Zazzle Blows away Cafe Press

I've been working with www.zazzle.com on making some custom T-Shirts in preparation for NHC in Cincinatti in June and I must say, I am very impressed at the service and ease of use in creating products.

My first design just arrived today and it turned out great!

Here's the front!



Here's the back.



I just made up this one and ordered it today.

The front.



And the back with the BCB Logo



It's amazing how the editing features work for changing sizes, text, fonts, placement, etc.

Cafe Press could only get my logo about 1/2 that size and the quality of the shirt is pretty chintzy.

Sweet!

I had to Google what it meant -- looky looky at link #3

Great stuff. Now I just need to make a shirt that says, "Friends don't let friends drink BMC." Of course you could substitute BMC with: Bud, Coors, horse urine, yeast sediment, etc. Maybe I've been beaten to the punch and it already exists, though...If not, I call dibs!

Finally got around to making a Zazzle gallery myself! I must admit, it's far nicer than CafePress. I'll be migrating everything over to Zazzle at some point.

http://www.zazzle.com/yuri_rage

Yuri_Rage said:

Finally got around to making a Zazzle gallery myself! I must admit, it's far nicer than CafePress. I'll be migrating everything over to Zazzle at some point.

http://www.zazzle.com/yuri_rage

http://rdr.zazzle.com/img/imt-prd/isz-m/pd-235459601128428105/tl-beer_spectrum_t_shirt.jpg?style=basic_tshirt&color=white&size=a_s&context=mfong&view=back&group=mens&lifeStyle=all&side_front=vert&side_back=vert

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Me too...I'm working on it as well.
I lovge the stainless coffee mugs and the custom neckties!

Edwort, how do you get the logo to be bigger? When I resize it, zazzle tells me the logo may be pixelated. I'm using a pretty big file. I have a bigger one, but it is an illustator format and I can't convert it. Just wondering the size of your original image that you are using.

Dude, it's probably less than the required resolution rather than a size issue. Zazzle likes 150 dpi resolution at full size.

EdWort,
Mine shipped the other day and should be here tomorrow. Thanks for the great idea!

Dude said:

Me too...I'm working on it as well.
I lovge the stainless coffee mugs and the custom neckties!

Edwort, how do you get the logo to be bigger? When I resize it, zazzle tells me the logo may be pixelated. I'm using a pretty big file. I have a bigger one, but it is an illustator format and I can't convert it. Just wondering the size of your original image that you are using.

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I had my artist guru send me a jpg of my artwork at 2500 x 2400 pixels. Once is that big, you can downsize it online no problem. Each of my files is just over a meg in size.

DaveyBoy said:

Sweet!

I had to Google what it meant -- looky looky at link #3

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Sweet! Thanks for the tip!

Zazzle is wonderful. I first found them when I bought a Pawtucket Patriot Ale shirt and then used them to make my own brewery shirt. They are indeed the bee's own mammaries.

Yuri_Rage said:

Dude, it's probably less than the required resolution rather than a size issue. Zazzle likes 150 dpi resolution at full size.

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If I'm not mistaken, vector graphics don't have a DPI right? Probably just a problem on their end.

Moving Up in the world.

Thanks Ed.

I also created a Zazzle account with the new Naked City logo. which you can now find in my signature.

Brewtopia said:

Thanks Ed.

I also created a Zazzle account with the new Naked City logo. which you can now find in my signature.

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Brewtopia, you are the league leader in logo changes.

Originally posted by Dude
Brewtopia, you are the league leader in logo changes.

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LOL, I'm done, I promise












...I think

Yuri_Rage said:

Dude, it's probably less than the required resolution rather than a size issue. Zazzle likes 150 dpi resolution at full size.

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Okay...I figured it out....went ahead and made a 300 DPI and a 150 DPI....just so I have them available.

I got my first zazzle product today, it looks great! I wouldn't say the quality of the graphic is any better than cafepress, but the T-shirt is actually the size they say it is. I'm pretty happy with this.

Dude said:

Okay...I figured it out....went ahead and made a 300 DPI and a 150 DPI....just so I have them available.

I got my first zazzle product today, it looks great! I wouldn't say the quality of the graphic is any better than cafepress, but the T-shirt is actually the size they say it is. I'm pretty happy with this.

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Yeah, the product and their ability to scale up or down is much better than Cafepress. how bout a pic of your finished product. The online one looks great.

I apologize in advance for the poor model quality -- ugly, stern-looking fellow, ain't he. But the contributions that Apfelwein alone have made to my life merited a shirt purchase (not to mention the hefe recipe -- perhaps the best beer I've ever brewed). Here's to you, Ed!

(Mashin the Kolsch)

BakerStreetBeers said:

I apologize in advance for the poor model quality -- ugly, stern-looking fellow, ain't he. But the contributions that Apfelwein alone have made to my life merited a shirt purchase (not to mention the hefe recipe -- perhaps the best beer I've ever brewed). Here's to you, Ed!

(

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Looking good! What do you think of the quality of the shirt? Anyone ask what does it mean yet?

To date, I've been at least a little buzzed and effusive when I've shown it to people . . . forcing my awful german on them and telling them before they had a chance to ask. I think only my neighbor who stopped by while I was brewing tonight had the opportunity to see and ask for himself, but did not. However, he did declare himself a fan of bavarian beers and so did allow me to pour him a bottle of (BCB recipe) hefe that I'd put up (before we floated the keg) and had high praise for it.

