[Foundation-l] Alternatives to Cafepress

[George Herbert]

On 8/26/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/08/07, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
> > I've been wearing my Wikipedia golf shirt, purchased I believe at Cafe
> > Press, for three years. It is as white as ever and has not suffered in
> > quality.
>
> The main problem with the CafePress process (and that used by most
> one-off printers) is that it's basically laser-printing to a shirt,
> i.e. toner particles melted into the fibres. This can work very well
> indeed, but is not going to be as good as silk-screen printing, which
> becomes cost-effective at a few tens of shirts or so.

For most of the fabrics, it's actually inkjet to a transfer "paper",
which is then ironed on to the clothing item.  Attempting to
direct-print to fabric is problematic at this time.

My wife has had stuff on CafePress for many years and has been active
talking with them about technology on and off.  She also does her own
stuff, for items where CafePress doesn't produce that type of item,
using a decent home inkjet printer and commercial iron-on transfer
material.

> Of course, the other thing you're buying from CafePress is having
> someone do all the ordering, packing and posting backend - not just
> making sure you don't have a stock of maybe-saleable shirts.

Right.  This is the big reason to use Cafe Press or its ilk; they
don't just produce the items, they have the "Store", and you don't
have to be in the "Store" business.  Just send them the design, and
collect whatever royalties the sales earn.

There are plenty of screen print T-shirt companies, some of which can
do all sorts of other stuff, and plenty of other companies that can do
logos/artwork to mugs and so forth.  But very few of them will do the
online store thing.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com