Zazzle Threads – EOD is here.
I just mentioned recently that Zazzle and Cafepress seemed to be involved in a game of one-up and today it seems more true than ever with the launch of Zazzle embroidery. To be honest I laughed out loud (that’s LOL for you 1337) when I saw this banner. Surely the Real is a dig at Infinistitch by Cafepress. Don’t you just love a bit of friendly rivalry?
Just recently I expressed my doubts about Zazzle adding embroidery products to their catalog but I was clearly wrong and I will try to be a bit more open-minded about unsubstantiated rumors in the future. Probably not though. Anyway, heads up to T-Shirt Chat for calling this. Although he did say that I was the first to call it way back when. So way back when I didn’t even remember. Then again I heard it from somewhere else (an embroidery blog I believe) so that wouldn’t even make me the first to call it.
Anyway, when Infinistitch was released quite a few people commented on my post about the fact that Infinistich wasn’t authentic embroidery. It was quite a heated debate as far as I remember but by the looks of it Zazzle’s embroidery won’t elicit such a debate. It seems to be pretty authentic to me although don’t take my word for it as I don’t know much about embroidery.
When I first saw the embroidery page I was blown away by not only the number of new products but what the new products were. Yes, I admit it. I am a front zipper hoodie wearing type of guy. So what’s new? Lots. Of course you some of these are available as print items but for embroidery you can select from the following list.
- Basic T-Shirt (11 colors)
- Basic Long Sleeve T-Shirt (11 colors)
- Ladies Basic T-Shirt (12 colors)
- Ladies Long Sleeve T-Shirt (8 colors)
- Classic Polo Shirt (4 colors)
- Long Sleeve Polo Shirt (8 colors)
- Ladies Polo Shirt (Fitted) (8 colors)
- Ladies Long Sleeve Polo Shirt (Fitted) (4 colors)
- Basic Pullover Hoodie (12 colors)
- Basic Zip Hoodie (7 colors)
- Ladies Pullover Hoodie (3 colors)
- Ladies Zip Hoodie (3 colors)
- AA Fleece Zip Hoodie (8 colors)
- Classic Sherpa-lined Zip Hoodie (2 colors)
- AA Thermal Fleece Zip Hoodie (6 colors)
- Basic Sweatshirt (5 colors)
- AA Pullover Fleece Hoodie (7 colors)
- Ladies Sherpa-lined Zip Hoodie (2 colors)
- AA Fleece Zip Jogger Jacket (8 colors)
- AA Fleece Track Jacket (7 colors)
- Flexfit Wool Blend Cap (15 colors)
- Basic Adjustable Cap (18 colors)
- Distressed Chino Twill Cap (8 colors)
- Grocery Tote Bag (5 colors)
Wow, now that I wrote the whole list down I’m even more impressed. For those that are curious that is a total of 182 items if I have done my sums and research correctly.
Of all the items, the ones I am most excited about are the zipper hoodies, of course, and the distressed chino caps. I have a similar hat at the moment but it would be nice to be able to make my own.
The thing I am least excited about is the tote bags but then again I don’t think dudes are all that interested in bags.
I also have to add that the thing I am most confused about is the military caps. I see them but I don’t see them.
This all seems great. We have real embroidery and a bazillion products to put them on. It seems to blow Cafepress out of the water so why didn’t they come up with this? There is a catch of course. You can’t simply apply any image you design to these products. There are guidelines that you must follow. But even that is not the real catch. The real catch is that it might cost you a lot of money to just add the design to your products. I tested one design and it would cost me $55 just to convert it to an embroidery-ready format. I decided not to make it. The bigger you design is and the more stitches that are needed the more expensive this conversion fee will be. So this will be a major factor in stopping shopkeepers from loading their stores with these products.
I really don’t think many shopkeepers are going to profit from these new products although I am sure a few will. I have a feeling anyway that these products are not really geared to us shopkeepers but rather to shoppers. I think there are plenty of people out there who will be willing to fork out a bit of cash up front for the conversion fee if they are buying the products themselves. I think they will be wildly popular with clubs, companies and sports teams as embroidery just looks so much classier than regular print items.
On the other hand Zazzle have provided us with a few ways to avoid the conversion fee, one of which is to just use text with the supplied test editor. The fonts are limited but it the selection is varied so you will probably find something you like. The other option looks like it is for shoppers only. You can use some of the 15,000 designs they have already uploaded.
