Review of the New Cafepress On-Demand Embroidery
Cafepress released a new technology they call “InfiniStitch” that allows for no-minimum create on demand embroidery on a variety of clothing products including hats, polo shirts, denim shirts, and performance jackets.
The technology allows users to embroider photographs or images with an almost unlimited number of thread colors. The process isn’t like traditional embroidery in that it doesn’t require specifically designed art or large order sizes. Users can now have their jps or pngs transformed to embroidery.
I received a sample green military hat with a design that says Ohbama. The hat itself is an Alternative Brand hat and is quite nice and surprisingly fits my fat head. I did not pick the design so I have no idea what the actual image looks which makes it a little hard to do a full review. But the text itself is in a green font with a white outline over what looks like particle board or some type of pattern. To be honest when I pulled the hat out the box I did not know what the hat said at first glance. This might be because the font is almost a graffiti/urban style font so the letters tend to blend in together. No one walking by me on the street would ever be able to read what this hat says. But as far as the actual stitching goes it is nice but I really need to try and use another type of design that allows the text and/or design to be a bit clearer. You can check out some pics of the hat and design below.
Read more about the process over at Cafepress
Cafepress Voice Representatives Chosen for 2008
The votes from the Cafepress Voice election have been counted and seven lucky folks will be a part of reviewing new features, services, merchandise and programs at Cafepress. The winners include: Brian D Gryphon, Catherine “Kip” Dorrell, Don E Johnson, Ne’ Metzger, Kate Glenn, Mathew Reiffe, and Pamela C. You can read about all the candidates over at Cafepress.
Cafepress Voice Voting Polls Open
There are seven openings for Cafepress Voice representatives. “CafePressVoice is a panel of Shopkeepers elected by the Community to help us evaluate new features, services, merchandise and programs.” You can learn more about Cafepress Voice, meet the candidates or go ahead and vote. But remember you need to be a Cafepress member to vote for your favorite Cafepress Voice representative. Voting ends April 25, 2008 at 11:59 pm PST so don’t delay.
Tags: cafepress, cafepress voice
Advertising Oversight? Zazzle Offers Personalized Nazi Products
Sometimes when a company reaches a certain size certain small but important details seem to get overlooked. During some research of few culturally sensitive search terms for my Banned T-Shirts blog I found Zazzle right there as the second result in Google for “Nazi T-shirts”.
I am not here to make judgments on Zazzle’s design inventory and whether or not certain t-shirts are appropriate or offensive. The user-submitted designs range from the soup Nazi inspired by Seinfeld, to an image of George Bush dressed up as Hitler and even some anti-Nazi/anti racism t-shirts. What got me was how the Nazi designs were advertised in the organic search results. I know that it wasn’t a human who typed these phrases for a SEO description and it is just their stock titles and descriptions but it is not an excuse. Would a socially sensitive human choose these phrases to advertise Nazi t-shirts?
-”Design your own personalized Nazi products for free”
-”Shop for Nazi T-shirts, Shirts, Posters, Mugs, Cards…”
-”Zazzle lets you find shop and buy Nazi T-shirts”
Currently Zazzle is the only one of the major t-shirt retailers who has done SEO for Nazi t-shirts. Cafepress has actually completely blocked the tag for “nazi” in there marketplace. Companies like Walmart have come under heavy fire over the past months about selling Nazi inspired merchandise. You can follow that story over at the Consumerist.
How would you suggest changing Zazzle’s advertising slogans for Nazi products them to make them more culturally sensitive? As always, we want your feedback.
Tags: zazzle, zazzle advertising
CNN T-Shirts - Spreadshirt System Exploited
Yesterday we posted about how Spreadshirt made it possible to buy CNN headlines on t-shirts. Well, someone figured out that you can change the url for products and it will change the title/image on the CNN t-shirts. A Digg user created a shirt that said “ABC News Fucked Up the Pennsylvania Debate” and over 849 people dugg the story. From there everyone started creating their own funny CNN headlines. One Digg user commented “now that is a rather spectacular example of WTF coding. “let’s just send the article title through as an URL string, what’s the worst that could happen?” Some of the t-shirts created by users included:
“CNN welcomes our Digg overloads”
“MSNBC is where it’s at”
“Hillary is a liar”
“We don’t report real news”
“Obama zealots are cry babies”
The system has since been fixed so if you change the search string it will redirect you back to the list of shirts. In some circumstances having the text in the url would be fine but in this case it was a serious oversight. This is embarrassing for Spreadshirt but it sure did help spread the word about CNN’s new t-shirt feature. For more info check out Digg.
