Slashdot Mirror
Google Investors Find New Project
Greg Linden writes:"According to ZDNet, the investors behind Google are at it again. John Doerr and Ram Shriram are investing in Zazzle, a company targeting mass customization by allowing shoppers and store owners to create individually tailored clothes, prints, and other items. For example, customers can choose an image from a large image library, design a T-shirt using the image with online tools, and then have the T-shirt delivered to them. Lands' End, CafePress, and other online clothing stores offer similar mass customization services on a small scale, but Doerr clearly believes that there is a substantial opportunity 'for every individual who wants to create products that are as unique as they are.'"
Doesn't this describe cafepress?
Could someone explain the term custmomizer?
[This space for rent]
Won't they have trademark issues with Zazzle.com?
Is it just me, or does the idea for Zazzle seem remarkably close to the idea behind Cafe Press?
Doesn't really sound all that interesting compared to some other things I've heard about.
On the CBC a little while ago there was an interesting feature on a company that has a local online setup for Ottawa that allows sellers and buyers to haggle. Anyone as cheap as I am can see the obvious benefits in such a system.
...as e- & i- are to Apple :)
First Google.
Now Zazzle.
What next? Gejujwh[NO CARRIER]
Not that this has anything directly to do with google, but think about how many companies have cropped up with new search "technologies" that will be better and more popular than google. How many people here can name any of them that have een covered by /. off the top of their heads? This, i believe, is one of those kinda of industries that is so engrained that everyone likes how it's being done and doesn't want it to change... Amazon and Ebay work great. why will anyone want to go to Zazzle instead? People like to stick with things they know and trust... My prediction is that it will fail. but maybe that's just me. :-)
This startup company, named Zazzle allows both shoppers and store owners to fully custmomizer their online experience.
Is it Zazzle or custmomizer? Anyone?
Wow, I can't wait. I soooo love to shop online.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
...and its pretty cool. As an artist, you can use it to get your artwork printed onto say archival-quality paper, or a big canvas, or whatever. As a shopper you can get artwork you like on objects of various sorts.
Dunno if its something I'd bet a large amount of money on as an investor, since I'm not sure how much money they'd expect a site like that to make, but its a pretty friendly and good site for what it does. Maybe that's enough...
Game dev and music blog
Didn't Amazon already patent e-shopping? By the way, didn't Amazon also patent "Land of the free"?
So the guys who got lucky and invested their money in the right place decide to throw money at something else. This is sort of the whole idea behind being a venture capitalist.
Now, if the brains behind Google decided to start another company, that would be news, but VCs invest in new companies all the time. The only notable thing about this one is that the company they're investing in sounds just as shaky as the crap VCs used to throw money at in the 90s.
"Fully customize their online experience" doesn't describe at all what Zazzle is. The customization comes in the GOODS that are made, not in the experience itself.
It's basically a glorified Cafepress.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
It seems like they are a true, domestic manufacturer. They are very well known (not necessarily to everyone, but to a lot of people) for their custom image clothing. They say that they can get it to your house in 3-4 days. If they can do this, it sounds like it is not coming on the slow boat from some Chinese sweatshop (Nike, hint hint), but rather good ol' Made in the USA.
I get this kind of thing in my inbox every day -- excited superlatives pumping up some penny stock or other, in the hopes that the gullible masses will get excited and throw away some of their money. This is the *exact* same thing, except the people behind it are bigger fish and so know how to write a press release that ZDNet will pick up and republish as news -- and then they hit the jackpot when sites like Slashdot republish it as legitimate. Yippie.
Froogle
Aside from the looks, how does Zazzle differ from what Google already has?
Sure, it's a good idea. And I really don't mind there being more competition in the market, but isn't CafePress already doing this with all sorts of apparel and other easily printable goods? In addition, isn't Stamps.com already doing this with stamps. And aren't there a number of sites that do this with photographs?
Yeah, printing customized materials cheaply is a great service... and combining the best features of all the currently available sites can only benefit us as a whole, but it's not unique and I'd be surprised if it were a big success.
