« Previous post
Next post »

December 22, 2006

Why Doesn’t CafePress Use Flash?

Michael Arrington

50 comments »

There are many sites that sell customized casino chips (just do a search), but we haven’t found any that have an online design tool to allow you to create the chip itself. TheChipLab has take the extra step and has created a very nice Flash tool for designing your own casino-grade chip. The creation tool is very flexible and layer based. It’s not as powerful as new online image editor Fauxto, which is also Flash based, but it does the job.

So my question is, why don’t CafePress and Zazzle implement Flash tools to help people create customized products as well? Zazzle’s Ajax tool is pretty nice and allows some basic resizing and movement of images, plus the addition of text. Imagecafe is stuck in the nineties - their product creation tool has next to no flexibility at all. Neither are anywhere near offering what TheChipLab does.

Adobe has created awesome tools that tiny ecommerce companies like TheChipLab can use to provide a cool service to customers. It’s time for the VPs of Product at CafePress and Zazzle to wake up and reinvent their products, too. Adobe has done all of the heavy lifting, all they have to do is implement it.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 5:34 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. TheChipLab « Technically Speaking

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:42 am

  2. Spamroll

    December 22nd, 2006 at 8:21 am

  3. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » なぜCafePressはFlashを利用しないのか？

    December 22nd, 2006 at 12:13 pm

  4. Drive:Activated : Christmas spirit, Drive:Activated style

    December 23rd, 2006 at 7:42 am

  5. » Chiplab In Tech Crunch

    January 9th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

  6. Zazzle Rumor: Big Hedge Fund Investment | Tekjuice.com

    August 2nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm

  7. Zazzle Rumor: Big Hedge Fund Investment | Tekjuice.com

    August 2nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Ryan Merket

    December 22nd, 2006 at 5:49 am

    Maybe because no one wants to wear a shirt that looks like your poker chip. You’re right Adobe has done the heavy lifting - it’s called Illustrator and Photoshop.

  2. Mike

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:07 am

    What’s being described for all these sites (and I’m sure for many more) is the same problem. I’m surprised there isn’t a basic flash toolkit or component that would let people implement something like this. Maybe someone else knows of one?

  3. Drew Anderson

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:18 am

    Michael,

    I don’t think we are too far away where fully flexible customizable product creation tools are everyplace. I imagine larger companies like CafePress and Zazzle are working on implementing Flash in their customization tools, although thecorporate process might be getting in the way of having these sorts of tools ready for the public. The slow adoption of apps like this gives smaller faster thinking businesses a nice edge when offering product. With a little research, you will find more of these types of applications on sites that may not have so much red tape in the way. I’ve worked on several Flash apps this year that are going to be implementing these types of customizapplicomalools in 2007. It won’t be long before this becomes the standard.
    Next year at this time you might be writing about why companies like CafePress and Zazzle don’t offer desktop versions of their services.

  4. friendship7

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:18 am

    because flash is annoying?

    it’s great that these sites aren’t overloaded with cruft like flash. a small edit to your article explaining how annoying it would be if they were flash-driven would help.

  5. Andy

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:22 am

    Because graphic designers, who are big users of these custom product services, would design the logo or motif in Photoshop and upload the visual as a .jpg or other high res format rather than use an AJAX interface for design. This goes to the heart of what should and should not be implemented in AJAX. Design is best suited to client applications and always will be. Several years down the line we will laugh at how clunky some AJAX design applications were that eventually need a richer client UI.

  6. S.Z.

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:22 am

    Flash everything. Adobe’s acquiring Flash is really a nice deal. Maybe I should buy some ADBE.

    Tech Tutorials: http://www.hotcoding.com

  7. donald

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:36 am

    Why do you ask lame questions?

  8. Rex Dixon

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:38 am

    I agree with Andy above, that people that are talented want to design their own logo’s and artwork in Photoshop or some offline program and just upload the file.

    I do like the chip though! Really Vegas flashy! :)

    Rex

  9. Blake P.

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:39 am

    CafePress could buy us and be up tomorrow for the right price :)

    http://www.youdesignit.com

  10. Adrian Keys

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:40 am

    “it’s great that these sites aren’t overloaded with cruft like flash. a small edit to your article explaining how annoying it would be if they were flash-driven would help.” - friendhip7

    And for an additional edit to explain what a Casino Chip is…would give me more time on TC instead of having to go search elsewhere…

    Well come to think of it I know what it is but in the context here and being so late for some Web 2.0 terminology, I am lost….cheers!

    http://www.jollyjo.org

  11. Janson

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:44 am

    There’s a reason, and a very valid one.

