Selling T-Shirts Online

I began my project of selling t-shirts online using CafePress.

This was because they seem to be very big in the US and that is going to be a primary market.

Here is a brief introduction to the CafePress service with my opinions and the thinking behind them.

Location

CafePress operates from the USA and makes payments for sales in dollar cheques only. No Paypal, no other currencies. They take payment for orders by Credit Card only.

They do ship goods to many different countries outside the US but it can take a couple of weeks to deliver which could be a problem for selling directly to international customers.

CafePress seem to be very well-known in the US, maybe the market leader. They have recently started a UK website but the goods are still produced in the USA and shipped over to Europe with all the delay that entails.

Products and Designs

CafePress offers a very wide range (over a hundred) of different items that designs can be printed on. These include mugs, clocks, mouse pads and many other homemaking and office products as well as many types of clothing.

If they want, designers can simply upload their designs, photos and images for others to pay to use. This means they can concentrate on designing without having to open their own shops if that’s a hassle. Naturally that also means that non-designers who want to open on-line shops have a wide range of great designs to choose from. Designers get paid a commission if their designs are used.

Of course, the ideas of having “shops” and a ”design marketplace” are not unique to CafePress.

On-line Shops

CafePress offers free shops which are quite small and simple with limited options and paid-for Premium shops which can contain many more products and designs and can be completely customised.

Premium shops can be paid for monthly and do not cost very much.

The best way to use free shops seems to be to have one for each separate graphic design and then select a range of products to be sold in that shop using that design. This is because you can only have one of each product in a free shop. So, for example, if you put a design on a t-shirt you cannot have a different design on that same style of t-shirt in that same shop.

Each free shop has a unique URL (web address) so you could have either a CafePress Premium shop or your own website showing the designs and link from that site to the separate shops.

CafePress has links with Squidoo to promote shops and it is also possible to sell on ebay then have CafePress send the product directly to the buyer – you have to order it yourself and have it sent as a gift so that the ebayer does nor get an invoice included showing them what you paid compared to what they paid you!

Service

CafePress prices are low and delivery times to US customers seem quick. If you are not in the US, the shipping delay could be a problem if you wanted them to deliver directly to international customers. CafePress offer a bulk-order discount so could be a good source for buying in bulk to resell yourself, perhaps using eBay or supplying local shops or market stalls, if you wanted to go down that road.

Personally I definitely do not want to operate a mail-order business. I want to handle the orders but use a full Provider service to produce and ship the goods, not be tied to physically packaging and mailing parcels.

It may be less profit but you are not tied to a physical location nor do you need storage space and capital or employees. In fact you can run the business anywhere there is an internet connection. A lot of the nitty-gritty work will be done for you and the work-team will also be scaled up automatically as the business grows without you needing to find more staff, premises or capital. These are some of the ways that this is similar to the eBooks business model.

So does CafePress offer what I’m looking for?

First thing to say is that CafePress offers a great service. The website is vibrant, the designs are vivid and topical, they have a great community and a huge choice of products. A great site for both graphic designers and buyers and also anyone who wants to get started selling stuff quickly and easily and simply.

I love it but is it what I am looking for to develop my business ideas in the longer term? I’m not sure it is and here’s why.

The CafePress ethos seems to be to make it as easy as possible for graphic designers to sell their designs and their mission seems to become THE first-choice site for people who want a themed or topical t-shirt etc.They aim to provide a complete service within the confines of the  CafePress system.

That’s not to say that they do not encourage people to open shops or that CafePress shops are not successful. And the tie-in with Squidoo makes it a lot easier for people to promote their products outside of CafePress. It’s just that their facilities for developing shops outside of CafePress or linking to eBay seem limited compared to some of their competitors. It’s not really what they are all about.

Another way of looking at it is that they do provide a simple and completely self-contained system. CafePress is a complete free-standing design-and-sell universe and that’s great if that is what you are looking for – go for it. As I wrote above, their emphasis is on making it easy for designers to get on with what they do best and get those ideas out to people with the minimum complications.

So – what next?

Well, I’m certainly going to continue to open free cafePress shops and put designs into the CafePress pot. CafePress is big, it’s a USA market leader and it’s free so I’d be a fool not to. I’m going to pay attention to tagging, to descriptions and to any other simple SEO techniques.

But I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to develop a CafePress presence beyond that. Although I could develop a Premium shop or a website linking to my free shops, I’ll not be doing that just yet. Maybe later on but not yet.

Why? Because next up is to try out  Spreadshirt. From what I’ve read so far on their site and forums, Spreadshirt offers much more scope for what I want to do.

With CafePress, you create a CafePress site. With Spreadshirt you develop your own ideas while Spreadshirt does the heavy lifting.

Also, Spreadshirt has a delivery operation in Europe as well as in the States and that is important to me too. It means I can easily sell in both continents without the long delivery delays to europe from the US.

And there are a lot of other factors that appeal to me too: like Paypal. Ethical policies. Links to eBay. Stuff like that.

Maybe I’m mistaken. I’ll find out soon. More later.