Cafepress Slits Own Throat

In a surprise announcement last week, Cafepress said they would restructure marketplace commissions so that designers would only receive 10% of the selling price. Prior to this designers were free to set their own mark-ups and many of them set theirs on the high side. Cafepress claims this move will provide a more uniform shopping experience for customers, but what they have actually done is lay off thousands of shopkeepers who depended on their Cafepress sales for a living or, at least, to make ends meet. Most of these people will not be able to collect unemployment even though they will lose a good deal of their income. Many may now have trouble making mortgage payments. Cafepress has said nothing to counter these claims and shows no concern for their so-called "partners".

We think Cafepress is either insane or on the verge of bankruptcy to institute such a change. This new pricing scheme reminds us of a wolf caught in a trap who will chew off his own foot to regain his freedom. Afterwards, of course, he is crippled and may not be able to survive. So, too, shall Cafepress be crippled and we predict they will be out of business within 1 year.

The changes do not go into effect until June 1st, but we have been hard at work setting up shop over at Zazzle which we now find to be a superior platform. We plan to have all of our designs transferred within a couple of weeks. And because Zazzle does not charge a fee for its galleries, we have split off our science and Chinese designs into their own stores.

On the day of the announcement, we had been uploading new Chinese character designs and, strangely enough,two of them speak quite directly to this current situation. So without further ado, here are our two latest from our new Zazzle store, Beijing Central.

Ignorance

Disaster