--
RumorsDaily
As subject.
My stupid web site
Name them...
[constanant][vowel][double constanant]le
I think Snoop Dog had prior art years ago, fo' shizzle.
fhqwhgads.+++ATH0
OK
The ability to print archivally is pretty cool, but I wonder who's paper it really is. Zazzle "GOLD MATTE" isn't a paper I've seen on the shelves anywhere.
:::: the insomniac's digest
and Dump?
The investors behind google did it again: Can somebody provide stats that they are always right?
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Wasn't Zazzle like a fairy or something that taught you how to read in some lame Apple II game?
Does anyone else see a trend in the names? Google and Zazzle? I think the investors are just biased.
I can see a lot of uses for this, especially in the t-shirt market. Also, they don't have to stop there, they could very easily become the main source for personal customization. Other stores could just use them as a frontline, and do the work themselves. Just like they're going to do with Pitney Bowes.
Time is comparison of movement to other movement.
Last time I checked it stood for "testing to see if any mods are awake behind the wheel"...
At least we got the results in quickly.
does that mean that I can have naked Swedish girls give me a massage during my online experience, or does fully customize mean, not really "fully" customizeable. We just allow you to set some preferences around..
...just for picking such a stupid name. I'm going to start a fast-food chain, but I can't decide whether to call it Flurger Fling, McZozzalds, or Glarglee's.
Google was also remarkably close to the idea behind lots of early search engines but it ended up giving them the smackdown on market share.
Are they going to have enough money to pay off amazon or its patent lawyers for all the obvious business practice patents bezos has been granted?
The Green Tennis Shoes Principle is (roughly) that the Internet brings makes it efficient to market niche products.
Zazzle looks to allow you to customize your selling experience. It's hoping to let folks like flea market vendors (and they are legion) sell their wares in a custom-looking environment. If it's easy enough, it shoud work really well.
Ebay, Yahoo!, AOL, et al will probably copy the idea.
sigs, as if you care.
Cafepress is cool, but there are some jokes/phases/logos that would be especially fun if noone else had it. I would see this site catering to not only the got-my-kid's-name-on-a-tshirt bunch but also the geeky inside-joke group - where maybe five of your friends are the only ones who will get understand the t-shirt. It's the ultimate insider wear.
- Hover Conversion Industries -
I can't wait to customizer my Zazzle!
I'd also appreciate being able to conflaggle my blunker, but I'll take what I can get.
I just went to register on the site. I don't see how it is really different to a lot of established create your own product sites. Maybe they will just market better. I agree that there is a lot of variation on what you can create. As they say: "Lots of places offer apparel, posters, and cards - and we do too. But no one else offers the range of sizes, colors or media that you find at Zazzle. And no one else utilizes our state-of-the-art reproduction techniques that deliver exceptional color, feel and resolution. " Hmm, maybe. Maybe. But, what's in it for the punter? If you use CafePress, you can set your own prices and make money. At Zazzle, you get a flat 10%. That's a in anyone's money. The users will make the site, they are effectively selling their creativity - and yet the return is pathetic. Despite the brilliance of the investors, I suggest this company will . And even if it doesn't, it isn't adding anything of interest to the world.
Investing that many million isn't very 'froogle' (This is funny mod accordningly)
Maybe with the money behind Google, Zazzle can finally get their "scrollies" menus to work in Firefox.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
It's 1999 again! Let the good times roll!
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
If Zazzle can't even get Your/you're right on a front-facing, high-profile license site, I don't think I really want to trust them with my money.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
because it sounds like someone is blowing another bubble.
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
CafePress + Customized Stamps + Google Investers = Zazzle
(Oh, and add slashdotted to the list too!)
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
Sweet. This could usher in a whole new era of irrational exuberance for investors. Startups by soon-to-be Stanford grads! Who cares if nobody wants what they're selling? They could be the next company trading at levels well beyond their capcity for earning! Call now for your very own castle in the sky.
