trmj's Journal: Something better than cafepress?

Anybody know of a t-shirt printing site that prints to order and drop ships that's better than cafepress?

Better in what way?

[turg]

What is the specific issue with cafepress?

Assuming it's print quality...

As I understand it, based on conversation with someone in the t-shirt business, is that the print-on-demand places like cafepress and zazzle use a process called dye sublimation for printing on t-shirts. This printing isn't as good (e.g. permanent) as screen-printing but has no set-up costs.

If you want t-shirts with the quality of printing that you get from the stores, you need screenprinting. The guy from whom I learned about this has

Re:Better in what way?

[trmj]

Your friend's site seems to be exactly what I was looking for. The largest thing that concerned me about cafepress was their pricing: they charge ~$10 per shirt, which doesn't leave much room for making money. The minimum order per design for screen printing is 24, but that shouldn't be a problem.

I'm not jumping into anything quite yet, but I wanted to get my resources lined up and ready to go for when I do move forward.

Re:Better in what way?

[SolemnDragon]

cafe press was a problem for me because of their terms of service- sell $25 worth of stuff in six months, or they keep all of your profits you don't spend on other gear.

I consequently never got paid for any of the GWE stuff sold through their because the costs and suchlike meant i never made enough fast enough.

Boy, was i ever ticked with them.

I am still looking. Zazzle hasn't worked out, either, and i am thinking i might just get a good screenprinter to handle the stuff.

talk to blinder though.

Depends on what you want

[sielwolf]

Spreadshirt [spreadshirt.com], T-shirts.com [tshirts.com] both allow you to do extensive customization via flash or AJAX. For the simpler, old school press-on, hipster look, you can't do better than Neighborhoodies [neighborhoodies.com]. Most focus on apparel instead of the "stick a GIF on anything" angle Cafeexpress has.