Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cafepress

How to bypass Cafepress?

hellbient — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:02:44 -0800

I want to make my own t-shirts. How can I do my own personal version of Cafepress, Zazzle, etc.? Not Cafepress in the sense that I would set up a site and take orders, but Cafepress in that I want to actually print 1-off Photoshopped images onto a shirt. I don't want to do iron-ons, screenprinting or draw anything. Is this possible without spending several thousand dollars on a Fiery or whatever? I would settle for B&W printing if there was no color option. I haven't been able to come up with much from my searches, generally it's just a bunch of Cafepress wanna-be sites.

Is there a T-shirt fulfillment API?

racecar — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:17:46 -0800

Is there an automated way to have t-shirts printed and shipped? I'm writing a program that will allow users to have their custom designs printed (a la spreadshirt). Is there any API out there that I could give the image and address and payment, and have it take care of that fulfillment? My friends are already expressing an interest in buying some of these designs I'm talking about, but I don't have any scalable way to take their stuff (order info, design image, payment, shipment info), and instantly turn it into a fulfilled order. I don't want to be another Threadless or Zazzle. I just want my users to have this feature.

I know of APIs that just dispatch the user to one of these sites. I want to get a callback, and be able to know when users have ordered a shirt, so I can reflect the fact that they bought a shirt on the site. I'm offering users some extra functionality when they've bought a shirt.

Things to watch out for with print-on-demand services

ghost of a past number — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:00:07 -0800

Are print-on-demand on-line shops really going to steal my precious artwork? I'm asking this for a friend, who is thinking of starting a shop on cafepress or a similar service, selling items based on his designs.

It seems there is some vague rumour floating around, even mentioned here on AskMe, that one could lose ownership of the images used, or transfer a perpetual right-to-use to the company providing the printing services by agreeing to the Terms of Service. However, googling around hasn't led to any definite information.

Does anyone have any specific example of this happening, or any other negative experiences in this direction?

I realise you are not my lawyer, or my artistic friend's lawyer. Thanks for any relevant information.

CafePress Options?

rev- — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:30:21 -0800

Does anyone have suggestions for options to CafePress in terms of on-demand t-shirt printing and fulfillment? The last question on this subject is 2 years old and some people's suggestions are long gone so I was wondering if any knew of any other places that did decent on-demand t-shirt printing and stuff.

Print double-sided posters on demand?

Tlogmer — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 15:31:55 -0800

Cafepress doesn't make double-sided posters. Is there anywhere like cafepress that does? I'm programmatically creating a lot of individual poster designs (hundreds, maybe) using the text of wikipedia articles. The articles are GFLD-licenced, so the GFDL has to be included whenever the articles are distributed.

I'd print the licence on the back of each poster and sell the posters through cafepress, but cafepress doesn't offer double-sided poster prints, so...yeah.

Where besides CafePress can I have a turnkey sticker shop?

mikepop — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 07:12:59 -0800

Where besides CafePress can I have a turnkey sticker shop? I designed a couple of bicycle stickers for myself/friends. I found that I enjoyed the process and designed a few more, and have ideas for a few more still. I'd like to sell these stickers online with as little trouble as possible, i.e. someone places an order, the website takes a cut and handles the printing, shipping, billing etc.

This is what CafePress does. I did a trial sticker (self-link) there, and thought the quality was ok. However, they offer a limited selection of sticker sizes and their base prices are somewhat high (I wouuld partially mitigate this by printing three bike-size stickers onto one standard-sized bumper sticker).

There have been past questions that recommend sticker printing places, but none that also handle the transactions. I do recognize that printing them that way is a lot cheaper, but I don't want to deal with the payment/shipping hassles.

CafePress is ok, but I want to check out the competition.

I'm not going into this expecting big bucks. If I could cover the $7/month or whatever CafePress charges for a premium store, and then clear $10/month beyond that, I'd be happy that I'd be getting some stickers out there and making some extra pocket money.