Oh, from TFA: "The name Zazzle means 'to embellish something' from the root word 'zazz.'"
It does? Since when do campanies get to decide their nonsense name means something, much less that the nonsense root word means something, too? Lewis Carroll they ain't.
Apologies if 'zazz' is a real word.
Considering these investors think it is wise to invest in broadband over powerline (BPL), you have to wonder about how competent they are at picking technologies in which to invest.
Because we all know it was the VC company that was truly responsible for Google's success!
pooptruck
Hoo boy, this one needs some cleaning up. The list of offenses includes: wrong capitalization, commas where there shouldn't be commas, no commas where there should be, wrong choice of word (customize/customizer), and no ending punctuation. Following is a corrected version:
Andrew writes "According to ZDNet, the investors behind the successful search engine Google are at it again. This time, the venture capitalists are investing in a company that promises to provide a unique online shopping experience. This startup company, named Zazzle, allows both shoppers and store owners to fully custmomize their online experience. The full story can be found here."
1. Associate yourself with a good name.
2. ???
3. Profit!
It works great if you sell out before people realize that you have nothing to do with the "good name".
I took a little Spanish and I don't get it. None of the "conjugations" of customizer as a subject results in "sodomizer".
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
That's pretty obvious when you RTA.
Obviously these investors made the foolish mistake of investing in a mispelled version of Zazzol.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It's not coming up with the ideas that lets you cash out. People come up with ideas like this and better every second of every day. The trick is to be able to use all of the lingo, talk to the right people, jump through the right hoops, and figure out how to get people give you millions for a silly idea, and how you can personally walk away with a pile of cash, even if (when) the idea flops. If you know any venture capitalists personally, and you know how to talk to them, and what kind of bullshit they expect, you've gotten past your first hurdle.
I don't respond to AC's.
What about the price? I would definitely shop at an e-store with that kind of customization!
1, 2, 3, 4, 5... That's the combination on my luggage!
The primary difference I can see between other sites (cafepress, etc) and zazzle is that zazzle will simply allow you to contribute creative without requiring you to actually sell the end product (mugs, shirts, etc). This could become a clearinghouse for artists who want to make their stuff available to others for 'mixing' (or mashup, or whatever the term is today).
If cafepress cut a deal to allow people to search through flickr, for example, use those pics on a mug, then cut the original flickr uploader a piece of the sale, I think you'd have something close to zazzle. This would also make flickr much more valuable (imo) as it would be a triple purpose site (share my fotos, share my portfolio and make money selling my work).
Anyway, not saying it will or won't work. With enough money behind them, it might. Obviously getting Disney and others to contribute stuff is a big boon. I think this MAY work out in the long run (whether zazzle themselves or someone else) because it encourages the 'mash up' idea people are all excited about these days. Long term it will just be seen as normal to take multiple images and do things with them that they weren't intended for. This is a stepping stone in that direction. Check out a recent wired magazine on the whole 'remix' generation stuff - I think it was July '05 issue (gorillaz on the cover?)
creation science book
They were incredibly stupid. For years, they ordered their artworks by average ratings... guess what happened... that's right, some artists spent all day giving themselves 10's and their competitors 1's... It was a troll's paradise. You could leave comments on artworks and there's no way to get rid of them except by asking an admin... "Nah, I don't like this one!" Want to piss someone off? Give them a 1! Artist cliques formed, where members praised up each others works and downrated outsiders. A few art spammers generated thousands of fractals to drown out other digital artists. Zazzle advertised their lists, so in effect, whoever was at the top got free advertising. And the solution was so obvious. Just use a ranking formula combining sales and a few other factors. They could have put capitalism to work for them! Now, you see mostly garbage. There are some outstanding works but they are very hard to find. The new investors have some serious ass kicking to do.
My first thought too, was that this was just like CafePress.com. CafePress has been around for years and has really done a good job refining their services, for DIYers, they're an excellent resource. I'm surprised nobody's entioned Lulu.com yet (especially since it has Bob Young at the helm). One of the really interesting things about lulu.com is that they don't just make books, CDs, etc. based on users' creative content but they also facilitate collaborative work between the people that use their site.
