April 04, 2004

Curious, George: CafePress and Cousins CafePress and cousins; I'm interested in any monkey experience with CafePress or any of the workalikes, since I'm trying to get a good idea of whether it's a useful option.

A bit of background: a few years back, I played a a joke (site possibly NSFW) which enjoyed 15 minutes of fame. The site still runs (and I really ought to do something like provide year on year trends...) and gets a few visitors. Since my friend Alan designed such an amusing little logo, I thought about doing the CafePress thing for some t-shirts, mugs, and the like. Now, there's on obvious problem with this, which is that they provide payment only in US cheques/tranfers, which are horribly expensive for the recipient. So I'd need pretty solid volume before it was worth any kind of effort. So if anyone knows a more international-monkey-friendly outfit, that would be good. Beyond that, I'm concerned by what I don't know. I mean, CafePress make it sound all very easy, but they would, wouldn't they? I'd like some first hand experience - does it work as smoothly as they say? Are there better alternatives? Have people been stiung with late payments, fine print, or other gotchas?

posted by rodgerd 20 years ago
  • I did it in 1999-2000 (and ongoing) with these. (made a few thou, too! and got in Texas Monthly.) You can set up how much you need to make before they cut a check for you (25, 50, etc), and you have to wait 45 days before you see any of the money anyway, to allow for their 30-day return policy, but that would mean that you could get bigger checks less often, if you need to exchange them. The t-shirts are just iron-on transfers, and don't last through many washings, but i was satisfied. The cups and things are of better quality than the clothes. All in all, I was very happy with them.
  • I would also love to hear people's experiences with any Cafe Press-like outfit, for a general comparison.
  • I can only speak to the design part of the process. I stole the logo from here and added it to a shirt. I never had it made but the design "process" is absurdly easy. (i.e. I managed)
  • I've been doing 3D artwork related to the board game Go for a few years, and not long ago I opened a CafePress shop to sell some apparel and products with the artwork on it. I'm not making any money, since it's all for the love of the game -- but the whole process has been very easy and user-friendly. (And I just found out that I'm making money anyway, because of referral credits.) You don't have very many options if you do the basic store (ie, only one design for each product type), but as you can see, there is still plenty of choice within those constraints. When I finally got the products lined up, I purchased one of my own large mugs, and it arrived with a hideous red tint. I called them up to complain -- they apologized profusely and immediately sent a replacement mug which looks fantastic. (Or at least it did before I dropped a plate on it and chipped it.) So yeah -- I give CafePress a big thumbs up. I wish they had only union-made products, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers.
  • (slight derail) scartol-- thanks for the links. (yes, I'm a go player) I wonder how many other monkeys make and sell cool stuff like this? (/slight derail)
  • vapidave, can you repost that link? I got a login page, not the page with the design.