I quickly created an Obama 08 cap which you can see at the Rude Politics store. It was a pretty painless procedure. I love the video feature for the embroidery products too.
Anyway, I think it is fair to say that EOD (Embroidery on Demand) is here. Well done Zazzle. I wonder what else you have up your sleeves.
Infinistitch Review
Well, Cafepress were kind enough to send me a few Infinistitch products to review. They send me three caps, three very pink caps, two of which had the same design. That’s about the worst thing I have to say about them. Click the images for closeups but remember that the closeups are bigger that the original size and not what can be seen with the naked eye. The quality of the designs themselves is excellent, much better than I had expected. The images were clear and easy to distinguish unlike the samples sent out to the other shopkeepers. Whoever sent those out made a bad choice if you ask me.
I noticed a lot of people say that they couldn’t tell the difference between them and traditional embroidery unless you looked closely but I disagree. I suspect it depends on the design but for me I thought the rose design looked nothing like embroidery unless you looked closely and when you looked closely you can see the threads but it looked nothing like the embroidery I know. You can clearly see the colors crossing threads and the threads changing colors midway. That said, I don’t know much about embroidery and maybe there is embroidery with similar qualities. Also the design is very flat. I really think that embroidery is more … 3D?
The dog design was different from the rose design and I think this is because of the complexity of the image. You may say that the rose design is complex and I agree to a certain degree but it is a pattern whereas the dog design is not and with the dog design it is hard to know which direction the thread should be flowing in.
To conclude, I think some questions have been answered.
Can Infinistitch products look good? Yes.
Does Infinistitch look like traditional embroidery? Sometimes.
Would I wear a pink cap? No.
Cafepress to Answer Questions about Infinistitch
I received an email from somebody at CafePress today and they are willing to answer any questions readers have about Inifinistitch. Great news. So if you have any questions feel free to add a comment to this post or send me an email using the contact form and I will pass them on. (Please refrain from using profanities as they will not be published or passed on. I may even block your IP address.)
Even better news for me is that Cafepress are going to send me a sample so I can see for myself. I will post images and opinions here later.
Infinistitch verses Embroidery
My recent blog posts about the new Infinistitch products from CafePress have been getting a lot of attention. There is a heated debate going on about whether or not Infinistitch is embroidery or not. To be honest I really don’t care about definitions. Well, with regard to embroidery anyway. If some product comes along that looks just like embroidery with equal or better quality and is the same price or cheaper I could probably go either way. To be honest, if it were the same appearance, quality and price I would probably go with the tried and trusted embroidery option. The thing is though, that the debate going on in the comments of this blog are pretty much focussed on the definition of the word embroidery.
As I said I don’t care about the definition. For me the product is the important thing and someone in one of the comments posted an image comparing Infinistitch to traditional embroidery and there are striking differences as you can see below. Using this image as a guide I would rather have the back of the traditional embroidery on my shirt than have something created by Infinistitch.
I do think that this CafePress design is probably not a fair representation of results that can be achieved from Cafepress so if anyone at Cafepress would like to send me some photos of their Infinistitch products I will be more than happy to post them in my blog along with a link to your stores. Hurry though, as this offer won’t stay open forever.
Cafepress Embroidery Showcase
In recent posts I mentioned that Cafepress had released new embroidery products and there has been a heated debate going on ever since. (See here and here) Is it embroidery? Is is not embroidery? I can understand the worry from people in the embroidery industry. Imagine someone came along and said they could do your job cheaper and better. You’d be worried too. To be honest I have no opinion either way as I don’t know anything about the embroidery business and I don’t really know what to do with these new products at Cafepress. I heard a rumor that Zazzle may also be introducing embroidery products and that perhaps this was a pre-emptive move by Cafepress. Given the luke-warm reception of these new products Zazzle may well hold off until they feel they can produce a better product.
It doesn’t take very long for Cafepress shopkeepers to embrace new products and release them for sale and below you can find a selection of these new products from various shopkeepers. I didn’t mention it before but Cafepress released pet bowls at the same time as these new embroidery products. They come in two sizes and have a base price of $16.99 and $19.99. I know you can pay a lot more for pet bowls but they seem pretty expensive to me and that is before the shopkeeper makes any profit. You can get plain pet bowls near here for 100 yen which is about a dollar. Maybe I should go into the pet bowl POD biz myself. Anyway, check out the innovative designs by Cafepress shopkeepers below.