What the world of online shopping really needs, well, at least I'm speaking for the situation in The Netherlands, is for online stores that sell clothes to sort them by size-availability. I'm only interested in things that fit me, and when I can get those (now or in 1-2 weeks). I hate browsing through a dozen pages only to find out nothing is available in my size. I hate browsing through racks in stores as well, but at least you can argue that in a store hanging the same kind of clothes together is more appealing; sorting the results slightly differently on a database-driven site is SO easy, why don't they do it??
Oh wait, I shouldn't have shot off my mouth like this, now Amazon is sure to patent it.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
custmomizo
custmomiza
custmomizas.... uh...
4 years of spanish and that's the best I can do...
Well, it's probably an irregular verb anyway.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
A colleague (well okay, a mate) and I have tried several times to get one of our development ideas to Google. It's a project that's just righ for Google and would dazzle Zazzle to a frazzle, it's an idea that's worth billions in turnover per year - and because Google seems to be full of dopey robots, we haven't had a response on even ONE of our dozen emails to any address we could find that seemed about right.
Is there some secret to getting a very good concept to the right ears in Google? Has anyone ever reached someone in R&D there? Because, the concept we have, will not work for any company lesser than Google. It might work for the MS Empire but it's such a cash cow that my colleague and I decided long ago that it couldn't go there. If anyone loves Google and knows a way to get our idea to someone in that there company we'd be stoked... Sorry this is probably OT but I really want to know how to get in contact, we can take it from there...
-- ted russ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/mydynes/ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/myblogs/
I have a patent on shopping cart that allows customers to build their own products.. WoooHooo.. I can see half a billion dollars calling me. (Just kiddin..)
What does your Credit Report look like?
Now what some might find unique may be quite offending to others!
then have the T-shift delivered to them
is this like the red shift, only stronger?
There ain't no such word as zazz or zazzle. You are correct that it is their own made up nonsense word to which they are further trying to attach some pseudo folkloric history.
Sadly, while zazz is not a word, the word "ain't" is now officially in Webster's dictionary. It's a sad day for the English language. Ain't it?
Btw, Mr Sriram has little to do with Google's huge success. He made his billions pimping for the two crazy lads. Google's wasn't even mentioned in his presentation in 1999. Give credit where credit is due.
--"There is a $5 trillion market opportunity for e-commerce today. " Ram Shriram Circa 1999 AD
Then you need to get your money back. That would be an 'er' verb, not an 'ar' one. custmomizo custmomize custmomizes custmomizemos custmomizen
Try designing a tshirt, select a bgcolor for the logo from the pop-up swatch, then hit "submit" on the right and the app crashes.
Then everything else stops working. This happened in Opera 8 and IE.
Brilliant.
smattawichu
After reading the wide range of opinions about this new e-commerce company, I decided to go on the website to try it for myself. I found the user experience to be intuitive, fun, and empowering. It was an awesome experience... I highly recommend it for anybody who enjoys creative endeavors... In the past, I have used CafePress, but now I think I like Zazzle better... While Zazzle may not offer as wide a range of products as CafePress, the products that they do offer give the user a much fuller experience! ...more depth and growing breadth... the experienced user notices a bunch of subtle advantages in using Zazzle ... no wonder the greatest VC legends of our time have invested in it!
At first I thought it wouldn't be possible do to such a thing but then examples poured into my mind:
a) The gym, where I go to customize my mass (it only affects me, hence "small scale", although the wife would object the "small" part)
b)Nanobots can customize anything in a very small scale - too bad they don't exist yet
But I don't think small online stores selling personalized itens fit into this category.
I founded a company that does the exact same thing.
We do a process called silk screening.
Seriously, just do it yourself, it's really easy to make your own clothes, plus it's fun, you get a lot of pride out of doing it yourself, it will be completley unique, and other people are always fascinated by it.
