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Rodney · October 30th, 2008

It seems like the Print on Demand world is just bursting with new product launches and innovations these days.

Zazzle, who originally launched in 1999, announced today that they now offer *real* custom embroidery on demand for their merchants. I say real because CafePress launched the "embroidery like" service called Infinistitch earlier this year.

Unlike the CafePress infinistitch product, Zazzle's embroidery offer requires that each design be "digitized" before it can be embroidered. Like traditional embroidery, the digitizing process only needs to be done once per design and requires a small fee to be paid by the merchant which covers the digitizing cost (in Zazzle's case, the digitizing fee average will be about $10-$20)

Zazzle also offers a cool "Video" feature that allows sellers and customers to see how the final design will look like as an embroidered image (see full article at techcrunch as the embroidery page at Zazzle seems to be taken down for now)

Source: TechCrunch via T-ShirtChat

Here's a page with some embroidery from Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com/zazzleembroidery

Adam · October 30th, 2008

Pretty big news! Can't wait to play.

Girlzndollz · October 30th, 2008

That's great, Rodney, thanks for posting this. I watched the video of the stitching, that was really cool. That fee is not bad for digitizing. I want to look into it more because I am wondering if you get to keep the digitized art after the order is made, or if they keep it on file.

But I just wanted to say how cool this is.

Adam · October 30th, 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Girlzndollz


	That's great, Rodney, thanks for posting this. I watched the video of the stitching, that was really cool. That fee is not bad for digitizing. I want to look into it more because I am wondering if you get to keep the digitized art after the order is made, or if they keep it on file. But I just wanted to say how cool this is.

I'm pretty sure they will keep it BUT you can reuse it on any apparel - of course their apparel.

t_shirtfort · November 4th, 2008

The embroidery looks cool but they expect shopkeepers to pay for having the privilege of having it embroidered, and it isn't cheap. I am not going to pay 50 plus dollars to have a design converted to the embroidery format on the hope that it will someday sell.

Especially since I put a lot of designs on the cafepress free embroidery like patches and none of them have sold.

Rodney · November 4th, 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by t_shirtfort


	The embroidery looks cool but they expect shopkeepers to pay for having the privilege of having it embroidered, and it isn't cheap. I am not going to pay 50 plus dollars to have a design converted to the embroidery format on the hope that it will someday sell. Especially since I put a lot of designs on the cafepress free embroidery like patches and none of them have sold.

That doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation. It's your design that you want to sell.

Customers paying for digitizing is pretty standard for the industry.

lizziemaxine · November 4th, 2008

Very interesting. I didn't see this information but may not have read enough, but what kind of stabilizer would be used (tearaway, cutaway, polymesh), and what kind of thread (rayon, polyester). These things can make a difference to how happy your customer will be with the purchase.

MizzBella · December 19th, 2008

I was excited about the idea for embroidery until I received a quote. Unfortunately my sales per month match the cost of embroidery so I will wait a few months until I accumulate enough traffic. I'm also disappointed that some of the items such as sweatshirts are only available for embroidery and not screen printing.

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Zazzle offers custom embroidery through their Print on Demand service