    Nobody wants to learn how to use Photoshop in order to make a custom tshirt. The interface used by Fauxto is powerful but seriously, as a casual consumer looking to slap a photo on a t-shirt and print it, this sort of interface will scare them off.

    They’ll prob do well to keep both versions on site, the simple Ajax version and the more advanced Flash version.

  12. anendel

    December 22nd, 2006 at 7:06 am

    I do agree with your post Michael. It would be a huge improvement if Cafepress would implement an intelligent Flash application to manage shops, shirts, images etc. (not only product creation)
    Once upon i time i started selling on CP, i had a lot of time and i didn’t mind going through many pages and forms. The whole process wasn’t user-friendly at all. Luckily, there were some improvements on the whole process, but in the mean time, i got a job and much less time. It’s very hard to manage all stuff and sacrifice precious time. (unless you make $1,000 each day on CP, which i don’t)

  13. T.J. Crowder

    December 22nd, 2006 at 7:07 am

    I’d much, much rather that CafePress did a decent Ajax designer than a Flash one. CafePress is truly painful to use in several different ways, but it doesn’t need a closed, proprietary tool, it just needs open standards like CSS, ECMAScript, DOM, and XHTML with a dash of XmlHttpRequest thrown in for good measure.

  14. Mark Day

    December 22nd, 2006 at 7:24 am

    CafePress seem to have a problem with ease of use issues. I may be particularly slow, but all the search terms I used to try to find the info I wanted in the backend came up blank. On the bright side, they do have live tech support. I ended up calling a live person on a friday evening and having them walk me through the process, which from their perspective can’t be particularly cost effective. The CS person agreed that the backend was not particularly intuitive (although they may have been humouring my rantings by that point….)

    Still, end result? Some fine “smiley intervention” merch at http://www.cafepress.com/markdaycomedy for the emoticon-junkie in your life…

  15. Allen

    December 22nd, 2006 at 7:25 am

    Spreadshirt (www.spreadshirt.com), a company out of PA, does this with clothing — their editor is fairly robust and flash based.

    I’ve used their services several times, and was always happy with the results. Images and text can be placed on the garment using layers and relative positioning, and they have various fonts/fabrics/colors to choose from.

    Since discovering Spreadshirt, I haven’t gone back to Cafepress.

  16. Jon Williams

    December 22nd, 2006 at 8:04 am

    I’m going to avoid parroting what has already been said about the fact that people WANT to design on their desktops but instead point out that Flash suffers from a lot of performance / reliability issues on smaller platforms. Even running the latest Flash on OS X / Firefox has me running into pages that have their responsiveness hosed by a nasty .swf. Why alienate people further or go into the trouble of maintaining a Flash and non-flash interface?

    Anyway, I think the jack-of-all-trades; master of none adage applies here as well. No one wants to be stuck in a cold war of cloning photoshop and illustrator features in Flash application, just to try to keep up with other people doing it. The only way to win is not to play.

  17. thejim

    December 22nd, 2006 at 8:21 am

    http://www.spreadshirt.com is the way to go. Much more robust tools and higher quality products than the generally crappy stuff you get from Cafepress.

  18. Rick

    December 22nd, 2006 at 8:22 am

    Hi,
    I’ve used a site called Spreadshirt.net (German based but do have different country versions I think). They have a Flash based tool for creating the designs for shirts which is quite good. You still have to upload EPS files for your own graphics (which are then vetted for compatibility) but once they’re in it’s really easy to make shirts. I use it because they server the UK and are pretty good prices and delivery.

    I have no affiliation with Spreadshirt other than I have a store on the site I run and I am a happy customer!

  19. ami

    December 22nd, 2006 at 8:30 am

    errrm cafepress does use flash: look at their nice click shirt site (but heavy loading time) -> http://www.click-shirt.com/
    and thanks for the positive feedback about us :)

  20. Ryan Stewart

    December 22nd, 2006 at 10:21 am

    “CafePress is truly painful to use in several different ways, but it doesn’t need a closed, proprietary tool, it just needs open standards like CSS, ECMAScript, DOM, and XHTML with a dash of XmlHttpRequest thrown in for good measure.”

    You’re joking, aren’t you TJ? Flash is a much better choice for something like this from both a user standpoint and a developer standpoint. Go check out Fauxto and try to imagine that using a dash of XmlHttpRequest.