Just go down to your local art store and ask around.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
Another difference with Cafepress: Zazzle seems to promote interaction through its community. "Zazzle is home to contributors who are individual artists, photographers, designers and creative consumers worldwide. As a contributor, you can choose to make your creations public through a Zazzle gallery, where anyone can browse, comment or connect with you."
This reminds me of deviantART, which has a huge artist community. The community can interact through the deviantART website (forums, chat, they organise contests,...), and they even have meetups for people to meet in real life. Artists also can sell their works as quality prints in a range of formats, with glossy or matte finish, even framed. They also have stuff like mouse pads, mugs, puzzles,...
Investor backing has nothing to do with this market. As others have mentioned, cafeexpress offers this service as well as some people on half.com or ebay. I even tried doing this at one point.
I ended up tossing the idea because of two main reasons:
1) To make any money, you have to sell in bulk with the same printing, and usually people just want one or two of the item; be it a shirt with a picture of dad-catching-a-fish or susies-first-bike-ride.
2) Cost. Your customers want to spend 15 dollars for a 15 dollar t-shirt with their picture on it. They don't think your service provides any value, even though it's the picture they value the most. At first it seems hard, but it's easy to explain; how much value do you put in those sweaters with your name on them that your grandmother bought for Christmas while a child?
Haven't tried Zazzle, but have tried CustomInk.com... they have a neato little "lab" where you can design your shirts. It allows you to upload whatever graphics you want, add text, change fonts, positioning, size, color. Seemed pretty complete. We drew up a nice shirt design with our band's logo, did some text and ordered up a few dozen shirts in various sizes so we had something to sell at shows. I really liked the flexibility of the design lab, and I think they were working on the ability to have something printed on the sleeves of longsleeved shirts.
What a company like this needs isn't Google's investors, they need google's wide scale exposure. In fact, I suprised that Google hasn't aquired this company for them selves already. There is a huge potential market if it's done right. Though, I think Cafè Press has done it better. Imagine political campaigns where artists could submit their work in support of a canidate, and have a percentage of the proceeds go to that campaign. Or a school fundraiser where the community could get thier team's logo on any product they want with the profit going to the team. Your local zoo sells save the pandas shirts online, with proceeds going to research. Support your local police with a bumper sticker. Print on demand with a built-in marketplace could be potentially huge for such purposes, but it lacks exposure. What needs to happen for this to work? How about a custom printed catalog with all of (or a selection of) the seller's designs and their set price. Mabey a paragraph or two about the seller, and a mail-order option for low tech users. Then I can upload my images, and pay $10.00 for 25 Catalogs (2-4 color pages), and have them shipped to me for distrabution, or Direct mailed on a larger scale by the company based on a mailing list customized to my target demographic. Every Item I upload is given a unique catalog number, and ordering can be done on a frequent, but small scale basis. Profit goes to my account automatically, minus the company's markup. This would be great for small business, non-profits, or anyone. I don't expect however that I can simply upload artwork and people will just haphazardly come across it on their site and order it. The website is great, but better marketing tools are needed.
And did they actually get their clothing, or did they find out that there's still a limit on how unique major corporations want you to be?
It all makes sense now, Homer must be Spanish!
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
It would be good if they integrated it with froogle, so if you searched for say a butterfly t-shirt, then you would get a template with a picture of a butterfly from google images.
Visit my amazing website on making webpages [html4u.uni.cc]
they've got slashdot junk! there's a whole bunch, search for "slashdot".
Screw the cafepress model. Picking the design of the artwork on the clothing is a problem that has already been solved, and it's not the interesting problem anyway.
As someone who NEVER fits into off-the-rack clothes (I'm 5'4", >160lbs, with a 30in waist) what I want is a direct link between the online-order process and a computer-driven seamshop. I want to be able to buy 30waist/29inseam pants with a crotch that doesn't scrape the insides of my knees. I want to order shirts that fit across my shoulders without leaving enough extra material at my waist to outfit a small craft with a spare spinnaker. I want to find dress pants that fit over my thighs and butt without having to go up four waist sizes. I want to specify pocket size, shape, and design; I want to pick fabric and cut. I'm sure the same would hold true for many folks who don't easily fit into mass-produced clothing, regardless of how and why their physiques differ from the garment industry's mythical "average-size person".
