Topsite Paper
Cafepress began as a long shot. Founders Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain started 10 companies in 1999, and only this one stuck. The idea behind Cafepress was to create an ecommerce site where users could open stores to sell customized goods. What made their platform innovative was that they would be the ones to create an inventory and supply the materials and equipment needed to create the custom goods. This meant that individuals could start a shop with almost no overhead. Cafepress would manufacture these goods on demand, and charge a base price for each item. Store owners set their own price, and kept any markup. Cafepress also handled the shipping, payments, returns, and customer service. To cover these costs, Shop Owners could choose to pay a monthly, 3 month, 6 month, annual fee or pay a percentage of their monthly royalties back. Currently, these prices break down to $6.95 per month, $18.45 for 3 months, $34.95 for 6 months, $59.95 for 1 year or 10% of monthly sales capped at $10. As a Cafepress shop owner, you are assigned a shop page to be customized. The most common way of doing so is to customize the shop page banner, but more savvy users do have the option to use HTML in order to create brand consistency with other pages.
Fast forward to 2023, and Cafepress is still going strong. The platform has expanded to allow customers to create custom goods for direct purchase from Cafepress, but the original Cafepress shops side still exists. When ordering custom goods, the site has an online designer to aid in creating personalized items. For intricate designs, users will have to use their own graphic design software and create an image to upload. For basic needs, the online designer will allow you to select colorways, add images, add text, and choose design placement. This “Create your own” side of the site contains seemingly endless options, from clothing to auto accessories and home decor to stationary. These items are available with no minimum quantity on orders, and are backed by a 30 day satisfaction guarantee.
The site also includes a large marketplace of finished products. These are the items being listed by individual shop owners, but produced and shipped by Cafepress. These items are broken down into clothing, drinkware, stationary, décor, and holiday/novelty gifts, with numerous subfilters within each category. Although these items have already been designed and listed by other users, many are designed so that they can be further personalized by the purchaser. Because Cafepress is a print on demand business, there is a 2-3 day turnaround time for each item. This includes “Create your own” items and finished products. Cafepress also has a membership offering. It is free to create this account, only requiring an email address and password. This account allows you to save payment information, log past purchases, save custom products and favorites, and start an online store.
The site bills itself as the world's best online gift shop, with over 1 billion different offerings. There are over 2 million designers sourcing the stores marketplace. It is certainly a place where self expression and personal identity are the highest currency.