  21. monkeypox

    December 22nd, 2006 at 10:41 am

    isn’t this what apollo is supposed to solve? despite the fact that it’d be a stand-alone app, an apollo cafepress implementation would be cross-platform with a (hopefully) standardized set of tools for basic image manipulation.

  22. gumby

    December 22nd, 2006 at 11:15 am

    Sorry Ryan Stewart, but flash violates so many UI and web paradigms it’s not funny. Plus you can’t use it from most phones (certainly not from any phone with a battery you don’t want to charge all the time). Stick to nonproprietary standards and you’ll have the widest customer base _and_ the best product lifetime.

  23. billy

    December 22nd, 2006 at 11:28 am

    It sounds like Michael’s question is “why use open standards on an open platform (Web) instead of proprietary standards on an open platform?” Could they possibly squeeze out more functionality with Flash? Sure. But they’d be locked into the Adobe upgrade/price raise/etc. cycle. And they’d lock out potential users as a side effect (i.e. Recent Flash versions are not available on Linux, where they lag a few years behind. Not to mention Palm, etc.)

    Why close even more of the Web? Why save the Web from Microsoft only to give it to Adobe?

  24. Amit

    December 22nd, 2006 at 11:34 am

    I’ll tell you why they don’t use Flash. Cafepress has the most ego centric, aggressive and idiotic management team. I interviewed for a program manager position there and the “Director of Program Management” was extremely rude over the phone. She was under the impression that Cafepress was going to grow infinitely and thus needed to prove herself to me by asking irrelevant software questions. Plus, she insisted on telling me how great she was and how her background served her for her job. I hope Cafepress burns and crashes.

  25. ED

    December 22nd, 2006 at 11:41 am

    I was going to comment on here but the comments are more comment worthy. I just can’t believe how many people are commenting on here just to try to sound intelligent. Arguing does not always make you sound intelligent, especially when your (billy’s)argument is “But they’d be locked into the Adobe upgrade/price raise/etc. cycle” As an independent developer that is a non issue, you think CafePress factors that in? Considering billy, himslef said, CafePress would get more functionality if they did - That says it ALL.

    Usability is the most important aspect of any software product or web site. Period. And why do they not use flash, I have no clue. - Good Point.

  26. Bret

    December 22nd, 2006 at 12:15 pm

    As Ami pointed out, there is a Flash-based CafePress tool, called ClickShirt:

    http://www.click-shirt.com

    It’s fairly new and hasn’t been publicized much, so not many people have heard of it yet.

  27. Survival Shows

    December 22nd, 2006 at 12:36 pm

    Ya’ll need to unbunch your panties and get a beer because you sound like wired high schoolers rambling on.

  28. Robot Dean Martin

    December 22nd, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    I didn’t even know that there were sites that allowed you to make customized poker chips. I’m glad I do now. That’s awesome.

  29. mutt

    December 22nd, 2006 at 2:27 pm

    Asking “Why use Flash” is sorta like asking an architect “Why use wood”?

    First, the architect is making a choice of materials to fit the needs of the project. Do the properties of wood satisfy the practical and aesthetic needs of this specific design? Should I use steel instead? How about stone?

    Second, the question “Why use wood”? is less interesting than the question “Okay, wood is the best choice for this application, but what type of wood should I use”?

    My point is, a forum like this should be asking, “Okay, if I have made the decsion to use a platform that uses the Flash plugin, which one… OpenLaszlo, Flex 2, ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3?

    Come on, let’s take this dead end “I hate Flash / I love Flash” religous war up to a higher, more interesting level ;-)

  30. willy mo pena

    December 22nd, 2006 at 4:01 pm

    arrington is a nerd

  31. David Mackey

    December 22nd, 2006 at 4:48 pm

    Mmmm…Customized casino chips, just what I always needed. But yes, it would be great to see a redesign with fuller feature sets of sites like CafePress and Zazzle. I hope your suggestions are heeded. :-)

  32. Marcello

    December 22nd, 2006 at 5:17 pm

    Maybe my memory is hazy, but doesn’t 99dogs use a Flash editor? They seemed a lot better than cafepress when I was looking into such companies a few years back.

