As we started using Cafepress.com to sell Linux Mint merchandising I bought a few items to see about their quality:
- a large mug
- a khaki cap
- a golf shirt
- a fitted t-shirt
- a ringer T
- a dark t-shirt
- a mousepad
I’ll go straight to the point: The logo doesn’t render well on textiles and I found the t-shirts themselves to be of poor quality. The Ringer-T (which comes with the penguin in the front) is the only piece of clothing which looks nice, I would recommend only that one.
So the Ringer-T looks good.
The logo on the khaki cap doesn’t render well either but it gives the cap a vintage look. Some people might like it.
The t-shirts and the golf shirt are of bad quality and the logo doesn’t look good on them. Avoid these items.
Now, to end up on a positive piece of news: the mug and the mousepad look fantastic.
The logo is bright and shiny on them and both the mug and the mousepad are of good quality.
So in brief: Get the mug and the mousepad, they’re definitely worth it. Eventually get the Ringer-T and the cap. Avoid everything else.
Link to the cafepress linux mint shop: http://www.cafepress.com/linuxmint
Clem.
Hi,
I was hoping this was because they ran out of ink.. and even then I found it weird that cafepress would ship them to me without re-printing them.
Thanks for the feedback. I will remove all mentioned t-shirts from the shop right now.
Clem
OK. There are now only 5 items in the shop. The Ringer T, the mug and the mousepad are of good quality. I don’t know about the badges, feedback as always is welcome.
Clem
Hola Agust,
I personally won’t ever use Cafepress to make t-shirts anymore. Even if another darker logo could actually print well, what I received was far from what was on the screen, and anybody with a bit of common sense from Cafepress should have contacted me about it instead of sending these the way they were.
Not to mention the fact that these t-shirts basically cost $20… if we ever make t-shirts again it won’t be with them.
I’m sorry you find out the same way I did. I’d be glad to send you back the $5 per item that went to us.
Clem
Recently Cafe Press began competing with its artists.
CP rents shops to its artists. The artist creates a website page and manually loads the desired blank products. The artist imports his image onto each product, arranges the products on the page, describes the products, titles the products and tags the images.
Initially, the artist set a markup and received the markup when a product sold.
However, recently Cafe Press began competing with its artists, using the artists’ own images. Cafe Press created a marketplace where a customer can search a keyword. That search brings up artist products. When the customer buys from the marketplace Cafe Press pays the artist 10% of the price Cafe Press set. Both the customer and the artist lose money. If the artist’s shop sells a t-shirt for $21, the artist makes $3.01. If the marketplace sells the same shirt for $25, the artist gets $2.50. The customer pays $4 more, and the artist gets $0.51 less. CafePress justifies this bait and switch by telling artists they can opt out if they don’t like the new terms; however, many have spent as much as 7 or 8 years creating as much as 88000 images.
Cafe Press tells artists to ‘promote your own shop,’ but Cafe Press buys Google adwords using the very image tags the artist provided.
Would you franchise an AMOCO station if AMOCO built a company store across the street from you?