I am going to elaborate on CaféPress here. It is a website that is very clever in concept. You upload your design to them, and choose what shirt it would be best on. Then, when someone orders that shirt, they make it for them and charge them. The price is whatever you want it to be, as long as it's at or above CP's base price, which is usually somewhere like $12 to $14. You mark it up however much you want.
-This is very great. But there are a few problems. The first one is that they don't offer any dark colors, as they can't figure out how to put light-colored ink on a dark-colored shirt. They only offer four colors of shirt: white, light green, gray, and pink. I'd say that severely limits creativity.
-The next problem is that they put limits on you. They offer about fifteen kinds of shirts, including the pink, gray, and green ones. But you can only sell each kind of shirt with one design on it. So if you put, say, "Design A" on a green shirt, and you have also "Design B" that you want to put on a green shirt, you can't do it UNLESS! you upgrade to a "Premium Shop" for $5 a year. That's why I haven't yet put out any more than two designs. I've only found two designs that work with the kind of shirts they're offering.
-And to make things worse, I've hit on a problem that not many other people have. One of my images (One that says "Caution: Do Not Read This Shirt" and has a red triangle with a black exclamation point in it), which I uploaded to the site but had kept in my "Image Basket" until I could find a good shirt for it, seems to violate a copyright. That's what was in the first letter they sent me. It was a very cheerful letter that was careful not to be accusative, so that's all good. But it still supposedly violated someone's copyright. I asked them whose. They promptly sent me another letter telling me that it was the copyright of one Jim Vitello.
-I researched Jim Vitello. He owns an online shop. The shop sells Scratch-'n'Sniff underwear. He markets it under the brand Caution, with an exclamation point in a triangle, a lot like mine. His website doesn't actually appear to sell anything, though. What it looks like has happened is that he registered the word "Caution" for a Registered Trademark with the U.S. Patent office for the sole purpose of cruising CaféPress and pointing out to other people trying to use the word "Caution" that he owns the trademark. Because when I researched him, I found an entire message board consisting of people who had been gotten by the Caution Guy. Most of them were trying to sell stuff on CaféPress that, blindingly obviously, had nothing whatsoever to do with his Scratch-'n'-Sniff underwear (if he even makes it at all). Stuff like my T-shirt. Every time he finds something he writes to CP--I can see him staring at his keyboard in the dark, doing a little hunt and peck with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth--and tells them BOOP, BOOP he's found someone trying to infringe on his trademark. Then, because CP is afraid of him suing them, they quickly email a paranoid letter to the offending innocent. I wrote CP a letter back once I found out what this guy was about. I said, yes, my shirt was pretty similar to his logo and that I would change it, maybe taking out the exclamation point, but that the real issue was that this guy was a lunatic, and that they needed to get a backbone and do something about him. I don't know if they will, but they obviously should.
-Anyhow, I'm going to write a description for that "Think Ahead" shirt, because I haven't yet, and then maybe put some of my other designs onto the different variations of white shirt they offer (fitted, organic, economy...). But I don't think I'll stick around with CaféPress much longer. They seem to be dweebs. Get the shirts while you can!
4 comments.
Ohhhhno, your blog's been spammed. Virgi got spammed six times today. I got lucky so far.
-Mom
I have deleted the spam comment. Isn't that swell?
Caution Guy is trying to stop my pagan bumper sticker, the only thing that was selling in my shop besides the "Moon Daughter" t-shirt. I don't want to cave. Something needs to be worked out, but the man won't return my emails.
I just might try that phone number.
Caution guys is hindering my "caution non-sterile" shirt.
We should really get together, push him back and counter sue him.
:big smile:
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