CNN Headlines on T-Shirts - Example of the Spreadshirt API
CNN launched a tool today thats enables users to purchase recent news article titles on t-shirts. You can sort results by title or date added but you better hurry because they are only available as long as the article is featured as latest news on CNN. Click on a title and you will be able to see the phrase on three different American Apparel shirts (grey, black or white). The shirts are priced at a competitive $15. When you click on “Get this shirt” there is a short loading script and you are then transfered to the CNN spreadshirt shopping cart. After you buy the shirt you can see “Share on Facebook” links and post the code into your profile. Spreadshirt made a great deal and it is a nice example of a t-shirt API.
Check out all the available t-shirts at CNN and you can read reviews of the system over on Spreadshirt CEO Jana Eggers Blog.
Tags: cnn t-shirt, spreadshirt, spreadshirt api
Interview with Founder of Printfection.com
Listen to a podcast of Casey Shorr, co-founder of Printfection on Startup Story Radio. Learn about how Printfection started, information on their sales, insight on how being young has impacted the business. Learn more about this “technology company that happens to print t-shirts”. You can also follow the company on the Printfection Blog.
Cafepress Addresses Their Better Business Bureau Record
In a recent post, T-Shirt Talk highlighted 13 t-shirt companies and their Better Business Bureau (BBB) records, which unearthed some issues with the Cafepress service record. The post generated some buzz in the t-shirt world and as a result Cafepress was made aware of their outstanding complaints at the BBB.
Last Friday, Cafepress responded on their blog about their “unsatisfactory” BBB rating. Cafepress stated that they pride themselves in customer service and that it was an oversight in their processes for handing BBB complaints. Cafepress also stated that they have as of now responded to ALL of the BBB complaints to potentially resolve any outstanding issues. I am glad to see that they took swift action to fix the outstanding complaints, set up a process to deal with future complaints, and also the fact they were open enough to explain what happened.
Check out the full response on the Cafepress Blog
Tags: better business bureau, cafepress, cafepress better business bureau, customer service
Tips for Building a Successful Crowdsourcing T-Shirt Community
Adam Fletcher has been active in the crowdsourcing community and even wrote a Master’s thesis on Threadless entitled “Do consumers want to design unique products on the Internet - a study of the Virtual Community of Threadless.com and their attitudes to Mass Production, Mass Customisation and Collaborative Co-creation”. You can check out his full thesis on his blog at HipHopUK. Fletcher was later hired by Spreadshirt to help organize their Open Logo Project at the end of 2007. Following the logo contest he took off to travel Asia but he has surfaced with an interesting article on tips, risks, and problems for running a crowdsourcing model and Fletcher answered the following questions.
1. What is required to make Crowdsourcing a success?
2. What are the benefits of Crowdsourcing?
3. How important is design feedback?
4. Are the most creative members ever given jobs?
5. Is fair treatment required for successful crowdsourcing?
6. What happens if crowdsource community members are treated unfair?
7. What helps crowdsourcing communities stay loyal?
8. What are the risks or problems for crowdsourcing models?
For more info check out the full article on crowdsourcing.
Tags: crowd sourcing, crowdsourcing, t-shirt community
Interview with Founder of NerdyShirts.com by GearCrave.com
GearCrave interviewed co-founder Jacob Fatoorechi of NerdyShirts.com, “your one stop shop for the most awesome shirts in the world” (if you are a nerd). Learn about how NerdyShirts.com got started four years ago, the co-founders favorite t-shirt, their favorite t-shirt designers, and a bunch of personal and geeky info about Jacob. Check out the full NerdyShirts interview at GearCrave and check out their NerdyShirts giveaway.
Tags: nerdyshirts.com, t-shirt interview
