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This year I finally sat down and started working on some "creative" shirts. I have been looking at setting up a store on CafePress and seeing how that worked out. My first designs were Valentines oriented and I ordered some for my wife and daughter. Hence the heart themes.
I especially wanted to see how their dark shirts would come out. Early last year, when it was in Beta, I had tried it and received a horrible print. It looked like it had been washed 50 times. Recently I had read some posts on here which had said that it was now out of Beta, and that the prints were much better. I do want to throw this disclaimer out: This is MY experience with it, other people may experience different results.
The overall print looked better than my first experience. Being a graphic artist that works for digital printers, I am used to color not being exactly as seen on screen, and there were some issues with that, but I think it fell within the bounds of being acceptable. The reds were a little more orangey, and I think the blacks could have been more saturated.
I did face some, what I feel to be, serious quality issues. The first was that the print was out of register (or blurred). In this close up of the wing you can see the "ghosted" image. It was also very obvious in the text.
Second, it showed clogged print head banding (looks like maybe the Magenta head), thirdly (and a big one in my opinion), it was off center of the neck about a half an inch or more (maybe Lou could send them a T-Square-It ).
One weird side note was the white area that appeared to the top right of the heart image.
This was no where to be seen on my original file, except when I went to flatten it and export it to a ".png". No matter at what magnification I look at it, there is nothing there, but as soon as I flatten it, this shows up:
It is barely noticible, but it came out full force in the print.
Now I had a white shirt done as well, that didn't look too bad. Once again, I think the colors could be a little better and I think it was off center a hair.
I emailed them and they were quick to respond and apologize. They are reprinting it at no cost and sending it out. I was trying to get these by Valentines day, which probably won't happen. I will follow this up with the results from that.
From what I have heard they are using Kornit DTG units to print these. I have seen other DTG units at trade shows that have printed way better than this. My main gripe is "quality control". Especially when looking at having a store there. I would hate for someone to order my design and get it looking like these, and return them and I lose a sale.
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The original Thread Killah!™ Heavy Metal Art and more @ www.deathisgain.com
I've been selling pretty successfully on Cafepress for the past few years and I sold a lot of dark shirts with very few returns. However, I finally got around to ordering a few test shirts from the other places and was surprised by how much better Zazzle's dark printing is. I just posted a few scans on my blog; Zazzle's color reproduction is better, the image is sharper and is not flecked with other colors like the Cafepress print.
Better or worst?
It's relative to who gets the shirt.
Returns are an inevitable part of business. It's going to happen (even with diamonds and pearls).
I say plant yourself into whatever service that you choose (try a few) and grow as that fulfillment service grows! At the current rate of improvement, we won't have the same complaints a few years from now.
As I stated before, here are the results of their redo that I received yesterday. I had only complained about the black print, but they actually reprinted both shirts on the ticket. They said that I would have them by the 20th, but I was surprised to seem them so soon.
Overall, they are much, much better. I was right about the magenta being out, as these are more robust when it comes to the red color and I didn't see any banding. Also the mysterious white blob didn't appear on this batch.
There isn't any registration issues, or blurring.
They still look like there is an issue with centering. The one on the black shirt even looks like it may be crooked. These, by far, are much better. But I wonder how much money CafePress might be losing, with out some better quality control in place.
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The original Thread Killah!™ Heavy Metal Art and more @ www.deathisgain.com
I also ordered some shirts of my own for a Gaming convention and noticed the random color flecks in the other colors. Is that customary to DTG, mostly the white areas seemed to be almost filled or flecked with reds and blues...
__________________ INTEGRAL APPAREL - "Color outside the lines" Spawned Ware: :Malicious Intent:: Spring/Summer Line
I also ordered some shirts of my own for a Gaming convention and noticed the random color flecks in the other colors. Is that customary to DTG, mostly the white areas seemed to be almost filled or flecked with reds and blues...
Not that I've seen.
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The original Thread Killah!™ Heavy Metal Art and more @ www.deathisgain.com
Robert, your experience was a lot like mine. I did a baseball character and ordered it to see the quality and I had the same problems. The image was blurred, the colors where off, it was off center, and the image was off center from the underbase. I had a great experience with customer service as well. She was very apologetic, said that this rarely happens and was quick to send out a replacement. I definitely have no complaint about them. Apparently, it happens more than they'll talk about.
The replacement was better but still not like my artwork. The fullfilment route fits my budget a lot better but I don't want my customers getting an unsatisfactory product even if the will replace it with a slightly less unsatisfactory shirt.
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
That's why I question about quality control. In the long run it would save them money, and face. As far as I understand there are people operating the printers, and it should only take a few seconds to look the shirt over. I wonder how many prints they do in a day.
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The original Thread Killah!™ Heavy Metal Art and more @ www.deathisgain.com
CafePress dark prints: My first impression 
). 
One weird side note was the white area that appeared to the top right of the heart image. 
Heavy Metal Art and more @ 
Re: CafePress dark prints: My first impression 
