CafePress.com
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CafePress.com is an online retailer that produces and dispatches a large variety of user-customized products on demand. Opening and operating a basic CafePress shop is free. A basic shop can be upgraded to a premium shop for a small monthly rate, allowing an unlimited number of products per type and additional maintenance and customization features.
CafePress was founded as a privately owned company in 1999 by Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain. As of February 2006, the site hosts over 2.6 million online shops with over 35 million products. CafePress.com is headquartered in Foster City, California, and its production facility is located in Louisville, Kentucky. Major accounts include Star Trek, Dilbert, Phil Collins, Peanuts, and Wikimedia. Shops are also frequently created for pop-culture phenomena such as JibJab.com and "All your base are belong to us". Besides the esoteric, CafePress.com distributes a wide range of items: apparel, teddy bears, ornaments, clocks, mugs, stickers, buttons, magnets, greeting cards, prints, mouse pads, coasters, pillows, and more. Shop owners have the ability to customize their own merchandise and select items that best reflect a particular consumer group. CafePress.com also offers print on demand and CD production on demand services.
After creating a shop, the owner can proceed to select products and upload files, such as images to print on t-shirts or bags. They can also determine a price markup for each item sold in the store. CafePress.com provides the online storefront and website hosting, order management, fulfillment, payment processing, and customer service. In other words, the shop is effectively managed by CafePress.com, and the shop owner only has to take care of customizing the products they want to sell. The base price for every item is determined by CafePress.com, providing its chief revenue stream. Shop owners can buy items at the base price, but they also receive commission payments within regular intervals.
The most popular CafePress item is the white t-shirt; according to a company fact sheet, almost half a million white shirts were sold in the first five years of the company's existence.
In July 2005, CafePress announced a partnership with Stamps.com to allow shopkeepers to sell "custom postage", similar to the already existing PhotoStamps service.
In November 2005, CafePress announced print-on-demand for dark apparel, starting with a Black T-Shirt.
[edit] Management
- Fred Durham, Co-Founder, CEO
- Maheesh Jain, Co-Founder, VP of Business Development
- Mehdi Maghsoodnia, VP of Product Development
- Jill Kulick, VP of Human Resources
- Abdul Popal, VP of Business Affairs
- Bob Marino, VP of Operations
