[Foundation-l] Alternatives to Cafepress

[Sage Ross]

Perhaps we could arrange a Wikimedia "Loves Threadless" competition to
generate some more T-shirt designs worth buying.  There seems to be an
extremely active community of artists who participate in these design
competitions, especially for organizations that have large fan-bases.
For example, the recent "Gmail Loves Threadless" competition generated
over 400 designs, many of them quite good:

http://www.threadless.com/submissions/designs,gmail/showme,intherunning,completed,printed

I'm not sure how the sponsors for these competitions are selected and
whether/how much the sponsors are paying for the privilege, but it
might be worth looking into.

-Sage (User:Ragesoss)


On 8/27/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
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