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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.'"
Is it just me, or does the idea for Zazzle seem remarkably close to the idea behind Cafe Press?
Doesn't this describe cafepress?
Maybe in a general sort of way, but more specifically it describes the 1990s.
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. :-)
...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
"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.
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.
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.
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RumorsDaily
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 doubt it. They're probably *printed on* in the US, but the blank t-shirts come from whereever. Their "Premium" shirts are Hanes (which is Sara Lee, one of the worst multinationals for fair trade and labor practices -- way worse than Nike. Ask Google.) They don't mention a brand for their "Basic" shirts, probably so they can change it up with whatever is cheapest at the time.
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.
I've used both CafePress and Zazzle to have T-shirts printed up with a logo on the front and a simple graphic on the back. The Zazzle T-shirt is of much higher quality. You get a larger area in which to print your graphic with Zazzle, and the Zazzle shirt is more comfortable because it doesn't have a big iron-on patch where the artwork is. The Zazzle shirts are a bit more expensive, though: about $2 more than comparable CafePress shirts.
Compared to CafePress, Zazzle makes it much harder to sell your stuff online in a self-contained space. I think this is where the missions of the two sites diverge. CafePress is basically a site designed to help you set up your little store to sell branded schwag. It is a portal for personal sites. Nobody goes to cafepress.com to shop; they end up on a specific CafePress store that has been linked from somebody else's site.
But Zazzle wants to be an entity unto itself, and it portrays itself as a clearinghouse for all sorts of printed artwork. If you want to make the items you design on Zazzle available to the public, you have to give Zazzle resale rights to the artwork in perpetuity, with the agreement that you will receive a 10% royalty on any items that are sold. Zazzle wants you to become part of their big community.
If you go to cafepress.com, you see a pitch that basically says, "We'll help you sell it yourself." If you go to zazzle.com, you see a pitch that says, "Look at the cool stuff Zazzle sells. Why not contribute?"
I prefer the quality of the printing process (again, I only have experience with T-shirts) on Zazzle, but I wish it had the selling flexibility of CafePress.
"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