This will also be part of the “incentive” program I mentioned previously – because once again you will be encouraged to sell more to make up your losses. Oh, and to make matters worse this change will be announced four months AFTER it is implemented and all shopkeepers will be retroactively charged a debit against their accounts for bonuses paid over that period.

3) Sale of Cafepress to outside interests (serious). Every move made recently accomplishes one ultimate goal – increasing Cafepress’s bottom line. Experience has shown that when companies make a quick series of moves toward this end it indicates that those at the top are seeking to divest themselves of the company at as high of a price as possible. The more black ink they can show the higher price the company commands. Of course, this often results in the new owner acquiring “damaged goods” as these changes certainly boost the bottom line in the short term but the full (and negative) effects are felt a year or two down the road. If Cafepress is indeed for sale (and anyone in business knows that any company is for sale at any time for the right price) the uncertainty of how new owners will operate the company is an uncertainty all current shopkeepers need to contemplate.

4) Update of License Agreement from non-exclusive rights to exclusive rights for designs (oh I want to say humorous … but I am not certain I can). Cafepress will announce that they are changing the agreement between themselves and shopkeepers to grant them sole and exclusive rights to our designs, thus prohibiting us from also putting them up on other PoDs as well. Now for some humor … This announcement will incidentally coincide with a “bug” where in the ability to delete images and products from Cafepress will no longer work thus ensuring that the existing marketplace will remain intact. Off and on over the next two to three years, Cafepress will claim to be working on solving this error but that they just cannot seem to find the problem.

5) Cafepress moves to buy out certain competitors (part serious & part humorous). Cafepress says that their advertising costs are going up. Why? Because their competitors are getting bigger! Why? Because Cafepress keeps rubbing their shopkeepers the wrong way and we keep loading more and more designs to other PoDs! Cafepress may seek to eliminate threats to their market share by gobbling up smaller companies and shutting down sites (under the guise of integrating them) that disgruntled Cafepress shopkeepers opened there. Thus making all of that hard work obsolete and fruitless. Why keep you current employees happy when you can just buy up the competition and reacquire those employees that fled to the competition right?

6) Announces move of main production facility to China (humorous). Cheap labor would certainly help the bottom line at Cafepress. Ok, maybe not China … but how about Mexico? At least all employees will get an afternoon siesta. Viva Cafepress!

7) Cafepress employees will no longer be allowed to use the restrooms at their production facilities (humorous). Oh, joke all you want but those utility bills add up! And being in California where “green” this and “green” that is all the rage, mandates of using less water may not be as funny as it sounds. Hey, every buck helps! Plus they will be saving the planet! How could you disagree with that you heartless Earth hating bastard?!?

8 ) Cafepress management will take a 25% pay cut over last year’s salaries (humorous). Yeah … right! Management almost never takes a pay cut to help the bottom line. Now get back to work slaves! *crack*

9) Announcement that Cafepress will now enter into an agreement with the United States Mint to print custom designed money (humorous). Well, they have already tried doing stamps that are legal postage so why not allow shopkeepers to print their own money? Three dollar bills with the pictures of kittens on them anyone? And with this deal in place, if Cafepress ever needs any extra cash to bolster their bottom line, they can just print some and stash it in their bank account.

10) Cafepress announces that the upper brass have decided to join the Dark Side and become Sith Lords (humorous). Next time the shopkeepers are unhappy they will now be able to just wave their hands and say, “You are not unhappy about this.” Many of us will then all drool like mindless zombies and responding by saying, “We are not unhappy about this.” And for those of us that are not that weak of mind it will be like the scene were Lando Calrissian confronts Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back.

Shopkeepers (outraged): “That was never a condition of our agreement, nor was giving up our Volume Bonus on sales from the marketplace which are selling in large part because we spent hours upon hours tagging them and researching high conversion keywords!”

Lord Cafepress: “Perhaps you think you’re being treated unfairly?”

Shopkeepers (biting our tongues): “No.”
Lord Cafepress: “Good. It would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison here.”
Shopkeepers (to ourselves): “This deal is getting worse all the time … anyone got Zazzle’s phone number?”

Ok, once again I want to say that I like Cafepress. I used to love them. But I won’t go that far at this point.