Never really had the chance to talk with him much before, but had a nice chat. He bartends one night a week at a relatively new place near me called Hopmonk Tavern, owned by the Biersch half of Gordon Biersch. 17 beers on tap, 70+ in bottles and a Bavarian food menu but emphasizing local ingredients (yes, we're Northern California). And, my God, I just checked out their website and they have the Duchess of Burgundy there. Ok, sorry, gotta go now. TTYL.

(They're also offering Pliny, Lagunitas' Farmhouse Saison, Moonlight's Death and Taxes (excellent dark lager, but sad to say you'll probably never get it outside of the SF Bay Area, as their distribution is limited to the brewer's daughters delivering kegs), and 3 house beers including an unfiltered pilsner)

BTW, yes, the shirt is quite comfortable and seems to fit pretty well.

Strike 1 for Zazzle.

I ordered some business cards and about half of them came all bent up inside a padded envelope.

I e-mailed customer service and they wanted me to take a picture of the cards and e-mail it to them. Instead of saying "sorry about that, we'll send some more out ASAP", I have to wait around for them to believe me that they came messed up. Yeah, send paper products in a flimsy envelope and then make the customer prove it.

At least cafepress owns up to mistakes and fixes it no questions asked.

You're not offering the first shirt anymore Ed?

Alamo_Beer said:

You're not offering the first shirt anymore Ed?

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The first shirt is there. Just click on the first shirt and check both front and back.

Sweet! Order placed!

Our first order from CafePress just arrived. Everything looks good, shipping was fast, no complaints.

Dude, thanks for blowing off my PM about this... lol.

I looked into Zazzle awhile back but it seems as if they take ownership of the designs and just pay you a commission. Ed, do you know if that is the case? They don't specify it anywhere on their site that I can find...

Interesting. Nothing keeps you from deleting your designs and you don't have to make them public either.

Thanks, I'm sure I'm just being paranoid but have a lot riding on the future of my brand... I will email them and get their legal spin on it before signing up.

Found it:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]Image Rights. You retain all rights to your work. If you choose to publicly display your work at Zazzle, you will maintain your copyright on everything contributed to the site.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]You are not transferring ownership of your designs when you contribute them to the Gallery. Rather, you are only granting us the nonexclusive right to actualize your designs into products. Nonexclusive means that you may continue using your contributed work for any other purpose you want to, including selling it elsewhere. Please see the[/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica]Nonexclusive License Agreement[/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica]for complete details.[/FONT]

Well, there you go! Have at it!

Dude said:

Strike 1 for Zazzle.

I ordered some business cards and about half of them came all bent up inside a padded envelope.

I e-mailed customer service and they wanted me to take a picture of the cards and e-mail it to them. Instead of saying "sorry about that, we'll send some more out ASAP", I have to wait around for them to believe me that they came messed up. Yeah, send paper products in a flimsy envelope and then make the customer prove it.

At least cafepress owns up to mistakes and fixes it no questions asked.

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So, soft items from Zazzle, printed stock from the Cafe

Just ordered a new shirt.

Front



Back



Should be fun to wear to Brew Club meetings and the NHC in Zinzinnati!

Sweet I like it (although it sounds like you need to balance your lines )

Bumpity bump...

My wife finally got around to creating a few designs for Deep Six

http://zazzle.com/deepsix

Anyone have any other ideas for some designs?

I also have a few things up on zazzle.
Link in sig.



Tim

Hey I'm just curious...I had a couple of these get moved off of zazzle in the past few weeks...who is buying them? If you don't wanna own up, I understand--but I wanted to thank you.

Pic for the lazy:

I've been thinking about moving over to Zazzle, too. Looking through the thread, it appears that everyone is impressed with the ability to resize images and the material quality but I haven't heard much about the print quality. Does anyone here have experience with both? Anyone done a side-by-side of CP to Zazzle?

I'm not happy with the CP print quality on dark shirts, and I especially don't like the way they handle black when printing on a black shirt. Which is to say randomly - sometimes it will be treated as transparent, sometimes as black seemingly at the discretion of the operator with no regard for the native transparency of the image. Anyone have any experience with issues like that in Zazzle?

EdWort said:

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I guess Kaiser Wilhelm never got the right gal in the end. I feel kinda bad for him!

MrNate said:

I've been thinking about moving over to Zazzle, too. Looking through the thread, it appears that everyone is impressed with the ability to resize images and the material quality but I haven't heard much about the print quality. Does anyone here have experience with both? Anyone done a side-by-side of CP to Zazzle?

I'm not happy with the CP print quality on dark shirts, and I especially don't like the way they handle black when printing on a black shirt. Which is to say randomly - sometimes it will be treated as transparent, sometimes as black seemingly at the discretion of the operator with no regard for the native transparency of the image. Anyone have any experience with issues like that in Zazzle?

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I got a couple of Zazzle black shirts a long time ago - one was perfect, the other crap. They were both from the same graphics, so I know that wasn't the issue. But that was back when they had just started doing dark shirts, so I would hope they have improved since then.

Dude said:

Hey I'm just curious...I had a couple of these get moved off of zazzle in the past few weeks...who is buying them? If you don't wanna own up, I understand--but I wanted to thank you.

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No one wants to fess up, eh?