And, We’re Back
So, I took a couple years off from maintaining the supersite, instead just sending wastedinc.com to cp.wastedinc.com, known also as CafePress.com/wastedinc.
For a while, that made some sense: since we’ve been outsourcing to CP since 2001, the overwhelming majority of our stuff can be found there. But there’s an old adage about eggs and a basket; and, in the absence of the basket itself, things were about to become a little scrambled.
I took that metaphor too far, didn’t I. Let’s catch up….
CafePress.com started up in 1999 [technically, about four years after Wasted, Inc. started up; but that's irrelevant] as approximately the first fulfilment service of its kind. By 2001, when we started using them, they’d expanded to—I dunno—maybe a dozen types of things they could print jpegs onto, which worked since that’s about what we’d been looking for. A couple of jpegs we’d uploaded in 2001 are still available somewhere at CP, I think; so we’ve been in a comparatively unique position to watch CP evolve over the last eight years, becoming for better or worse what they’re beginning to be now.
Now, CP have something like 120 types of things onto which they can print jpegs and, more usefully, .pngs: black shirts and FlipMinos and so on. That’s the good news.
The bad news, as mentioned below and a couple years ago, is that they’ve also been expanding and modifying their infrastructure, and frankly getting greedy. In a couple days, they’re adopting a soviet pricefixing scheme because…I might as well just show you….
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1. Why is CafePress setting the pricing in the Marketplace? Inconsistent pricing on the same product makes shopping confusing for customers. Customers need to know that they can find quality designs at a great price – always. Also, by taking control of the pricing, we can ensure we’re seasonally competitive and that we can respond to market conditions along with other online retailers. It also lets us offer timely promotions and sales that can maximize conversion during key seasonal retail periods. |
The shorthand: You the Customer are Too Stupid to grok why a shirt wacomed over the course of hours, days, or weeks could possibly outcost a shirt reading NOT MY PRESIDENT in Times New Roman. Something we at Wasted don’t quite agree with [a case could be made, I suppose: there are some painfully stupid people on this planet], and therefore something we don’t particularly support.
Also this, from the same inhouse FAQ:
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2. Why change the commission structure for Marketplace sales only? We’ve recognized that the economics of the Marketplace are different from the shop platform. With the Marketplace, we spend a great deal of resources to drive quality traffic through marketing and search engine marketing. However, with the shops platform, shopkeepers invest time and money to generate their own traffic and sales. By separating Marketplace pricing from Shop pricing, we are able to maintain competitive base prices for shops – while avoiding the need to ask our shopkeepers to help fund growing Marketplace traffic. The 10% commission structure gives us the ability to take a more proactive role in managing a good retail experience, and to make a continued investment in customer acquisition (search engine marketing, advertising and other marketing initiatives) that will grow our Marketplace. |
The shorthand there: We at CafePress.com are tired of making less than ninety percent before taxes and shipping, and figure You the Little People will put up with this midrecession paycut because, hey, we’re CafePress.com and we have no real competitors.
Which just isn’t true. They have competitors; their competitors’ backends suck and annoy me all to hell, but they have competitors.
And so, we’re back to the supersite, retaining the outsourced services of our uppity soviet overlords, and acknowledging that their competitors are in cases better at printing up specific product types, and are generally better at understanding a freemarket economy…which is ironic, since one’s in HongKong.
In any case: for the moment, everything’s still pretty much about CP here. The next step is to upload and install the new blogueware skin, which is easy enough [notwithstanding monumental miscalculations in its design], followed by less easy a task of splitting up sources: PrintFection.com’s ability to print black shirts on both sides, zazzle.com’s ability to make skateboards, et cetera.
Probably won’t have all this done tonight. Might have it done this year. But it’s all near the top of the whiteboard, so it’s officially at least as important as KILL EVERYONE.
Keep an eye on the site. There should be more changes soon….
—Gremlin