Yes, these things are all possible now with a human tailor, but they are prohibitively expensive (think $5-10k for a bespoke suit using good fabric from a good but less-than-famous tailor, versus minor fractions of that for a mostly mass-produced off-the-rack suit of the same fabric from a known designer.) Cut the end-user cost even in half compared to the cost of tailoring, and you'd have a viable business proposition. Cut it to 10 percent (still more than retail cost for many off-the-rack suits) and I guarantee you'd have all the business you could handle.
(Or, as Captain Picard said to the robo-tailor's programmer... "Make it sew.")Need a UNIX/Linux/network guru in the Boulde
"the Zazzle shirt is more comfortable because it doesn't have a big iron-on patch where the artwork is." Cafepress never used iron-on patches but they have used heat transfers (not available in mass market stores) in which a carrier is used for ink. For the past several years they have been hand trimming the carrier to fit the designs. The trimming is good enough that some customers have mistaken my Cafepress produced products for silkscreen products.
However, Cafepress is also in beta testing stages for a direct to print process which is essentially printing directly to the items... ink only where ink belongs -- and it looks and feels fantastic.
Zazzle's Price Structure "The Zazzle shirts are a bit more expensive, though: about $2 more than comparable CafePress shirts." And sometimes as much as $7 more per shirt if you count Cafepress' offer of their Value T-shirt.
Pricing is the part that gets to me as an artist. The Zazzle shirts are more expensive to my customer and yet I get less per shirt from a Zazzle sale than from a Cafepress sale.
Additionally... Zazzle doesn't give me any bonus for selling more items while Cafepress has a bonus commission program which makes it worth it to put out the extra marketing effort.
Finally, Zazzle doesn't let me change the retail prices of my products. There are many times when I'll do a custom design for someone or make a "joke t-shirt" where I want to give my customer a deal and take a little bit off from my profit end to pass along to them. I can't do that on Zazzle. And, on the other side of the coin, I can't charge more for artwork that took me months to complete versus days. This makes a lot of difference to artists who are creating posters and framed prints.
Zazzle's Portal vs Cafepress's Portal Perhaps you haven't been to Cafepress lately but they have changed it to become a shopping destination as well as an artist's destination. Their home page gives you two choices, either sell or shop. They have a whole Marketplace section now as well. I think this has a lot to do with the attention they (as a company) received during the political election and from various other hot topics. In the past though, Cafepress was definitely less of a shopping destination. I didn't count on them to provide many customers. These days I can track sales that came from their directory.
Final thoughts: Cafepress' wider selection of apparel styles, non clothing products (you can sell books and CDs for instance), and seasonal stuff was a real bonus for me to use them. However, the pricing and ability to customize my own store front were the real reasons to make Cafepress my primary supplier over Zazzle.
In the end though, producing items yourself is the best way to go. I've been moving more and more in that direction. Meanwhile, I don't mind if Zazzle gets a little stronger due to this attention, it will just give me and my customers more choices.
~Fricka
OffLineTshirts.com
...much like every other customized retailer I know of, they don't offer black t-shirts. Is this really so damn difficult to do? What gives?
... I've used Zazzle.com for several years, (as other people have pointed out they have been around in beta form for longer than stated above).
... its easier to get things sent adn then deal with that here). The one thing that kept me from using them more is complete lack of any form of artistic talent ... something they can't really be blamed for!
... thanks, I'd never heard of that site so will have to go for a browse :)
I have used them to produce tshirts and posters and while they may not be the cheapest I have had no arguements with their quality or speed of shipping, (I'm in the UK). In fact I have several pictures around my house which I have brought from their web store, (note that I have not used their framing services due to international shipping
For those who immediately compare them to Cafepress
t
A while back there was a story on the winners of a computer-generated graphics competition. One of them included a link to a Zazzle page where you could buy a poster. Since I had just moved into my new apartment, I ended up going to search several hundred posters more and finally found three I really liked (yes, there's a lot of crap on the site :P), paid for 'em, and they arrived quickly.
