Comments on: Cafepress – Helping Or Hurting Online Shopkeepers?

By: D Wolff

D Wolff — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:16:50 +0000

Unfortunately, it has not resulted in increased sales, and we make about 1/3 of what we made before due to the changes. One reason is because they also took away direct links to shops from within marketplace so even though we have a large shop that caters to a particular interest, customers are unable to view our carefully laid out & categorized designs from the marketplace. It’s been a disappointing month.

By: Demetrius

Demetrius — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:06:09 +0000

To be clear – the power of the CafePress Marketplace is competing with shopkeepers’ ability to draw customers directly to their shops. There are not links from the Marketplace to the shops. Marketplace customers *remain* marketplace customers (at 10% profit.) Opting out of the Marketplace altogether or accepting the 10% are the shopkeepers’ only options.

By: Demetrius

Demetrius — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:23:42 +0000

The important thing to know is that with these *new* changes, while shopkeepers can add whatever markups they want to items sold directly from their shops (often $5 -$15 profit per item), CafePress limits shopkeeper profits to just 10% of a retail price that CafePress sets for Marketplace sales (around $2 shopkeeper profit for the same items). For many shopkeepers this means that Marketplace sales volume would have to increase at least threefold in order for profits to remain the same. That threefold increase in sales volume has yet to materialize. At the same time, CafePress makes a lot more money on every sale.

By: Andy Loverock

Andy Loverock — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:18:22 +0000

Although some of the methods being used by CafePress appear questionable! Sounds like a deal to me too Chuck. Nothing wrong with additional customers.