Hello DP, I have a client who is thinking of building & selling merchandises for his bands. I know the most popular option is CafePress. There price is just way too much. Does anyone know a cheaper option?
Yes i have to agreed with you that the cafepress price is a bit expensive. But for me its ok since their quality is good. You can try this www.customink.com
SpreadShirt is probably the best Free and paid bet for a musician.. They can upload there own content or pick from a nice database of seriious-funny items. Consider getting him to pay for it though. Like anything free on the internet its limited
This is one of those situations where it best to go local. Look in your local business directory/ yellow pages for screen printers and transfer printers. p.s. places like cafepress do transfer prints - you'll get a much better deal on a superior quality screen print by going local.
I would use something like http://www.magentocommerce.com/ do it yourself, and print things locally. hope that helps, Nigel
If you are near an art college or university -- just hire a college student to create your screens and to make your shirts. Otherwise, vistaprint.com has good options only about $2.5 per shirt (white).
I agree with magda & james0822. Go local. Its cheaper. If you want to go online in the future, register your own domain, find a cheap webhosting and just use osCommerce.
Like everybody says, the cheapest option is to get the t-shirts printed up locally. But if they want to have a print-on-demand option too - maybe for web site sales rather than live show sales, for example - I'd recommend Zazzle. The T-shirts look nice, you can get other stuff printed (like mugs, stickers and even skateboards), and they have an affiliate program too. ETA: If they plan to print T-shirts to sell at concerts, please suggest to your friend that they print up some on women's T-shirts too. I'm a chick, and I think that the standard "unisex" tee is boxy and unflattering, so I usually only wear them when I'm working out or doing chores. A flattering T-shirt with a cool design I'd wear anywhere.
I can do DTG and vinyl printing cheaper than cafe press and the others if you need print on demand service. If you need small runs I also offer screen printing. If you need I am able to do everything from warehousing, payment processing and order fulfillment. PM any details if interested.
going local is cheaper but it's going to take serious dedication from you, since it's up to you to ship out shirts individually. Personally, that isn't an option. Cafepress seems like it's not an option anymore, they changed their policy a few days ago and pissed off their whole community (look on DP for recent threads about this). A lot of people have migrated to Zazzle. Honestly, I dont even know what service is good anymore, but Zazzle seems to be promising.
Can you point me at the thread talking on Cafepress changes? I'm trying to retrieve my password to Cafepress lost after a pc crash but if site is not longer worth I'll take a look at Zazzle.