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See that “Word Shoppe” banner to the left? If you also follow me on facebook and twitter you’ve probably seen my www.onecitizenswords.com references to afore mentioned store. The Word Shoppe is my Café Press store, where I design and sell my unique, word-related wares. I decided to do business with Café Press.com several years ago based on their reputation of honoring creativity and innovation in entrepreneurs (“shopkeepers”) while giving them the power to design their own shops and set their own prices for items sold.
Well, the times they are a changing and apparently the concepts of corporate greed set paradoxically against equal distribution of wealth for all, have taken hold of our friends at Café Press in northern California. Earlier today, the folks at CP announced to their 6 million plus shopkeepers that, starting June 1st, marketplace commissions would be set at 10% - across the board, regardless of individual shop markups. For example… a t shirt that was formerly $16 base which the shopkeeper marked up to $20 will soon net that shopkeeper only $1.60 vs. $4.00. Keep in mind that it is CP who has always set the base prices, negotiating with vendors and such – thus the previous leeway in markups. Their reasoning? Apparently customers got too “confused” by varied pricing on the same items. I loved the blog comment on what is now a VERY active café press community forum page, saying, “Yes... I agree... each time I go to Amazon I get really confused. They want $12.99 for one book... while another book might be $4.99. The other day I saw a 50" HD TV for $999.00... and today I saw a 50" HD TV for $1,299.00. I was really confused.” Well said FRedStates.com! Yes Café Press, free market capitalism can be quite confusing can’t it?
The other new policy change is in regards to search engine prioritization. CP will apparently be “prioritizing” the unique, innovative designs over ones that don’t meet that extremely subjective sounding description. For me, the wordsmith with limited graphic design capabilities, it sounds like “pretty pictures pop up first, sorry word-based designs.”
Another savvy shopkeeper theorized that this may be CP’s not so clever nor subtle method of handling shopkeeper saturation in the marketplace. Here was my response:
“Interesting points. The idea of creative, entrepreneurial people considered marketplace annoyances is definitely of concern to me. These are the people that drive the marketplace by promoting original ideas versus mass produced rewrites. I can only hope that there are still companies out there like the old Cafe Press, before they changed their identity and apparently their overall intention to give creative people a way to be heard. Creativity, free speech, and innovation cannot be allowed to die.”
Imagine if you have a store in a mall with two doors into your store... one from the mall and a private one for the store that only your customers know about. The stuff in your store costs one price for people that come in the private door and a different price for the people coming in from the mall - set by the mall owners. Same store, different prices. And then the mall claims that they are "not affecting" your store's bottom line. Sure.
As I write this, the 6 million plus CP shopkeepers are mobilizing on the very CP community chat forums used to announce the policy changes, and in addition on facebook, yahoo and other blogs and boards on the web. We are alerting the national media and producing our own “counter” press releases because, quite simply, we outnumber them. As Glenn Beck would say (sorry to the anti-Beck shopkeepers) – We Surround Them. If you are reading this and are screaming “greed… socialism (10% for all despite ability)… injustice…” the best I can tell you is to send an email to the national media and/or find one of our many café press shopkeepers forums on the web (I’ve posted some below) and let your voice be heard. And to my fellow shopkeepers… thank you for listening, thank you for creating and thank you for speaking up and letting Café Press know that when you bite the hand that feeds you – sometimes that hand bites back.
Facebook Group "CAFEPRESS SHOPKEEPER'S UNITED ~ 2009"
See my "Cafe Oppressed" gallery at Zazzle
7 comments:
Thanks for making this post!
Yeah, it's just double-dipping on the part of Cafepress: they already make money on the base price, now they're taking control of final pricing and shooting a paltry 10% to the hard working designers who sell their products for them! Prices won't be any lower, just a much bigger chunk going straight to the corporation. Big boon to any print on demand competitors, not to mention local print shops.This hurts perhaps millions of people and is certainly newsworthy.
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Cafepress has made a huge miscalculation! Their marketplace will see far fewer quality designs once all the outraged shopkeepers have defected to Zazzle, thus decreasing cafepress sales and decreasing buyer satisfaction.
I hope there is enough backlash from this that they change their minds. It is an awful business decision. They must be reading from eBay's playbook.
Thanks for your post. I love that Zazzle made ''Welcome Cafepress Shopkeepers'' t-shirts so quickly.
--Marianne Dow msdowantiques.com
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I'm Blog Rollin' the subject Christine. I'd like to see our posts get good search engine attention. Best of luck with everything.
http://a-stitch.blogspot.com/2009/04/dont-with-art-department.html
Cafepress just tried to shut me up!
Cafepress just suspended my right to even read the forum because I encouraged people to tell their stories! I also told people about how I googled my own work using my own titles and descriptions and discovered that almost all the Google searches where I found my items -- including ones that included my name -- dumped me into the Marketplace and not into my shop. AND, get this, sometimes the Marketplace page didn't include my item at all! That means they've been using all our hard work with titling things, product descriptions and tagging to bring people to the Marketplace and not to us! The Marketplace where our sales don't count for a volume discount anymore. The Marketplace where sales won't be fairly compensated at all anymore.
Read more on my blog at http://healingcommunication.blogspot.com/2009/04/cafepress-just-tried-to-shut-me-up.html
I just tried to join the Facebook group and I logged in with my Facebook account but I can't post anything or join. I don't know how to use Facebook -- what should I do?
I see that you were able to join facebook and the group - well done! :) Thanks for the comments everyone and keep up the charge - alert the media (bunch of people apparently contacting the Drudge report)!
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