Great Upgrades from Cafepress
This is another good day for POD shopkeepers. Cafepress have launched a few upgrades, one of which I mentioned before but quickly disappeared. That was the design tab of the sale report. It is even better than I had first thought. Not only does it tell you which designs are selling well, it shows their tags. You can see an example below. The design is first, then the number you have sold (in this case: 1), the image number, the store and finally the tags. (I had to chop it a little to fit on the page.)
The image basket has also been upgraded making it easy to find CUP images. For those who don’t know CUP stands for Content Usage Policy and the CUP guys make decisions based on possible copyright and trademark infringements. There are a few other enhancements including bulk image deleting. Just check it out for yourself.
There is also a new Share it / Post it feature on items in the marketplace. I think the email it feature had already been there but this is a sign that Cafepress is willing to embrace its Web 2.0 brethren. What was it waiting for? I would highlight it more though. If we hadn’t been told about it I don’t know how long it might have taken for me to notice it by myself. Also it appears only to be in the marketplace. I can already hear cries about Cafepress trying to marginalize our stores. I don’t know about that but please Cafepress, add this function to our stores as well.
Finally, back to Infinistitch, Cafepress’ pseudo-embroidery. More colors have been added to their lineup. The mens polo shirts are now available in red and navy as well as black. Women’s now have navy and black. The men’s performance jacket is now available in navy as well black. The military cap can be purchased in black and mocha as well as the already existing olive. Deck Blue and Ivy have been added to the stonewashed caps.
All in all it is a good day for Cafepress shopkeepers.
Cafepress Announce Contest Winners
On the same say Cafepress announce base price increases they also announce the winners from the Design Contest. I did think that the prize was unusually generous. Perhaps Cafepress have an amateur psychologist on their team advising on how to take the attention away from the base price increases. Oh, you tricked us all Cafepress. LOL. Anyway, the main purpose of the contest, I imagine, was to increase the no. of Infinistitch products in the marketplace to make use of the new facilities. The winners were not so bad. Nothing to get excited about either though and I’m just now trying to figure out why Cafepress have decided to enter into the embroidery market when a simple printed patch might have looked just as good, if not better.
Well, below are the winners from left to right, first prize to third. They are all patriotic caps for Americans and fans of the USA. It is interesting that the military caps were chosen for this contest. At least the winning design is giving off the right message. The other two designs show off famous American symbols – the Statue of Liberty and Uncle Sam.
There is more information on the Cafepress blog.
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 Design Contest
I guess this competition is a combination of promoting the new Infinistitch products and a clever way to boost the number of designs for these products in the marketplace. Below are the general guidelines:
1. Create an American patriotism design in the spirit of July 4th on our Military Cap with InfiniStitch(tm) embroidery
2. Submit your Military Cap for this contest by tagging your image PDC2008
3. Submissions are accepted between June 13th and June 20th
Be sure to read the full rules though as conditions of eligibility apply. The competition is only open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 years or older at time of entry. The prizes are as follows:
Grand Prize: One (1) $1000. American Express* Gift Card.
2nd Place: One (1) $100. CafePress Gift Certificate.
3rd Place: One (1) $75. CafePress Gift Certificate.
I assume that you will retain ownership of your design and will also benefit from any sales that you may make from them as well so even if you don’t win, you may win.
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.
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