[Home]CafePress

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People coming here from Google searches for "cafepress UK alternative" and similar - there's 3-4 of you per week. I See A Need (tm).

See discussion below. Basically, there's photobox; also, we are informed that [www.spreadshirt.co.uk] now offers a similar service to Cafepress but with colour tees including black - anyone with experience of using either of these, please post!

I made one just for myself on spreadshirt. Looks fine, quality feels good, I've been washing it at 30 inside out as per instructions for ~6 months and it seems fine. Only thing to notice is that their sizes are very small. Lmm

(out of date) - we are told also to have a look at Makemymegastore.  Fantastic quality, huge gallery and great delivery.  They are efficient, organised and helpful people.  Based in New Malden and wholly British owned.
Snip comments to Revision 73 - makemymegastore did get back to me and were both nice and competent. I have failed to be the latter, since I intend to set up a shop there, but not done it (and it's been not being done for at least a year, now, I think). Sorry.. it has been recommended by a friend of mine, though, if that's any use :) - SunKitten

You might find [i-merchandiser] quite useful
I think I'm being really, really stupid here - all I get is the front page with the pretty scrolly text frames. I can't find any link to setting up a shop unless one has to do it via the report form - there's no information whatever! Can anyone else see what to do? - SunKitten
Presumably, they prefer personal contact with their shopkeepers ("All the better to sell to you with, my dear...."), so I guess email/phone the contact details listed on the "Contact Us" page. I must say, their use of the phrase "we pay you commission for each item sold" hardly leaves me feeling optimistic about their attitude to intellectual property. And as for their page on "Customer Relationship Management".... - tjm
I was hoping that wouldn't be the case... oh well - SunKitten



CafePress have recently started a furore by doing three things:

Anyway - [More information] - includes some suggested alternatives!

We read the above website, and are now rather concerned. We're not too worried over the silly prices and commission stuff, but we are not happy about the copyright issues. If that paragraph (see the above link) doesn't change before June 30th, we will terminate our store. So, if you're going to buy something from CafePress, do it now.
We are currently considering alternatives which we'll make available whether or not we stop the CafePress shop at the end of this month; they are unlikely, however, to match CafePress in either quality or choice of item - SunKitten

In the interests of fair reporting, oh ye of the royal we, this one would add that many WebComics are reporting that CafePress are attempting to reassure them that it was 'just' a lawyers snafu - they were attempting to protect themselves against the ridiculous possibility of being sued for distributing images of advertising the items they sold - whilst not technically owning the copyright to those images...  A fine distinction between 'the copyright for purposes of advertising the products the owner wishes us to sell' and 'the exclusive copyright'.  However, I don't believe them and think that they were trying to pull a fast one.  As for the price thing - though I understand that (like most people using them) you're not oncerned with profit - but I think you will want to at least reassure yourself that the $25 a month fee doesn't apply to you.  --Vitenka
It's MoonShadow and I who are the 'we' :p As to the 25 dollar fee, that does apply but all that happens is that our miniscule profits get eaten. It's unfortunate, but I was not expecting to make much money - SunKitten

Check out section 6 of http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/new_memberagreement.aspx - they've revised the nasty copyright clauses, with just a few hours to go. The new ones seem quite reasonable. - MoonShadow




CafePress have a very simple business model.  They make things to order (things like t-shirts and mugs).  The innovative part of this is that they do it over the web.  Unfortunately they are in the USA? which means the postage tends to be high to the UK?.

Surprisingly, their mugs are not cheap and nasty and the printing is bright, clear, and doesn't damage easily (although a washing machine will fade the image).  Dish-washers are known to be even more violent...

A website can have a CafePress "store", where surfers can buy the above-mentioned items with appropriate pictures printed on them. Websites which have the above include ToothyCat.net [here], as well as LadyStar, Dilbert.com, AngelMoxie, SailorNothing, etc, etc, etc.  If a UK dweller makes orders from more than one such store at the same time, then since they're all coming via CafePress, you only pay shipping once.  Which is still expensive, but not quite so expensive as it would be otherwise.




Alternatives



http://www.atyourtown.co.uk/ have gone into operation on the 27th, apparently. No idea of quality or prices - their website is distinctly uninformative. Payment is through PayPal. If anyone knows anything about it, do say..
Was the "Terms and Conditions" page there when you looked? Basically looks like they make money by changing the contractual terms on the sellers. Of course, I could be wrong.




