We've been talking about making a MISoft Studios merchandise store, called "MIStore," carrying everything from t-shirts to mousepads to wall clocks. The obvious choice is
Cafepress. They pioneered the print-on-demand system, as far as I know. A long time ago when I still cared about my personal website, I used them to sell
Matt Rock Online merchandise, so I know they're trustworthy and pretty awesome to deal with.
But there's a few issues with Cafepress. First, their shirts and other apparel aren't that great... wash a Cafepress shirt a few times and it fades somewhat dramatically, or at least that was the case back when I used them. Another issue I have with them... their prices! The base price for a regular t-shirt is $13.99. That's the cost of a single t-shirt to be printed and whatnot... you don't see a penny of that money. To turn your own profit, you need to mark up the price, so if you sold a t-shirt for $15.99 you'd make about $2 in total profit... but then you're asking customers to pay $16 for a t-shirt, which does seem a bit over the top in my opinion.
I've been looking into alternatives to Cafepress today. I found
this article about alternatives, which lead me to a company called
Printfection, who makes similar products. They apparently have better printing on apparel, and they offer bulk sales to your shop's customers. Plus, they have a ton of features that make them similar to Cafepress's Premium Service, while still remaining free to use. But they don't offer nearly as many products as Cafepress... for instance, I REALLY want a MISoft Studios wall clock, and Printfection doesn't offer that. And we want a dog shirt (for reasons you'll all be made aware of in the very near future), and again, Printfection doesn't offer it. so for the catalog alone, Cafepress wins.
So, does anyone know of a good merchandising alternative to Cafepress, whose cheaper to use and also has a similar catalog size-wise? Oh, and who is also trustworthy? I'm sure it's a tall order but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. We want to launch MIStore when (or shortly after) we launch MINet 2.0, so it's time to get this sorted hehe. Especially with the boost in forum visitors on MINet 1.0 recently
