Buyer beware. I'm removing the link to the Zazzle shirts I created because I received my shirts and the quality is really sub-standard. You can get much better results from a real tshirt screen-printing service. No idea if Cafe Press will be any better.
Judging from this discussion of Zazzle on Dealtime, other people have had the same bad experiences. The biggest problem I have with these folks is that you cannot delete products from their site and they will continue to run your shirt perpetually. I didn't read the agreement, but according to others who have uploaded art work on Zazzle, there is no way to remove their art work, and Zazzle can continue to profit from your work even if you no longer want to sell through them. That may be good business for them, but it's really bad for the creators of the art work.
So my opinion is to stay away from Zazzle for dark t-shirts and wait to see how Cafe Press does with theirs. I'm having a really hard time imagining that the quality would be any good for any of these types of shirt printing services on black.
UPDATE: Black TShirts on Cafe Press are now up for sale!
Comments
11/26/05 @ 19:44
Thanks so much for the advice on Zazzle. I just found them online and wanted to try a shirt but I am so glad to hear from someone who doesn't like their quality...I'll definitely shop around. Cafepress does offer some nice shirts, just depends on which ones you use..I like the organic cotton tee..It's really soft. some of the other tees are a bit of a starchy material but I have like what I designed with them....Thanks!
http://www.cafepress.com/wiltsewonders
12/16/05 @ 21:16
Came from this thread: http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/07/20/profile-zazzle
Read the comments. Seems the Zazzle story goes on.
12/24/05 @ 01:41
Zazzle needs a warning lable. If anyone ever really read the contract, no one would sign the thing. It says that they can literally reject you and keep selling your product without paying you. I made a couple of posters from the book covers of my two novels coming out next year. One of them has a photo of Olga Khanukova in a swimsuit. They sent me a letter telling me that it was obscene and that they would not pay me for any sales. I thought, okay, fine, no big deal. However, what they did not say was that they will continue to sell the posters. In other words, they rejected me because they did not approve of my product, but that will not stop them from selling the posters.
I checked further, and there is nothing I can do to stop them. The contract is an arbitration agreement, so I would have to go to California and put up money for an arbitrator in order to challenge the contract. They would probably win because I agreed to their terms when I signed the contract. It is really funny to look at though.
12/26/05 @ 13:00
"It says that they can literally reject you and keep selling your product without paying you."
Well, that's not quite true.
They can keep selling your product forever, but they still have to pay you - so keep your payee information up to date. You just don't have the option of removing the product from the marketplace. Also, it is a non-exclusive license, which means you can enter into other non-exclusive license agreements at any time (you can market your images on other products with other printers). Considering that most people using this service are not serious artists or, like us, are "backyard" artists; it's not a bad deal.
Serious artists looking for exclusive marketing rights need to find other printers and other ways to market their art.
As far as rejecting you and then selling your image, I have not read about this happening to anyone. Images that are rejected by Zazzle are removed from the marketplace and all products with them. I've seen it done because I've had to report products in flagrant violation of standards (it doesn't happen often, but every now and then someone does something stupid). They were thoroughly removed without a trace from the marketplace and from the contributor's gallery. That means there is no way for Zazzle to sell the product anymore.
Also, keep this in mind. Any lawyer worth his/her weight in gold will tell you that just because you agree to a release doesn't mean you can't do anything about it should you feel you are being abused by the other party. If Zazzle abuses their license agreement, enough lawyers will burn them right back on it. ;-)
12/30/05 @ 20:19
I'll second the comment on Zazzle's poor quality t-shirts. I was disappointed with the blurry looking text. A home made iron-on looked much better and was a lot cheaper.
01/02/06 @ 12:25
Does anyone know how the shirt quality (not black shirts) and printing quality compares between CafePress and Zazzle? I was thinking about selling shirts on one but I don't want my visitors buying junk products. Thanks!
03/04/06 @ 18:52
Cafe Press has better quality shirts and printing than Zazzle. Even their value t-shirt is better than Zazzle's standard white t shirt. You also have a choice of heat transfer or direct print. I tried both and the quality is excellent. As I said before, Zazzle's printing looked blurry. I did not have that problem with Cafe Press.
01/05/07 @ 10:19
dark shirts from cafepress are nice, at least with white printing only
01/22/07 @ 15:03
I ordered three custom T-shirts from Zazzle last week, two "dark" and one white. I won't be back. Here's what I did not like about my dealings with Zazzle:
(1) Quality of printing on "dark" T-shirts was horrible! These shirts used a simple graphic with only three pure primary colors: black, yellow and green. The front (small) design was fine, with the colors true. However, the back (large) design's green was almost 100% yellow, and with streaks of low-contrast green!
