New Facebook App. to help Cafepress shopkeepers increase sales

This week, meet another member of the LinkedIn T-Shirt Professionals Group. Watch for more member profiles as members reveal valuable secrets, share their expertise, and offer advice.

• Brian Buser
• Co-Founder, Shirt Shack
• Brian Buser's LinkedIn Profile
• http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=18119779549



What segment of the T-shirt industry do you work in?

"Marketing of Cafepress shops."


Tell us about your company and your role in it.

"Shirt Shack is a Facebook application that allows people to easily import their Cafepress designs into Facebook. Users of the app promote the designs by displaying them on their profiles and sending them as virtual gifts to friends. This is similar to the extremely popular apps Bumper Sticker and Pieces of Flair. Additionally, the designs in Shirt Shack link to marketplace pages in Cafepress, which enables interested app users to buy the shirts directly. So users’ Cafepress sales will grow as their designs are shared throughout Facebook."


What makes you/your company remarkable?

"Shirt Shack is bringing together the very active Cafepress and Facebook communities in a way that has not been done before. Facebook has over 175 Million users; each of which is a potential t-shirt buyer. But before Shirt Shack, there was no easy way for Cafepress designers to promote their designs within Facebook."


From where do you draw your inspiration? Motivation? Ideas?

"We're just solving a need in the marketplace. The other Shirt Shack Co-Founder, Tom King, and I both have Cafepress shops and use Facebook daily. We figured there should be a way to promote our designs to the Facebook community. So, we designed an app that would not only accomplish this, but also be fun for the average Facebook user who is not a t-shirt designer."


What are you looking to find in the LinkedIn T-Shirt Professionals group? What types of people do you want to connect with?

"The app has only recently been released to the public. So we are calling on the t-shirt design community to help build up the collection of designs in Shirt Shack. Early users of the application will have a chance to have their Cafepress designs highly visible in the app."


Is there anything else you want the world to know about you or your company?

"Our goal is to create an app that helps designers increase sales in Cafepress. We'd love to hear your feedback of any kind. People can get in touch with us in our Facebook group. Everyone is welcome!"

Join the group here: Shirt Shack

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Members are welcome to complete the interview and may be featured here. If you are a T-Shirt Professional looking to make new business connections, join LinkedIn and look us up for details!

The One Man Corporation: A blog to bookmark

You know it's good marketing when I hear about something because a friend told me about it.

I mean, isn't that the most trusted source? "I heard it from a friend."

Well, Mike from The One Man Corporation got it right when he sent out an email to his competitors (other Cafepress shopkeepers) teasing us with some valuable information and an invitation to forward it to more friends. And so, a friend forwarded it to me.

It worked. I got the email and actually didn't delete it! That's a feat in itself. I hate forwards. I always delete them. But, hey, if the first few lines grab my attention, I'll read on.

So check him out. I'm going to add his blog to the sidebar here for future reference. He's got some great tips on making money from home, valuable resources, and insight that can only be learned from experience. After all, he does work from home. And he's sharing his experiences for everyone to benefit from.

ModPillows featured in Daily Candy today!

I love candy. But what I love almost as much as the real thing is my daily dose of what's "the next big thing" in my in-box delivered fresh and free by DailyCandy.com. And today, I'd have to say, Daily Candy's got me more excited than a box of chocolates on my lap!

For the past couple of years I've enjoyed their cleverly written reviews & links to little known websites with fabulous products I often bookmark to buy later. I've often wondered, "would they ever consider featuring one of my products?"

Once again the phrase, "It never hurts to ask" has paid off...big time.

I happened to email the folks at Daily Candy at the beginning of the year to let them know about my new pillow shop, ModPillows.com and had since forgotten about it, continued to build my site and add designs.

Now you can't pay to be in Daily Candy, nor can you bribe them with gifts (it even says so on their web site!), so imagine my surprise when their Dallas editor emailed me a couple weeks ago, saying Daily Candy wanted to do a story on my ModPillows. I just about fainted on a nearby ModPillow!

So after a nice phone call from one of their fact checkers last Friday I was excited to know my creations would be featured in the Dallas edition of Daily Candy on Monday, April 16th, 2007. Today's the big day and I want to shout out a big thanks and virtual hug to the folks at Daily Candy. I'm honored ModPillows was chosen to join the ranks of your past picks.

