Cafepress Acquires Imagekind.com for an Estimated $15-20 Million.
It was informally announced this morning that Cafepress purchased Imagekind.com for an estimated $15-$20 million. Imagekind is a marketplace of member created art that is printed on demand. The model is similar to Cafepress where the artists set their own price markup but it is focused specifically on prints. Prices of the artwork range from $5 to $500.
Imagekind was founded in 2006 with $300K used to purchase printing equipment, hire staff and web site development. In February 2007 Imagekind raised an additional $2.6 million in funding and was valued at around $7 million. Imagekind had turned down offers in the past to be purchased by Amazon.com. It is likely that both Art.com and Zazzle.com were also involved in recent negotiations to purchase the growing print on demand company. Imagekind has grown quickly to over 750,000 art images for sale by over 50,000 artists worldwide.
For more information on the deal check out Venture Beat or an older article with a few facts about Imagekind at the Seattle Times. You can also follow the story at TechCrunch.
Zazzle T-Shirt Review – $43.91 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt
It took me a long time to get around to buying a t-shirt at Zazzle. Last month I decided to order a t-shirt for my t-shirt packaging review and to check out their print quality. In general I prefer to wear simple artsy t-shirt designs without slogans or brand names so I had to dig pretty deep at Zazzle to find a design that I liked. I came across this simple design made up of grey and white arrows that start in the middle of the shirt small and get bigger as they move out.
I chose the Edun Live organic t-shirt that is made in Lesotho from 100% African cotton. The total price for one sided printing of these standard black organic t-shirts was $35.95. It was officially the most I have ever paid for a t-shirt.
The shirt arrived in a fancy shiny dark silver packaging with a small Zazzle logo in the top left corner. The packaging is indeed eye catching and the dark colored bag almost makes it look like you have ordered some type of suspicious.
Inside the package was my Edun live t-shirt, an invoice, a $5 off coupon and a card with a short letter suggesting that the t-shirt may have a film on it until it is washed.
The shirt itself was nice and fairly thick but unfortunately the print was a complete disappointment. Before I show you the printing here is what the image looks like on the Zazzle web site. The left is the design view and the right is what it looks like zoomed in at high resolution. The design has different colored arrows in two different shades of grey and white.
Below is the design closeup of the actual shirt printed by Zazzle. As you can see it has white outlines over almost every single arrow.
One more closeup to see how bad the white outlines are. When you compare this image with the design preview there is no suggestion of white outlines. It just looks plain sloppy when printed.
The design was created by one of their members so it is hard to know what the original resolution of the image is but it doesn’t matter. The “high resolution” preview showed one thing and the final print was not the same.
If this shirt was $12 I would be disappointed but not as disappointed as I was after spending $43.91 with shipping for a badly printed t-shirt. And yes, I did submit for a full refund and I am waiting to hear back if the “Zazzle Promise” will be kept.
What is so funny is that the t-shirt has a 5 star review based on 12 votes but who was voting? It was obviously rated by people who just thought the design was kind of cool but never actually bought the shirt. It is ridiculous to have and center design ratings from people who haven’t even seen the shirt before. People should vote with their dollars and not with a left click on the mouse.
Cafepress Drops all New York Affiliates
Cafepress announced that as of July 1, 2008 all their affiliates who live in the State of New York will be dropped. Cafepress is one of many companies who dropped NY affiliates due to new legislation passed in New York that has impacts on “tax registration, collection and remittance”. Before the NY legislation if a company didn’t have a physical location within a particular state then the state could not require that they pay state taxes. The changes in NY now require that companies from all ecommerce sites with affiliates (including Cafepress and other t-shirt companies) based in New York state pay state taxes. New York was estimating to raise $50-$70 million in taxes but the plan has backfired as many companies have pulled out of New York or filed lawsuits (Amazon.com) against the state.
I am sure other t-shirt companies will follow but I haven’t heard any specifics. You can check out a list of other companies who also have dropped their NY affiliates at abestweb.com and watch a video of Shawn Collins at Affiliate tip on how this whole mess started. Marketing Sherpa also has an article about whether or not the legislation will spread to other states.
