I protest.

Cafepress mugging.

I've seen Cafepress advertisements around for some time and have generally thought it was a good idea but that the price was too high. Well, it appears that the price is going up while the profit their customers make on those items is going down. I'm linking to, of all things, a comic strip, here, but the important bit is the June 5 news entry entitled "CafeDe-pressed:" Angst Technology Daily Web Comic. (Actually, the comic is pretty good itself, but the real interesting bit for me is the news item. Or should I call it a rant?)

Barry uses a coffee mug as an example. Conservatively, using Cafepress the mug costs the customer $12.99, with $2.00 of that going to Barry. After July 1, that will go to $1.90, since not only is Cafepress gouging on the real price, they will begin charging an additional five percent of the profit.

Barry then priced out the same mugs via a company that produces "promotional materials:"

I did a quick Google search on "Promotional Materials" (you know, all those pens and buttons and tote bags they give out at trade shows) and went with the first site I saw. They have TONS of crap to put your images on. And not all in white either.

The company does a minimum run of 72 mugs. Barry chose the most expensive print job he could find, three-color, wrap around, eleven-ounce mug. His price: $1.31 on a run of 72 mugs. His total cost (see his site for the detailed breakdown) came to $308.17. He decided to charge his customers $9.00 per mug. On the whole run, he will gross $648, out of which he has a profit of almost $340. Even after overhead, this is a lot better than Cafepress and saves the customer some four dollars per mug. As Barry concludes:

That’s a 52% profit margin for me. So more than half of the money goes back into my pocket. And that is with using the most expensive printing options, keeping the sale price relatively low, not buying in bulk, and not even looking for any special deals.

52% vs. 15%.

Gee….which would you choose?

Um, yeah. Cafepress can bite me.