(2) The quality (and sizes) of the T-shirts was poor. Typical of "cheap" T-shirts, the sizes were wrong, about one size too small. For what I paid (about $30 per shirt), I'd expect something better!
(3) Double shipping costs! This was because the "dark" T-shirts, for some reason, could not be shipped with the single "white" T-shirt. (Afterall, they're bagged in plastic, so what's up with that?) This "hidden cost" nonsense, which I did not discover until after I'd placed the order, added almost $8 in "extra" shipping costs to my order.
OK. So I can probably ask for a "refund" or "replacement", but who has the time and patience for that? Plus, I'm going to be out shipping costs, to the tune of almost $40 by the time I'm done. It is not worth the time. Zazzle sucks...pass it on! :-)
09/12/07 @ 08:13
Tried zazzle, everyone is right the pretty much suck all the way around. Now I deal only with cafepress and printfection.
12/20/07 @ 18:37
Er well i got a t-shirt from them recently in black and the quality is exactly the same as i would expect if i had bought it in a shop, the text on the back was not blury at all. Mabey they have updated their quality recently so dont judge them!
02/02/08 @ 22:38
I just ordered a few original shirts from zazzle and they looked really great, unitl I washed them. Most of the color came out and it looks like I have owned the shirt for ten years, wearing and washing it every day. Has anyone else had this problem or is my case a fluke?
02/19/08 @ 03:56
I had no problems with zazzle, "now owned by Myspace" yet I have had countless problems with Cafe press. I don't like the fact everyone else offers unlimited print on any item yet cafe press and the idea they have of a free store sucks. They also want your social security number. I don't like giving out that kind of info to anyone on the web.
They have put in rating system on zazzle you can print anything now.
If you do not know how to size graphics and know what white quality is on any shirt it will suck in any company. Dark shirts more often then not. That's why you check what it looks like and read the graphic warnings. Making your own templates though trial and error are more often better then not. I know several people who run Web comics and have complained of the shoddy tee shirts when fans by them and they fall apart after a few weeks from cafe press. Yet, I have not myself had that problem yet.
LOL I don't care what others do. I just fell in here from who knows where.
Zazzle also has a contract with Disney. So they may be evil. Of course if you want something great you don’t sell your soul to angels do you?
03/04/08 @ 18:23
Just got some dark shirts from Zazzle myself. I am INTENSELY disappointed with the quality of how my designs printed on the shirts. Looks like the white layer underneath the design was applied by someone with a can of spraypaint or a carney doing airbrushed shirts. There are white lines around the designs and white splatter around the transparent area of the shirt.
The one full-color cartoon design I did looked the worst--my black lines were blurry, blended into the colors, and the colors were oversaturated like they had been printed on a bubblejet printer from 1996. This design was 300DPI and a transparent PNG. There was no reason for it to print so poorly -- unless of course Zazzle is just a poor-quality printer. "Professional," my eye. Cafepress looks better--there may occasionally be white background errors on Cafepress shirts, but at least the colors and lines in the design are sharp.
I am talking to Zazzle customer support about this. it certainly isn't professional quality. What they sent me was junk. If they can replace the shirts with decent quality ones, maybe I'd change my mind about them. Otherwise, I'll just consider them scam artists who misrepresent their products to their members AND their buyers.
03/17/08 @ 21:55
I've used both to sell stuff and some of this does come down to the quality of the source image -- Cafe Press is the best when it comes to instruction when creating a product (templates, resolution etc.) - Zazzle is terrible when it comes to this - Zazzle will let you stretch an image to fit - eventually you're given a warning that the image may appear blurry - I found that you have to size it correctly the first time - and even that turned out so-so - never stretch your images on Zazzle, you'll end up with crap.
Side-by side, I would say the quality of Cafe Press products is much better - I ordered a jersey from them and the colors are still holding up great. The shirt I purchased on Zazzle feels like one of those laser-printer transfers and itches like hell - the colors are amazing but it's also starting to crack. That being said - Cafe Press' site needs a little updating, I like Zazzle's much better.
04/07/08 @ 15:00
I am a new user on a site called RedBubble. I've designed a few shirts, and once I understood the process for preparing files, the previews look great on the site [dark and light colors]. I should mention that any True White in a T-shirt design will be treated as transparent. However, I have used 10% Black in its place, and everything looks great.
The site looks great. As far the T-shirts themselves, I have not purchased one, but buyers post regularly on the site, and the sparkling reviews [comfort, colors, size, etc.] are very encouraging. The shirts are all printed on sweatshop-free American Apparel materials.
Hope this is useful.
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