As is common practice in many situations and rightfully so often times, a company has changed it’s business model to meet the changing demands.   The economy sucks right now but not everywhere apparently.  Until these recent changes, sales were improving for many small businesses including mine.  Work hard and succeed in growing steps does happen. The problem I have is more of an ethical one….call it my own personal ethics if you like (and you may find a zillion things to argue here…in that case, move along..there’s nothing to see here)  Did I mention the whole debacle is financially devastating to my family now and in the foreseeable future as it was my most established site?   I can’t blame the business model really.  It’s their business and theirs to do with as they wish.  Certainly go ahead buy your goodies from Cafepress Main but if one of my Cafepress shops (Scott Designs) or the next small business at the next Cafepress offshoot web address has the better price, go there and use the same safe method of buying the exact same product from the same exact company but at a fair deal to the workers.  Find a Cafepress coupon online or in my shops, go to cafepress.com and see if there are sales running….grab the code and run to the cheapest version of the same shirt  you find. (which I pray daily is mine but can’t promise as I can’t watch the continuing docudrama that is the Cafepress Marketplace pricing formula)

     Now here’s the driveling lesson:  www.cafepress.com is the Big Daddy company. You go to that address and you search and find just the right thing.  See the price and etch it into your head.  DO NOT PUT IT IN YOUR SHOPPING CART WHILE IN THE MARKETPLACE or else Cafepress calls it their own sale.  Bookmark that product or note the address.  Then get out of there and Google the title or something directly attached to it.  You might see www.cafepress.com/scott64 or Scott Designs somewhere buried under Cafepress big paying Google advertiser slapped right under the search bar.  Same system, same cart,  same product and  still ultimately Cafepress BUT this is a more individualized environment and you’re now buying from the designer who will make fair profit for hard work not PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR while being tossed some shoddy treatment in the deal.  Cafepress is doing the same thing they have always done either way….printing up a very nice t-shirt and handling the payment transaction and shipping for me.   In the Marketplace main site,  they are taking most of the profit and governing the price day to day  AND are effectively cutting off their hard working designers at the knees by not showing you how to look at my things in the environment I’m hoping you like.  Links to shops have been erased so you are trapped within their marketplace giving only themselves (Cafepress) a higher profit margin if you buy there.  You won’t find the matching product on their main site quite possibly and the related items shown on the page often have nothing to do with designer’s intent though was the bone tossed  that this is actually the same designer and they  at least have a name.  I am not Cafepress.  I utilize Cafepress to fulfill orders for printed products designed only by me that people like no matter where it was found.  If the price is cheaper here at Scott Designs at Cafepress,  do me a favor and BUY HERE  and  save money on the exact same thing.  You are then, in reality, supporting the actual people working hard to give you what you want not just the bland blank product.  Cafepress is not doing the Big Corporate Control of individual shops…yet.

    I know I don’t explain it well (and you have probably wandered off in boredom but it’s my rant and my website )  but currently at www.cafepress.com which is considered their “marketplace”,  designer makes %10 of sale price,  Cafepress makes 90% if you buy directly from that web location.  See I “get this” as a business owner but I don’t like it any way, shape or form.  Within our smaller personal, yet still very much Cafepress, individually self advertised and designer rented shops, Cafepress gets original base price with profit margin for production already worked in and designer sets markup based on their time,  work involved, and fair market value. (Dear Lord, that’s a run on sentence but too dang worn out to rework tonite..)   Designer is sometimes a SAHM (stay at home mom) or disabled or simply a designer/artist/doodler/cartoonist who wants to work hard designing as profession but does not have the time, space or knowledge to physically print own product.  And some, like me, work hard by day then put in another full time shift here in front of the keyboard because I liked this and I needed to provide for my family.  Sleep?  Not often.  I digress…….Theoretically, in this individual shop scenario, designer is paid fairly while NOT impacting YOUR price negatively but also as a huge bonus, not giving Cafepress EXTRA profit above and beyond previously mentioned base price as fulfillment provider. 

     Big online sellers such as Amazon have a fluid pricing practice.  You’ll see the prices wave up and down and you decide when you hit the buy button.  There is no deadline. Heaven knows I have 80 items in my cart at any given moment.  They stay there as a reference point and if the price hits the mark I want, I buy.  If not, they languish in the maybe someday or maybe not part of my cart.  Odd, but it works for me.  I am a huge Amazon shopper.  No one sends me emails with deadlines of when they’re emptying the cart and pushing me to buy before I’m ready.   Cafepress will.

Cafepress apparently is aiming to emulate or sell out to Amazon and on the surface that’s a good thing…right?

