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Talk About A Fleeting Competitive Advantage
from the oh-wait-a-second... dept
There was way too much hype earlier this week when the news came out that uber-VC John Doerr had decided to dump some money into a company called Zazzle. Zazzle is a CafePress.com wannabe that's been around for a while, but has never really done much special. CafePress.com, on the other hand, has become something of the standard for anyone who wants to make any kind of personalized on-demand item. That's not to say there's no room for competition, but CafePress has the advantage of a pretty strong brand in the space already. So, you have to wonder what it was that Doerr saw in Zazzle. BusinessWeek has a nice little interview with Doerr where they ask him exactly what the difference is between Zazzle and CafePress, and the best that Doerr can come up with is that CafePress can't do personalized stamps, while Zazzle can -- while also suggesting it's unlikely that CafePress will get approval to make customized stamps. It seems that Doerr has overestimated Zazzle's ability to use that particular feature as a competitive advantage. As has been widely noted, on the same day that Zazzle announced their custom stamps offering... CafePress announced a nearly identical program. There goes that competitive advantage.
Reader Comments
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however Zazzle
is a much better name than CafePress, especially when you're going for Silicon Valley venture money
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Re: however Zazzle
Well, CafePress raised plenty of money from Doerr's biggest competitor in the Valley, Sequoia, just a few months ago... so apparently that wasn't a problem anyway. In fact, it certainly has the feel of a copycat investment.
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What about Printfection?
What about Printfection.com, a much more direct competitor to CafePress than Zazzle.
Many of the same designs are showing up on CafePress and Printfection, indicating store owners are using both services. Not as much repetition on Cafepress/Zazzle.
Based out of Denver, might be a competitive advantage with a lower manufacturing cost structure. I think Zazzle is actually manufacturing products in the valley. This can't be cheap!
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What about Printfection?
What about Printfection.com, a much more direct competitor to CafePress than Zazzle.
Many of the same designs are showing up on CafePress and Printfection, indicating store owners are using both services. Not as much repetition on Cafepress/Zazzle.
Based out of Denver, might be a competitive advantage with a lower manufacturing cost structure. I think Zazzle is actually manufacturing products in the valley. This can't be cheap!
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Zazzle's real weakness compared to CP is their weak commission structure and terms of service about licensing/using the images on their site. Printfection has opportunity to be a player over time but really is the same concept except they have more products. It will be interesting to see what happens with the t-shirt and print on demand market in the next few years. Will there still be a place for Joe-Schmo entrepreurs to sell t-shirts or will it become oversaturated.
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In response to Casey, I think the only reason you see more cross selling between Cafepress and Printfection is because Printfection decided to duplicate the Cafepress service. People tend flock to what they are familiar with. Zazzle chose to go a different route, they didn't allow users to markup their products. Who would add a design to a site that they can only get 10% of the retail when they can add it to a site and earn $4.00 - $10.00 on it.
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Problem with both Zazzle and Cafe Press is that...
....they take away your exclusive rights and if you sign their agreement, you let them keep and use your design even if you quit their store or get shut down by them. CafePress has also been guilty of shutting down shops of people selling political designs they don't like. They are decidedly pro-liberal and pro communist designs and their money goes to liberal causes, which is fine if you support that... but they have a strong double standard. Google it and you'll see a lot of ex-cafe press shopowners who give testimony. The reason you are seeing cafepress designs show up on printfection is because people are in the process of moving over to PF after being dissatisfied with products and service from CP.
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