ModPillows as Art Prints: Expanding to ImageKind

I wanted to offer my ModPillows designs as fine art prints with custom framing available, so I decided to open up a few galleries over at ImageKind.com and see how they do.

ImageKind's specialty is print-on-demand fine art prints. Their selection of frames, artwork, sizes, paper, and canvas materials is amazing and their web site has a nice "upscale" feel about it. And from what I've heard from other Cafepress shopkeepers, the quality of their printing is impressive.


It's quite easy to set up a gallery. The only draw back is you can only upload one image at a time. But there are other ways to get multiple images to them via FTP or by mailing ImageKind a CD of your artwork.

Rearranging art in your gallery is a cinch with a drag and drop feature. Like opening any online venture, you do need to market it so people can find you. ImageKind does pay for Google Ads and I've noticed when I Google myself now, I get ImageKind ads with my name, linking right to my galleries, so that's pretty cool.

If anything, it's another way for me to market my designs on two different sites by offering products that coordinate. They compliment each other nicely.

What has your experience been with ImageKind so far? Any input or tips you want to share?

Designing Backwards: Start with the market

I'm working on a little business experiment and thought I'd share.

It may not seem backwards to marketing people start with the market, but in the Cafepress community of designers, there seems to be a common school of thought regarding design:

1. Think up a clever design.
2. Put it on a T-shirt.
3. Promote it and sell it.

This is not a bad formula and works well with cartoon characters, clever text phrases, and funny comic strip art which all work well on T-shirts, mugs, aprons, or caps. I even use the above formula for my T-shirts and do quite well. And most Cafepress shopkeepers, for that matter, design something clever, put it on a shirt, and then either wait to see if it sells, or maybe pay for a little advertising.


Cafepress' throw pillow

But what about pillows?

Cafepress sells them, you know. I'm not sure how big of a seller they are, as most of what I see in the marketplace on their pillows are cartoons, T-shirt phrases (which work best on T-shirts), some fine art and photography (which usually work best on framed prints or posters). And speaking from personal experience with BusyBodies I rarely sell pillows. I feature them "just in case" but I know my stick figures don't lend themselves well to home décor as well as they do to T-shirts. I did not design BusyBodies with pillows in mind.

Now to think backwards...

I thought I'd open up a new Cafepress Premium shop from a different angle, appeal to a different market, and design with a new perspective:

1. Determine my market and figure out places and ways I will promote my products.
2. Consider one product family to feature.
3. Design specifically for this one product and market segment.
THEN promote (see step one)

It's a fresh way to approach designing for Cafepress and so far so good. The market I've been wanting to tap into for a while is that of modern home interior & product design (step #1), and people who appreciate a bargain.

But to narrow it to a product (step #2), I was specifically interested in decorative throw pillows. I LOVE throw pillows but am usually disappointed at the price tag. Sure, it's often worth it as many of these great pillows are made of things like hand printed silk or embroidered wool (and I admit to having some throw pillows custom-made to match our livingroom a few years back), but sometimes I just like the pattern on a pillow and want it on my couch for under $110. Heck, under $20 would sure be nice, especially since trends are always changing, and my pillow addiction has already costed me a bundle.

That was the "ah-ha" moment. Why not come up with my own modern pillow designs? Then sell them for under $20 through Cafepress, and market them to the IKEA shoppers of the world who appreciate good design but don't want to pay an arm and a leg for it.

And ModPillows was born.




OK there really are more than three steps to all of this. Somewhere after "step 1" I bought a domain, reserved a Cafepress shop name (by opening a basic shop for free), decided on a color pallette for my first few collections, completed several designs (222 to be exact!), created a logo for my shop, created graphics for the web site, uploaded and tagged all of my images, upgraded my shop to a premium shop, customized my shop, ordered pillows to photograph, and put the shop together piece by piece and it continues to grow.

Now time to start spreading the word, which is where I'm at right now. Being that I thought this through at the very beginning, I have some ideas of how I'll go about it. I will keep you updated on my progress. It will take some trial and error and I'll continue to massage the look of my site and it's designs and marketing methods, but it's a good start and I'm excited to see what comes of it.

Do you have a unique method or approach to designing for Cafepress?