Surprisingly there are NO designs on cafepress for “New York affiliate“. Not sure if there truly aren’t any designs or if the terms have been blocked to avoid controversy. But I did find a couple over at Zazzle.
Cafepress Raises Prices for (almost) the First Time in 9 Years – Minimal Impact to T-Shirt Prices
Cafepress announced that they are raising prices on a few of their products on July 28th due to the rising cost of goods and labor. Below are the new price changes and the percent that each item increased. Only two human t-shirts out of dozens in the Cafepress lineup were were impacted. The white and women’s t-shirt prices increased by 7% which is a minor bump considering these prices have remained the same for almost 9 years. The largest price jumps were for magnets and buttons which changed on average over 50%.
White T-Shirt – $14.99 (+7%)
Women’s T-Shirt – $14.99 (+7%)
Dog T-Shirt – $16.99 (+21%)
Rectangle Magnets:
• Single Rectangle Magnet – $3.49 (+40%)
• 10 pack – $19.99 (+81%)
• 100 pack – $139.99 (+64%)
2.25″ Magnet – $2.99 (+70%)
Buttons:
• Mini Button – $1.49 (+50%)
• 2.25″ Button – $2.99 (+99%)
• 3.5″ Button – $3.49 (+50%)
Black Cap – $14.99 (+7%)
Cap – $14.99 (+15%)
Stickers:
• Bumper Sticker – $3.49 (+16%)
• Oval Sticker – $2.99 (+20%)
• Rectangle Sticker – $2.99 (+20%)
Journal – $9.49 (+26%)
Single Greeting Card – $2.99 (+20%)
For more information check out the Cafepress announcements page.
The World’s Best T-Shirt Packaging – Ongoing Review
I thought it would be fun to do an ongoing t-shirt packaging review of the best t-shirt packages in the world. As I discover new packages or if t-shirt talk readers post comments of companies packaging I should check out I will edit the post to highlight/reorder the best t-shirt packaging. This post will cover just the “outside” packaging and hopefully later this week I will post one for “inside” presentation that would include any additional packaging of the actual shirt and other included goodies. For now I have not included those companies who use the standard white bags with a company sticker but will consider adding some at a later date. What would a “world’s best list” be without creating a numbered list. If you believe that some of these are out of order let me know why as comments and I will consider your feedback.
1. Design By Humans
Design by Humans definitely has a wow factor with full-bleed dropout/printing on a clear bag. On one side the bag is see through in parts allowing the customer (and others) to see the shirt design before the packaging is even opened. The other side of the bag uses a metallic shiny style (not sure what it is called). The bag has a very large design logo, the company name and web site address which is great for the branding. The see through bag really is fun unless you were buying someone a gift or bought a design that was sensitive/offensive/adult in nature.
2. Oddica
Oddica had the most artistic bag. It has a full-bleed print with the Oddica logo being very visible in white over a maroon header. The main part of the bag has one of the Oddica designs for sale called “Bluebird Migrane” which has the design title and artist name. The back of the bag has two edges in the maroon with the light blue in the middle along with an Oddica logo and another t-shirt design called “Sheltered” along with the artists name. The Oddica bag is the most artistic and intriguing with the full bleed multi color design.
3. Spreadshirt
The Spreadshirt shipping bag has very subtle unrecognizable pattern at first glance but if you look closely you will see a repeating pattern of mini t-shirts. It isn’t strong in branding but is unique and fun to find in your mailbox.
4. Shirt.woot
Shirt.Woot is the most fun bag with a bunch of little characters wearing t-shirts across one side of the bag. It also has the shirt.woot logo in white surrounded by a black background. This bag is sure to get the attention of the mailman or the person opening the bag. The other side of the bag is all white with no print.
5. Threadless
The Threadless bag is a simple blue bag with the Threadless logo and url addreses for threadless.com and threadlesskids.com. The bag also has a shopping cart character with a talk bubble with the text “You’re awesome and this pack is proof!” The back side of the bag is mostly blue with a white outline.
