For CafePress, it's all about getting their customers to spread the word.
The site offers on-demand manufacturing of all manner of knick-knacks -- coffee mugs, t-shirts, mouse pads, hats, lunch boxes and more. Customers create and upload their custom graphics, which CafePress will print onto any of these items.
This type of on-demand manufacturing is relatively common on the Net, but CafePress takes it a step further. They enable customers to build their own Web page on the CafePress site, selling the knick-knacks CafePress imprints. The sales transactions from these customer pages are handled by CafePress.
The advantage -- from CafePress's standpoint -- is that each of its customers is working to drive traffic to CafePress. Instead of spending a lot on advertising, the site relies on its own customers. "If you open a store with us, you want everyone to know about your store," CafePress Chief Executive Maheesh Jain notes.
This viral marketing "is built into the model of our company," he says. "We've spent very little money on the marketing of our service to bring in new sellers." Jain says that over 700,000 e-stores have been opened on CafePress since its founding in 1999.
Riding Waves
The site's viral marketing builds on itself. Once shoppers go to the stores, they realize, "'Oh, I can start my own store,'" Jain says. Indeed, the majority of its stores have been set up by members who found CafePress through other members, he adds.
To create this word-of-mouth advertising, the site rode many of the great Internet pop culture waves of the recent past. In the site's early days, "we went out of our way to find headline clients that already had traffic or brands, to give us exposure," Jain says. In 1999, for example, they set up a CafePress store with Mahir, the Turkish man who went on Letterman after his "I kiss you" site made him an Internet cult figure.
CafePress has worked with political groups of many persuasions, imprinting many items for the Howard Dean grassroots campaign and for a Republican site, FreeRepublic, during the 2000 election recount. The site worked with many organizations selling merchandise to raise money for the Red Cross after Sept. 11. (CafePress donated a portion of the base price for this.)
At this point, the site has reached critical mass: the Alexa site rating service indicates that CafePress's rating is around that of the 600th to 700th-ranked site on the Web, Jain says.
Variable Mark-Up
The San Francisco-based site charges its customers a base wholesale rate. Customers then add whatever mark-up they think the market will bear. The average is about 20 percent, Jain says.
Allowing CafePress to stay viable, its base prices are close to retail: A cotton t-shirt goes for $16.99, a coffee mug for $10.99. At this level, storeowners have to sell a lot of merchandise to make significant cash -- all the better for CafePress.
The benefit for storeowners is that they never have to pre-purchase inventory. They merely upload a design, create a site on CafePress and work to drive sales. CafePress charges no upfront costs.
| Vital Statistics |
| Name: |
CafePress.com |
| Founded: | 1999 |
| Sales/revenues: | Undisclosed |
| Content management/storefront system: | Proprietary |
| Database backend: | Microsoft SQL Server |
| Visitor analytics system: | WebSideStory HBX |
| Hosting provider: | Verio |
| Payment solutions: | Changing vendors at press time |
| Number of employees: | 150+ |
| Number of tech staff: | 20 between IS and development |
| Key strategies: | • Guerilla marketing
• Users incentivized to promote site
• On-demand manufacturing |
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