The Lowdown on Cafepress Embroidery
Well, today’s chat at Cafepress provided a lot more information about these new products and this new technology. This new embroidery technique is called Infinistitch and was developed by Cafepress and is therefore exclusive to Cafepress. While they admit it is not traditional embroidery it does have an advantage – infinite colors. No easy task for traditional embroidery it seems, one Cafepress employee stated “if you went to a traditional embroiderer with a photo, they would laugh at you…. if you wanted more than 15 colors they would laugh at you”. Cafepress, it seems, won’t laugh at you.
I think I also compared these new products to jackets with patches because frankly, that is what they look like on my screen but they are not patches. They are sewn right onto the products. A Cafepress representative said “a patch is typically glued on or just tacked on around the border. InfiniStitch products are fully embroidered throughout the image area.” More good news though is that patches may be a new product in the future. According to Cafepress, they ” have plans to offer patches using Infinistitch technology… you can then apply them to anything you like”.
If you have been reading my posts you will know that I am not happy with the embroider area but the good news is that Cafepress “are considering larger print areas for future products”, although no date has been set. As this is new technology, I think it’s fair to hope for many developments in the future. I really think that they will be able to add more shapes and possibly even custom shapes. Now that would be very cool. Imagine being able to embroider large picture shapes on the back of your jacket.
Because it is not traditional embroidery, the question “Can we really call this embroidery?” came up a few times. A Cafepress study said that 9 out of 10 people thought it was embroidery and a Cafepress shopkeeper said “I received one of the samples and I will say that from the front, it required a magnifying glass to determine with 100% certainty that it wasn’t traditional embroidery”. So, i think it’s fair to answer that question with another (rhetorical) question. Does it matter?
I have one more question about the hats though. Where is my free sample? As I don’t have a sample, I can’t get closeup images of what the patch actually looks like. So if someone would like to send me some closeups of the inside and outside of the patches I’d appreciate it.
Embroidery at Cafepress
Well, as predicted, EOD (Embroidery on Demand) has arrived at Cafepress. Today Cafepress had some downtime for “maintenance” but really it was to provide us with these new products. When I saw the little banner in my control panel I got a little rush of excitement. I quickly clicked on it and, I’m sorry to say, my excitement just as quickly disappeared. To be honest I don’t really know what I was expecting but it wasn’t this. Cafepress has added some new products, such as the cap in the previous post and a denim shirt, which it seems are the only products on which the embroidery (called InfiniStitch(TM)) can be used. And as you can see below the embroidery area is tiny. The size is the source of my disappointment.
The caps are pretty cool but I really don’t know who these shirts are for. We could just get the patch made and then sew it onto the clothing of our choice. Maybe people will use them as uniforms or something? Who knows? The jacket would be pretty sweet for POD though.
Recently we were given bulk tool over at Cafepress which enables us to add new products to many sections simultaneously but alas they cannot be used with these products because the image guidelines are different.
When it comes to POD I think the print area is a priority. Increasing the print area allows for more creativity. I really think that, instead of these items, Cafepress should have been working on how to increase print size. I don’t think we can even print on the back of dark t-shirts yet.
Finally I would like to say that EOD hasn’t arrived yet. I don’t really consider these to be embroidered products but rather products with embroidered patches on them. Oh well.
You can find out more at the Cafepress web site.
POD becomes EOD at Cafepress?
It seems that CafePress has sent embroidered caps to a few shopkeepers so this may be a sign that Cafepress will not only offer POD (Print on Demand) services but also EOD (Embroider on Demand) services. If they have sent out these caps to shopkeeper’s I think it is only fair to assume that they might be publicly released soon. I also don’t see why they would stop at caps. I think it is only a matter of time before these services are provided for t-shirts too.
Above you can see one of the caps being modeled by one Cafepress shopkeepers lovely daughter, who kindly gave me permission to post them here. I love the new hat but I think that, as usual, the print area, or embroider area in this case, is too small. We need more control over the look of the hat. It is still a very exciting development from Cafepress and I will post more about this when I know.
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