6. Cafepress
Cafepress uses a few simple types of packaging for t-shirts that are both paper and plastic. They have the cafepress logo with the Cafepress trademarked flying green star that takes up a lot of the packaging. The packaging is fairly conservative but does a good job of branding. [This is one image that isn't mine because I have not received a Cafepress t-shirt in their small packaging in quite some time so it is being borrowed from Kimiskustoms until I get my own image.]
7. Zazzle
The bag is all dark grey metallic and if you look close you can see a relatively small Zazzle logo with the phrase “infinite one of-a-kind-ness”. When the bag was in my mailbox it got my attention but the logo was actually less apparent in person than in the photo. While I really like the bag the logo just doesn’t pop off the bag.
8. YOUR BAG HERE – If your t-shirt company uses awesome bags or if you know of one who does please let us know as a comment to this post. Thanks!
Document Your Company History With T-Shirts – Mozilla History on 53 T-Shirts
Many companies release t-shirts for product releases, events, or memorable occasions and over the years the number of t-shirts really adds up. But what usually happens to company shirts is that they get worn to gym or to do yard work and get to rag status and soon become a distant memory. But John Slater, the Creative Director at Mozilla has compiled 53 Mozilla t-shirts including a few Netscape t-shirts for context and posted them on Flickr. According to John this will be a work in progress and hopes others will send him images of any of the missing t-shirts.
Check out John’s blog at Into the Fuzz or Flickr for more info.
Wooshka T-Shirt Order Review
Many of you now know Wooshka from their $1 t-shirt sale but for those of you who don’t they are a Threadless t-shirt design competition style clone in Australia. Users can submit a t-shirt design and the community can score your design and if your design is selected for print then you will receive $500 and 200 Street Crew credits that can be used to buy Wooshka t-shirts.
Honestly, I wasn’t overly excited by the current design inventory of nine shirts with half of them being for women but I really wanted to check out their printing and service. There are so many design competitions sites and soo many t-shirt designs out there it really is hard to have designs that truly shine and are rise above the rest. Every single t-shirt design competition site seems to have the same random artistic images. I guess I would just like to see more designs that really are different from one site to the next. But everyone has different tastes so you can go check the Wooshka designs yourself.
The Wooshka site itself is quite attractive with the dark background and the bright logo with color splatters. It is easy to navigate and the design detail pages make it easy to see the design detail and the shirt on various models or of course buy the shirt. I am all for doing promotions and the $1 deal was a very good deal to attract buyers what they really need to do is have promotions to attract designers. Designers are the backbone to this type of t-shirt competition web site (especially when getting started).
The t-shirts at Wooshka are normally about $20 which is about the norm for this type of shirt and what is amazing is that even though Wooshka is in Australia the shipping to the US was just $5. I received my first Woohska package a few days ago and it was a standard polybag with a Wooshka logo return address and a sticker on the white bag. Inside the shipping bag the t-shirt was wrapped in another branded plastic bag with the Wooshka logo and the phrase “This shirt has just 499 brothers & sisters worldwide”.
The shirt I chose was the “I (heart) Ketchup“. The shirt is a random doodle of characters and images and from what I can tell has no direct connection to a love for ketchup.
The shirt itself was REALLY soft and nice. I am not sure what the brand of the shirt because there is only a size tag and a Wooshka label printed on the inside of the neckline. On the left arm there is another dark tag on the outside of the shirt with a wooshka label. I am all for branding but I have to admit I was overwhelmed by the amount of branding starting with the packaging, to the inside bag, to the shirt, to the other products that were included. On a white shirt a dark shirt label is very obvious and to me it is distracting. Personally I don’t like walking around advertising people’s company names and I really could do without the label on the arm.
As for the design the printing was fine but I felt like the preview was not an accurate representation of what I received. The graphic on the site appears to be a one color drawing but in fact it was a three color drawing giving the effect of motion or blur. From a distance the shirt actually looks like it is printed blurry but in fact its the artwork. That is fine to do but I think it should show on the preview.
The package also included a few Wooshka stickers and a lanyard as seen below.