  33. billy

    December 22nd, 2006 at 5:35 pm

    ED –

    Your rebuttal avoids the point. There are two tradeoffs here:

    1) Maximize Audience (W3C standards) vs. Maximize Features (Flash/proprietary)

    2) Independent Development Organization vs. Vendor-Captive Organization

    I’m arguing that maximizing audience while maintaining flexibility of their development tools is a good thing for most development shops. And developers seem to agree to some extent: witness the success of multi-vendor Java. If they can do the job in a way that maximizes audience while staying off the Flash upgrade treadmill, I think the burden of proof is on the other side. Why use Flash? Are there competitive threats that would make them choose to reduce their addressable market and lock into a specific platform?

    Flash may be a useful tool for some, it is NOT the Web.

  34. James

    December 22nd, 2006 at 5:49 pm

    if they used flash, they might be as sweet as:

    http://www.stagr.com

    style and graphics from the founder of Zappos.com

  35. Kosso

    December 22nd, 2006 at 6:22 pm

    I agree - and also why doesn’t http//blograffiti.com use cafe press? v.2 on the way for users. cafepress would be great for one-offs. no cheap though.

  36. johnbtes

    December 22nd, 2006 at 9:50 pm

    Forget the chips, I want customized cards. How about a “magic seeing eye” deck. Hmm.

  37. Bert Grantges

    December 23rd, 2006 at 7:18 am

    A buddy of mine just implemented a psuedo design tool for his T-Shirt site.

    http://www.innertee.com

    still has some quirks but its getting the idea there. Its not a full fledged design tool, but more along the lines of what some of the other folks have been commenting on. It allows you to upload your own illustrator files to put right on the t-shirt.

  38. John Dowdell

    December 23rd, 2006 at 7:45 am

    “Magic seeing eye deck”, gotcha covered, right here:
    http://www.ellusionist.com/ord.....htm?cat=40

    Beautiful stuff, but no empowering RIA customization, sorry.

    (I’m getting a kick out of the comments too… next thing you know they’ll be putting fluoride in our water or something…. ;-)

  39. Jason

    December 24th, 2006 at 9:42 pm

    I’ve seen a preview of the Stagr.com website and it’s Flash based widget for designing your own shirt is pretty impressive.

  40. boffo

    December 24th, 2006 at 11:14 pm

    Cafe Press tried to create exactly such a flash-based tool about a year ago … and failed miserably. I heard about it from an informed source. They couldn’t get their shit together, and ended up ditching the entire project in the end. Total jokers.

  41. joe

    December 27th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

    I think the reason they don’t do the designer thing is they are targeting communities that want to monetize their user base…. like rock bands, organizations, etc. They probably see more money in this space than having product builders for one-offs. the whole one-off thing is pretty difficult to build and I’m guessing would be fairly low revenue.

    I personally think they should create an API that lets anyone use them as a back end merchandise shop… this way anyone can create any interface they want and use CP to do the credit card/fulfillment. Companies like Zoomr/BubbleShare, comic strip sites, etc could hook in easily via an API.

  42. Rama

    December 29th, 2006 at 3:15 pm

    Great Question Michael!

    CafePress should provide tools that enable their users to customize the Shirts with ease. CP has a few different designers and one of them uses flash.

    It’s important to understand though that people with diverse skill sets visit CafePress and they need different kinds of tools to be successful -.

    a) A Seller with specific design ideas normally prefers using industry standard tools like Photoshop to create their designs and prefer a simple interface to upload it and tweak it online. The main site caters to these Shopkeepers. Simplicity is the key there.

    b) Some Non Tech savvy folks also prefer a simple interface. If the tool provides too many options and asks too many questions it gets overwhelming. CafePress’s Create and buy flow addresses their needs.

    c) And then of course there are folks whose creativity rises with RIA tools. Flash or Ajax or MS Atlas…I love playing with these technologies and I feel empowered when I get to use them. For such folks their is http://www.click-shirt.com. It is a Flash based tool created by Bret, a developer in CafePress Developers Network. It’s in Beta. It hasn’t been publicized much yet.

    CafePress recently announced their Content APIs (www.cafepressdn.com/api/content) so people can create design applications suitable for their users using any technology. The designs can be customized using SVG (an industry standard). The APIs are restful, raw XML.
    A recent addition is http://cafepressdn.com/tool/TextDesigner. This tool is using MS’s atlas framework.

    Technology is a tool (a great tool) to solve a problem, not the end. Its important to understand the customers strengths and limitations and provide solutions using the appropriate technology.

    Happy New year everybody!

  43. PowerPete

    February 10th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    Our site: http://www.uniprint.se Click on “PrintStyler™” and start design or upload your own design to the shirt.

    /Peter

« Previous post
Next post »