Look great. My only complaint is that one is a *little* lower resolution than I would have hoped - some of the details blur a bit. The others are fine though, so I suspect whoever made that poster just didn't do it in high enough resolution.
Recommended.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
When uploading JPEGs created in GIMP, the site returns:
"could not upload JPEG, please use proper JPEG format"
So I re-save the image with MS-paintbrush still the same error...
Not very happy, not very happy at all...
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
The idea behind Zazzle is great, but service totally sucks. I created a shirt and place an order for like 13 shirts as a surprise gag for a friends out-of-town graduation.
There was no way to guarantee when shipping would occur. They had some process (I forget what it entailed, maybe paying for priority shipping) that allowed you to jump the line and get priority printing. I followed the process and sent several emails through their online forms telling them that if I could not get the shirts before a specific date, I needed to cancel the order.
Well, with something like a two week lead time, I watched my order and my status never changed. I sent follow up email after follow up email trying to get someone who could tell me about my order.
Eventually, I had to research the company, find out where in California they were located and then do a company lookup for their phone number (you can't find any of that information on their website).
I finally tracked someone down via land line and they checked on my order. I called to let them know that if the order wasn't finished, I would have to cancel it. The sales guy told me that the order was finished several days prior and some glitch prevented it from shipping and it was sitting in the warehouse.
He then told me that come hell or high water it he would get it to me before I left town. I told him I was leaving town at 1:00 PM on a Friday and he said, no problem.
Well, then next day I called to check up and I was told that it failed to make it out the door because of some other glitch, but to be assured that it was possible to still receive it before I left town.
Well, Thursday evening, I get a confirmation that the item shipped. When I looked at the detail I noticed that it wasn't sent as a "deliver before 10AM" parcel and that I shouldn't be expecting my package until 4PM.
On Friday, I logged in to track the package and sure enough, another snafu caused DHL to misdirect the package and I would not receive it until Monday!
Well, I left for the graduation sans t-shirts and I got a package on Monday for about $150 worth of now-useless t-shirts.
After a month of leaving messages and trying to get an RMA, I gave up and realized I just got sacked by Zazzle.
Now a part of Google or not, I will never use them again.
Just my $0.02 --
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
Wasn't this and Poppler's the only non-trademarked names in the year 3000? What will the people of the future do now?
I'd call this a thinly veiled PR announcement if it were thinly veiled. Doerr making an investment is news like Bill Gates selling a copy of Windows is news. He does it constantly, it is his job. Moreover this kind of thing has been around since the late 1990s, lots of well-known and less well known companies doing it. I am embarrassed this got parroted on slashdot "products as unique as you are!" sheesh.
VC's fund companies all the time, and most of those companies will fail.
I don't know why this is newsworthy.
for every individual who wants to create products that are as unique as they are
hey here's a thought... how about letting others judge/care how unique you are by your contributions to the world instead of some crappy t-shirt you "designed" on your computer while in your underwear.
I use vosotros you insensitive clod!
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
C'mon, folks, there have been reports of
the Japanese custom SHOE makers for years!
They scan - in 3-D - each foot and make a
pair of shoes to match the scanned images.
The Innovation Drought seems to be hitting
Sorry, but I think this
better placed on kiddie-slashdot...
There's an idea for you (or others to try
- a variation on the SlashDot-theme that
addresses kids & feeds them ideas about
technologies in their toys, or whatever
kiddy-geeks (or would-be geeks) might go for.
But "send us (or worse: pick from OUR
image collection) the images & we'll
print 'em on T-shirts" just doesn't do it.
My 2.2 cents (incl Aussie GST)
Spanish infinitives generally end in -er. That's what I thought of when I read it. Made me laugh, at least.
My stupid web site