Hawk - Couldn't you get anywhere nearer Cambridge to make things like this?  $7 shipping on a $16 bear seems excessive to me :-)

MoonShadow - CafePress are the only people I know of that do this kind of service :( Any recommendations for UK-based equivalents are welcome ^^;

MoonShadow: an update on the above. I am currently checking out a UK alternative - photobox.co.uk charge in pounds what CafePress charge in dollars, but shipping is more bearable (£1.50 instead of $7). They don't offer a fully online store service the way CafePress does, but they do offer co-branded sites. Their [selection of items] isn't as good (they certainly don't have things like the ToothyBear). A CafePress T-shirt ends up costing around £15.50 including postage. A photobox.co.uk T-shirt would cost around £14.50-£15 and would get to you quicker (although, unlike CafePress, I don't have experience of their quality). I'm now waiting for them to get back to me with more info.


MoonShadow: Just got a response pointing me to http://www.photobox.co.uk/static.html?name=printbuttoninfo. It's basically the same service as CafePress, except they charge a £250 setup fee. Bleh. It doesn't seem to make that much difference to what people would end up paying anyway - it's just that with CafePress, more of it is going into postage and less into printing.

MoonShadow: Just received an email from PhotoBox?:
.
.
We have today released a long awaited upgrade to this service. Galleries can
be set up in minutes and give you control over branding, products and retail
prices. The gallery is presented in a great new design, suitable for novice
visitors. The best news of all is that there are NO SET UP CHARGES for this
service.

You can view some sample pro galleries on the following page:

http://www.photobox.co.uk/gallery/

We are now in a trial phase, which gives us a chance to get valuable
feedback from our customers. If you would like to open your own pro gallery,
all you need to do is to log in to your PhotoBox account and click the
"share this album" link for one of your albums. Then choose the gallery
option. You will be asked to read and accept a gallery terms page and then
the gallery controls will appear.
.
.





With regards to ToothyWiki's store: there was a suggestion at MathWorks that this image (appropriately resized) should be made available on a T-shirt, for CompScis.
Image: 5

Um. If you insist. I think it looks a bit daft, actually. Bear in mind, CafePress only do white T-shirts.
You could have a front/back thingy, rather than both images being on the same side, if you want - SunKitten
Hmm, I think just the first frame of the two (on the back) with a toothycat logo or something on front. -- Senji

Hawk and I were just discussing this again, and suspect there may be sufficient interest in a Compile, Link, EXE T-shirt to make a Talking Tees run plausible (MethSoc use a different company 'Tees Total' who worked out cheaper, but are on the other end of snail mail).  Might it be worth plebisciting for approximate numbers to see if this suspicion was reasonable?
I think you're nuts. I'm definitely redoing this if it's going on a T-shirt. I can ask around next strip update.. - SunKitten
Just confirming interest from Hawk.  I think a couple of other people at Churchill would be interested too.
ChrisHowlett is vaguely interested - probably either with images front and back, or refactored to have Compile, Link, Exe all in one frame.
AlexChurchill definitely wants one, as long as it has *something* front and back.  And like I said, the original suggestion was from the techies at the MathWorks, so there's likely another one there, possibly more...
Yeah, go on then.  --Vitenka
Crazyscot is quite interested; I like the sound of the single-frame refactoring, though I'd want to see the image before committing.

Single frame image now up [here]. Is that acceptable? - SunKitten
Well, it still needs the words. Presumably in white, since I'm guessing that's an image intended for a black T-shirt.  But once they're on, that should be fine.  Anyone else have any comments?  --AlexChurchill
I'm still thinking over the incantation. The words will be in speech bubbles, except possibly for 'EXE!' - SunKitten
Yeah, I'd say I'd feel silly wearing it, but since I've already worn a logo badge (can we get higher res versions of the logo for things like that?) I don't have a leg to stand on.  --Vitenka
OK, ginormous logo [here] - SunKitten
I'm not sure about speech bubbles, but may be persuaded when I see the finished product. -- Hawk
Would you prefer no speech at all, or speech without bubbles? - SunKitten
Having seen the colour image, I might well be interested; speech without bubbles (or EXE!) I think... -- Emperor
I think the speech without bubbles looks quite good.  Certainly for the Compile, Link and EXE.  -- Hawk
Was it intended as a 'frame and inverse' thing, as per the original drawing, or not? Either way, I like... (not sure how good Talking Tees are about full colour printing, though...) -- TI
They do do full-colour printing (in fact I suspect they'd want to do full colour for the original too, because GreyScale?s can't be [screen printed]. -- Senji
They'll be expensive. I'm considering options :) CafePress don't do black T-shirts, but there may be other ways - SunKitten
I seem to recall that Talking Tees is very expensive if you want to be able to print white (because of something or other...).  Poohsoc decided to use them anyway, and poohsoc Tshirts are going for around £10 each, and that's w/o p&p (because we are going to collect them in person...)--Naath

We went to Cardiff this weekend, and visited Matalan. Watch this space :) - SunKitten

Also see BadgeMachine




[99 dogs] [Zazzle]
A couple more alternatives there - I don't know anything about them, ewxcept that they both price in dollars.  --Vitenka


[SimplyIcons] - Another UK based cafepress-alike


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