CafePress.com

CafePress.com is an online retailer that produces and dispatches a large variety of user-customized products on demand. Opening and operating a basic CafePress.com shop is free. A basic shop can be upgraded to a premium shop for a small monthly rate, allowing an unlimited number of products per type and additional maintenance and customization features.

After creating a shop, the owner can proceed to select products and upload files, such as images to print on t-shirts or bags. They can also determine a price markup for each item sold in the store. CafePress.com provides the online storefront and website hosting, order management, fulfillment, payment processing, and customer service. In other words, the shop is effectively managed by CafePress.com, and the shop owner only has to take care of customizing the products they want to sell. The base price for every item is determined by CafePress.com, providing its chief revenue stream. Shop owners can buy items at the base price, but they also receive commission payments within regular intervals.

The privately owned, profitable company was founded in 1999 by Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain and, as of February 2005, hosts over one million online shops. CafePress.com is headquartered in San Leandro, California, and its production facility is located in Hayward. Major accounts include ASPCA, Dilbert, Phil Collins, Star Trek, and Wikimedia. Shops are also frequently created for Internet phenomena such as JibJab.com and "All your base are belong to us".

Currently CafePress.com sells a wide range of apparel, teddy bears, ornaments, clocks, mugs, stickers, buttons, magnets, greeting cards and prints, mouse pads, coasters, and pillows, all of which can be customized by the shop owner with color or black and white images. CafePress.com also offers print on demand and CD production on demand services.

The most popular CafePress.com item is the white t-shirt; according to a company fact sheet [1], almost half a million white shirts were sold in the first five years of the company's existence.

Companies offering similar services include 99dogs.com and Spreadshirt.de.

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