In summary, the shirt itself was quite nice, the printing met expectations, the price with shipping from Australia was reasonable, but I felt the experience was over-branded and that particular shirt could be better represented in the web preview. Wooshka is still new and their success will really depend on whether they can successfully build a dedicated community who is eager to design, rate and buy t-shirts that are unique. Visit Wooshka for for more information
Zazzle’s Value and Revenue Estimates for 2008
Last month the Silicon Valley Insider published the results of the “estimated” values of the digital startups based on information from readers, sources and an Advisory Board. The list is a work in progress and is said to adjust monthly as they gather more data. Zazzle is currently at number 24 at $250 million and Etsy is at $115 million.
The Insider value analysis is based on a 2006 report in Forbes that Zazzle was generating $20 million in revenue with a gross margin of 50%. the Insider estimates the revenue to hit $80 million in 2008 and with a 4x multiplier Zazzle would be valued at $250 million.
With that in mind I dug up some other interested funding/sales facts about the big Z.
1. Zazzle Funding: $46M ($16M 7/05 & $30M 10/07) [Tech Crunch 1, TechCrunch 2, Zazzle]
Yes, $46 million is a lot of money. I have often wondered what I could do with $46 million. So after 3 years how many sales do you think you can bring in for one month?
2. “In February, Zazzle sold 900,000 different items to customers up from 500,000 the previous February. All told, Zazzle says, it has sold 30 million products.” [USA Today]
Yea, 900,000 different items. (FYI: Where is the fact checker when you need one?). Now to break it down by product:
3. 40% of Zazzle revenue comes from apparel, 25% from postage, 35% from other products (mugs, posters, neckties, and business cards) [USA Today]
So with all those mind boggling figures get ready………………
4. Zazzle It is NOT profitable. (but it says business doubled in 2007) [USA Today]
How many shirts does Zazzle have to sell to be profitable! What are they spending all their money on?
Check out the Silicon Valley Insider top 25 or the Zazzle profile.
Do American Apparel T-Shirts Shrink? Results of a Spreadshirt Testlab Study
Spreadshirt was out to find out if it was the difference in fabric and cut that makes American Apparel t-shirts worth the premium price over other t-shirts. For this first Spreadshirt Testlab experiment Spreadshirt took twenty black American Apparel t-shirts and documented how they changed in the color, condition, overall length, the length of the sleeves, the checks and the waist.
The results of the study found that the elements reduced as follows:
Length: -1.02″ (3.5%)
Chest Width: -.75″ (3.7%)
Waist Width: -.87″ (-4.0%)
Sleeve Length: -.28 (-3.2%)
After twenty washes Spreadshirt also found that the color saturation gets lower and the fabric gets linty. Tobias of Spreadshirt stated that the AA shirts “couldn’t satisfy my expectations” but was pleased that the shirts overall shape stayed stable.
This was a great experiment and it would be interesting to see how the American Apparel compare to other brands.
For more info check out the Spreadshirt Blog.
Threadless – The Most Innovative Small Company in America (According to INC)
Inc Magazine did a story on Threadless suggesting that it is the most innovative small company in America. The article is quite interesting and has details on wow Threadless was started by the two college dropouts Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff in 2000 with just $1000. The company’s revenue grew by 500 percent a year and they had never done any advertising, hired professional designers, had no sales force or retail distribution making their margins above 30 percent. We all know the model of having community members telling Threadless what to print making it such a successful site.
The Threadless user base has grown to over 700,000 members and in 2006 sales reached $18 million and continued to grow 200 percent in 2007 for an estimated $30 million in T-shirts last year. Threadless currently has a 25,000-square-foot office is open to customers and run by 50 employees who are ALL younger than 33.
The article explained that Threadless was offered a deal to carry their shirts in both Urban Outfitters and Target but Threadless declined both offers because the companies were unwilling to have a way to for potential customers to learn about the designs and the artists that created them. Threadless did sell a minority stake of the company to Venture Partners for an undisclosed amount. The funding allowed Threadless to open a retail store (which is already profitable) and potentially open others including a children’s store as well as explore a European warehouse to speed up worldwide deliveries.
You can read the full article at Inc “The Customer is the Company”