   The problem begins…major pricing changes at Cafepress very much surprised many shop owners/ designers not long ago. Lives turned upside down with a very short deadline in the grand scheme of things.   Profit to the people who make Cafepress both unique and a huge success was cut for some to the tune of 90%…Yes, I’m referring to the designers of that t-shirt with just the right statement, stick figure that amuses or that beautiful print that would look great in your office or at least make you smile daily.  I am somewhere down the middle with my odd little doodles but heaven knows I worked to make my customers happy and giggling.   Just an opinion but without me and others like me, Cafepress might be able to print a t-shirt since they have the industrial toys to do so but it would theoretically be a t-shirt with a random blob of ink without someone coming up with and creating design.  Now even if some commissions set by  designers  seemed  over the top, most were not.  Cafepress has simply made it now that Big Company makes far more profit per item while downgrading artists and doodlers to mere “content providers” in the world (main site) most people will see first due to before mentioned advertising $$$$$.  Mind you, the magic Cafepress fairy did not make my often various sized like designs, upload them,  size them to fit individual products (yea ok, mostly), deal with often times ludicrous backend system, design and shopkeeping platforms,  advertise in a huge way across the web to every niche known to man and make them accessible and appealing to the public (thereby improving sales for BOTH Big Company and smaller individual people forging a living).

So, under the spin of  Cafepress, they forged a new path to provide the customers better continuity and pricing in shopping.  Is it?  Not so sure about that.  If you want to pay a different amount depending on where your search engine takes you, then the process worked.  Much remains to be seen as the constant release-before-its-ready poking and testing continues.   The issues that needed immediate tending such as cleaning up the front porch remain.   I HEART ALOYSIUS and I HEART BEELZEBUB in the flower catagory run rampant.  Looking for a dog shirt…yer gonna wade through a lot of cat, penguin, i-heart-everystinkingnameineverystinkingbabybook shirts first.   Football..yea, you’ll find every sport with a little football smushed in there. 

The amount Cafepress makes per product sold made a HUGE jump with this “new and improved” system.  Is it better for the customers?   Did it improve pricing in their part of the mall?  Sometimes….and sometimes a big fat NOT.  Going in through the front door of www.cafepress.com, you may at least see more uniform numbers and they might look at a glance lower but you might pay a far heftier amount on some products along the way without realizing.  Individual designers who run their shops under the umbrella of Cafepress need to stay inches from the monitor if they are to play follow the dole.  Let it be said, one of the biggest things is that often the individual shops will offer a better price for the same product but the shopper can’t get here from there.  They’ve been cut off from the very same company they worked their tails off to help grow to what it is.   Hiring SEO gurus who study every move people make and watching every search within their online marketplace to make sure you’re always  redirected to their end, not shops.  Yes, it’s their business and they can and do as they please.  Nothing illegal in that.  It’s the process of how it was done and the seemingly lack of that same “community” feel that made them so appealing in the first place that annoys me the most.  Advertising to the world about the “community” when loads of people are spitting nails is simply a slap in the face of hardworking individuals and small businesses hurt by this.

Oh, for Pete’s sake….I’m angry again.  I’m angry for every person who worked hard to make Cafepress what it is today.  I’m angry for everyone who had to readjust every aspect of their life because a big corporation got greedy again and kicked the ethics and humanity to the curb.  I’m angry for the disabled woman who finally found a job she could perform to support her family.  Listen….Cafepress has great stuff and I have to truly believe underneath they are still the leader or else the door would shutter at that location.  I have some pretty cool things produced by Cafepress.  I’ll keep my shop open because I want to still offer those keepsake boxes or the Sigg bottles.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to make 40 cents on something I worked hard on while Cafepress just kicked me in the shins on their playground and took more lunch money from me on each sale.  Trust me, I tinkered with the idea of staying in their marketplace and taking what little was left after the changes because yes my family needs this income.   But everytime I reviewed my reports, I felt a little piece of me wither.  I still can’t figure out if they really are that cruel, if they really are so far removed from real life out here that they no longer see who and what helped them grow or if they were simply in danger of financial ruin without change. 

In my shop, I have more control over price.  I have pride though never enough time to fully get it working and looking just right. I worked many, many hours to make and build the shops.  Too, too many hours to simply slam the door and lose all income.  Some tiny part of me still feels like my friend will apologize and we’ll make up. Some slightly bigger part of me hopes they sell it out to a kinder and more transparent and reasonable clan.  Cafepress, you print em’, fine.  Designer makes fair profit selling within shop, fine,  I’ll sell only in my shops.  You, as big guns, are too ignorant to realize what makes people tick, including your customers,  beyond your inner circle…fine,  but I won’t give you the ammo to continue to shoot body parts off of me.  Nor will I take the gun and shoot myself in the foot.  But I will make my tiny little stand against the part that hurt so many people.

Oh and Cafepress, yes there are  fulfillment providers who are growing stronger each day. (and they do very nice high quality work and have cool things too where I can put my little doodles that obviously people like) So there! said the 45 year old mother and small business owner.

Scranton, home to one of the biggest St. Patrick’s celebrations in the country, just happens to be home to Scott Designs.  Some highlights from the parade of 2008 to get you geared up for this years!

This year’s Scranton St. Patrick’s Parade is on Saturday, March 14, 2009. If you like to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, or simply like to celebrate, then why not do it early?  Since 1962 the St. Patrick’s Parade Association of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania conducts the nationally acclaimed parade – The weekend before the blessed feast day.

And to get you ready for parade day, some great Irish t-shirts and more from Scott Designs!