Google Investors Find New Project

Greg Linden writes:"According to ZDNet, the investors behind Google are at it again. John Doerr and Ram Shriram are investing in Zazzle, a company targeting mass customization by allowing shoppers and store owners to create individually tailored clothes, prints, and other items. For example, customers can choose an image from a large image library, design a T-shirt using the image with online tools, and then have the T-shirt delivered to them. Lands' End, CafePress, and other online clothing stores offer similar mass customization services on a small scale, but Doerr clearly believes that there is a substantial opportunity 'for every individual who wants to create products that are as unique as they are.'"

Is this really new?

[OctaneZ]

Is it just me, or does the idea for Zazzle [zazzle.com] seem remarkably close to the idea behind Cafe Press [cafepress.com]?

I've used Zazzle...

[MaestroSartori]

...and its pretty cool. As an artist, you can use it to get your artwork printed onto say archival-quality paper, or a big canvas, or whatever. As a shopper you can get artwork you like on objects of various sorts.

Dunno if its something I'd bet a large amount of money on as an investor, since I'm not sure how much money they'd expect a site like that to make, but its a pretty friendly and good site for what it does. Maybe that's enough...

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Re:Clothing from the US?

[mattdm]

It seems like they are a true, domestic manufacturer. They are very well known (not necessarily to everyone, but to a lot of people) for their custom image clothing. They say that they can get it to your house in 3-4 days. If they can do this, it sounds like it is not coming on the slow boat from some Chinese sweatshop (Nike, hint hint), but rather good ol' Made in the USA.

I doubt it. They're probably *printed on* in the US, but the blank t-shirts come from whereever. Their "Premium" [zazzle.com] shirts are Hanes (which is Sara Lee, one of the worst multinationals for fair trade and labor practices -- way worse than Nike. Ask Google.) They don't mention a brand for their "Basic" shirts, probably so they can change it up with whatever is cheapest at the time.

Re:Is this really new?

[Oculus Habent]

CafePress [bascially] lets anyone sell stuff through them for royalties (you design, they sell/make/ship it). So does Zazzle. Zazzle also allows you to let buyers add/change your designs.

Like the T-Shirt, but want the message on the pocket, instead? No problem. Want to tag your items with your name on the back? Done. Don't like the color of the font on that postcard? Change it. Want that poster to be a little shorter? Crop it.

Re:Not so unique...

[TPIRman]

I've used both CafePress and Zazzle to have T-shirts printed up with a logo on the front and a simple graphic on the back. The Zazzle T-shirt is of much higher quality. You get a larger area in which to print your graphic with Zazzle, and the Zazzle shirt is more comfortable because it doesn't have a big iron-on patch where the artwork is. The Zazzle shirts are a bit more expensive, though: about $2 more than comparable CafePress shirts.

Compared to CafePress, Zazzle makes it much harder to sell your stuff online in a self-contained space. I think this is where the missions of the two sites diverge. CafePress is basically a site designed to help you set up your little store to sell branded schwag. It is a portal for personal sites. Nobody goes to cafepress.com to shop; they end up on a specific CafePress store that has been linked from somebody else's site.

But Zazzle wants to be an entity unto itself, and it portrays itself as a clearinghouse for all sorts of printed artwork. If you want to make the items you design on Zazzle available to the public, you have to give Zazzle resale rights to the artwork in perpetuity, with the agreement that you will receive a 10% royalty on any items that are sold. Zazzle wants you to become part of their big community.

If you go to cafepress.com, you see a pitch that basically says, "We'll help you sell it yourself." If you go to zazzle.com, you see a pitch that says, "Look at the cool stuff Zazzle sells. Why not contribute?"

I prefer the quality of the printing process (again, I only have experience with T-shirts) on Zazzle, but I wish it had the selling flexibility of CafePress.

Re:Clothing from the US?

[TheSync]

The higher wages of multinationals, of course, does not come from their own generosity, or even out of concern about anti-sweatshop group, but from the simple fact that they are more productive than smaller, less advanced domestic producers in developing countries.

The literature is rich with studies that show higher wages of multinationals:

'Technological competition' causes U.S. multinationals to pay more [uiuc.edu]

Even critics of Nike, whose wages and working conditions have become a cause celebre on college campuses, concede that the footwear giant pays higher rates than those prevailing in Asia, where their plants are located. The same pattern is found among multinationals with factories in South America and Eastern Europe.

"The wage differences between multinationals and domestic firms," writes Dan Bernhardt, a University of Illinois economist, "far exceed the differences in rental payments for buildings and land, or prices paid for domestic raw materials by foreign firms compared with their local counterparts."

Effects of Multinational Company Investments [nber.org]

For example, considering the charge that foreign investment leads to depressed wages and thus exploits "host country" workers, Lipsey finds that the opposite is true. "Within host countries it has been abundantly shown that foreign-owned firms pay higher wages than domestically-owned firms"

The Effects of Multinational Production on Wages and Working Conditions in Developing Countries [umich.edu]

This evidence indicates that multinational firms routinely provide higher wages and better working conditions than their local counterparts