Maybe it’s because it’s the holiday season, but it seems impossible to me not to like San Francisco-based GoodStorm. It’s a competitor to Kleiner-backed Zazzle, and CafePress – basically they let you set up shop and sell items with your logo on it.
As with all of these services, they do all the hard work – producing and shipping the item, and collecting the money. All the seller has to do is market the shop, set prices and collect their share of the money.
GoodStorm was founded by Yobie Benjamin and August Capital’s Andy Rappaport in October and launched on December 14, 2005 (there are good pictures of the team at that link as well). Their business model is designed to cater specifically to nonprofits. They keep only 30% of the profits on a sale (giving the rest to the seller), and also donate a portion of profits to charity. Like I said, it’s hard not to like this company.
Currently they are working with sellers one-one-one, but will eventually launch a self service store creator.
The company is built on the Drupal open source content management system. GoodStorm says they will be donating chunks of code back to the project as well.
Stefanie Olsen at CNET wrote about Goodstorm earlier this week and has additional information.
Hey Mike, thanks for posting about these guys. I really hope things work out for them since, as you pointed out, their business model sounds a little too good to be true!
I know that I’ll be working with them to set up a Bar Camp store as well as my own for my shirts. I also would love to see them become the de facto provider for open source projects. We’ll see!
Chris, Awesome, I can FINALLY get a Bar Camp tshirt.
I think the killer in this space would be a place that made really good, high quality goods to order. The percentage to charity thing sounds nice, but I would like to know what the percentage is. Also imagine that a company which made actually premium goods could donate even more to charity!
good site, good company. when mentioning the competitors, you could mention http://www.spreadshirt.com as well.
lukasz
(from spreadshirt)
you mean, like CafePress, they do the work of creating really crappy screens that fade rapidly and have terrible reputations with t-shirt afficianados?
It hurts my ears to know the entire “print on demand” t-shirt industry has a reputation for poor quality because of the low-quality heat transfers used by the early companies in this industry.
Recently there have been huge advances in digital printing and now the best print on demand companies are using what’s called “Direct to Garment” printing. It shoots ink directly onto the shirt (no transfer) and makes a very high quality print almost indistinguishable from 4 color process screen printing.
In fact, this new printing process is so revolutionary I believe it (coupled with the efficiencies of the Internet) will turn the entire screen printing industry upside down within 5-10 years. However, in order for this to happen it’s important for companies like Spreadshirt and Printfection to shed the image that all online printing companies produce low-quality product. I know Spreadshirt’s “flock” printing is great quality, and I know our printing is top notch as well.
I hope some of the newer and seemingly more quality-conscious companies in this industry can turn around the general perception most people have about CafePress and similar companies having low quality. I think some competition in this space will bring out the best in everyone, and I know our company is going for the customers who actually care about their printing quality. Not everyone has low quality… I promise you!
-Casey from Printfection.com
You can perform digital printing on textile products with umadeup.com
On Monday, August 19, 2009 my liaison, Mr. Michael Phelps, contaced Zazzle.com about promotional items that Zazzle could market using our book cover for a logo. I was very impressed by their line of products and I saw this as a way to promote our book and we were intent upon purchasing some T-shirst and hats with our book cover on them for my wife and daughter to wear for an huge up and coming book signing opportunity we’re scheduled to do in Perryville, Kentucky this October. We were let down the next day when we received an E-mail from Zazzle’s product reveiw team stating that our product, A Dark and Bloody Ground, contained content which was deemed unsuitable for Zazzle and further could be harmful to their reputation. The only thing on our book cover that could be construed as “unsuitable” was a Confederate flag…Our book is about the American Civil War and displays not only the Confedretae flag but the United States flag as well. This is a part of our heritage and our history and I cannot for the life of me understand why we cannot display the historical images of this country without being perceived as racist or at the very least, “politically incorrect.”
We have since written to Zazzle and requested a complete explanation as to their rejection of our book cover design. I believe that to simply ignore our request would be completely degrading and we shall continue to press them for a response. Hey Zazzle; the ball is now in your court!
we were intent upon purchasing some T-shirst and hats with our book cover on them for my wife and daughter to wear for an huge up and coming book signing opportunity we’re scheduled to do in Perryville, Kentucky this October. We were let down the next day when we received an E-mail from Zazzle’s product reveiw team stating that our product, A Dark and Bloody Ground, contained content which was deemed unsuitable for Zazzle and further could be harmful to their reputation. The only thing on our book cover that could be construed as “unsuitable” was a Confederate flag…Our book is about the American Civil War and displays not only the Confedretae flag but the United States flag as well. This is a part of our heritage and our history and I cannot for the life of me understand why we cannot display the historical images of this country without being perceived as racist or at the very least, “politically incorrect.”
We have since written to Zazzle and requested a complete explanation as to their rejection of our book cover design. I believe that to simply ignore our request would be completely degrading and we shall continue to press them for a response. Hey Zazzle; the ball is now in your court!