Spreadshirt vs. Cafepress

Tlogmer — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:22:19 -0800

I have a vector design that's plot printable at Spreadshirt. But should I just take it to Cafepress (which I think is cheaper)? More generally, the two sites use different terminology to talk about printing: Cafepress talks about direct priting vs. heat transfer; Spreadshirt talks about digital vs. plot printing. How do all these compare, in terms of quality and price, assuming the designs are plot-printable without modification?

Semi-related ask posts.

Alternatives to Cafe Press and Zazzle?

apetpsychic — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:48:32 -0800

I'm looking to make some t-shirts, on an on-demand basis. Are there any alternatives to Cafe Press and Zazzle, preferably one that's not weird about owning people's designs, and copyright issues? I'd like to have unlimited designs available, decent prices, and decent quality t-shirts. I'm not interested in getting anything in bulk. Thanks!

Promotion ideas & advise for online business.

arrowhead — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:20:03 -0800

Has anybody had any success making good business out of an online business such as CafePress? I opened an account recently, selling rock climbing shirts and apparel. Started some promos on the rock climbing forums and managed to get a couple of sales, but it has flattened since then. There are only so many climbing sites that I could promote at.

Would gladly appreciate some ideas / advise / tips on promotions, especially if you've done something similar and seen some success out of it.

Thanks!

Help me make tubgirl mousepads haha just kidding

Krrrlson — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 09:55:39 -0800

Is Cafepress the best option for easy on-demand manufacturing of various pieces of junk or is there a better place? Constraint: must be able to open an account from Canada, no US-only sites.

Where can I make my own clothes?

petah — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 00:15:04 -0800

I want to make my own clothing. I want to upload a design to a website, and get a shirt/sweater/jacket/whatever. The two sites I know are cafepress and spreadshirt. Does anyone have any experience with this? I'd like it to be fairly inexpensive or at least have the quality be equivalent to cost. What other sites are there besides cafepress and spreadshirt? Is it worth it?

Creating high quality custom T-shirts

gentle — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 16:25:32 -0800

I want to create a few custom T-shirts (1) where my image covers the entire shirt, not just a small rectangular area on the front or back, and (2) that are fitted, not those loose nerdy things, and (3) online. Accurate colour reproduction is fairly important. Is there an online store á la CafePress that lets me do this?

Selling photography books online?

Jack Karaoke — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 06:59:03 -0800

Print On Demand / Digital Fulfillment for photography books - I want to sell small photobooks through my site, but want someone else to handle the printing and shipping. Both Lulu and CafePress handle books, does anyone know of others, or have experience with any of these outfits? [mo'better inside+] CP and Lulu have slightly different options regarding paper stock and formats, Lulu seems to be more oriented towards photobooks. Ideally I would like each book to be a one-off. To achieve that with Lulu I would have to process the order and payment through my site, upload the specified pages to Lulu as a new job, order it, and have it sent to the buyer. A little convoluted, but I have no printing or storage to do, and no visits to Kinkos. Lulu apparently has partnered with Xerox, and is able to offer good color work. The spellchecker thinks I should sell phonebooks.

Cafepress Art Books

quibx — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 08:14:35 -0800

I want to use cafepress to publish a small book of black and white illustrations, maybe about 100 pages. I'm concerned that their 100mb pdf limit will result in poor image quality. This is a personal project. Has anyone made an artbook through cafepress? Were you happy with the result?

Where canI get good custom coffee mugs?

crunchland — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:04:09 -0800

Aside from cafepress, does anyone know of a good company that will print my images on decent sized coffee mugs? I've been informed that even the biggest coffee mug at cafe press a) isn't big enough and b) doesn't keep coffee very hot. Looking for alternatives. Ideally, each piece shouldn't cost me more than $10 or $12 each. And I'm looking for short runs ... no more than 2 or 3 at a time. Oh. And a pony.

Cafepress in Europe

dabitch — Mon, 22 Dec 2003 06:27:58 -0800

Is there a european equivalent of Cafepress.com (t-shirts, cards and posters etc) for us on this side of the pond, who are tired of paying import taxes...? ... that you have used and might recommend?