EGS frist thanks for your comments and insight. One of the things that has to be taken into account is the magnatude of complexity with a system like this.I gotta tell ya I am pretty disappointed with all of the T-shirt design tools on the market. With the exception of Advanced Artists FREE open source tool. It has not even gotten started yet and it's already looking good. I'm anxious to see how it shakes out.
I will first start off by saying it has been proven that an online design tool can be accomplished. If you don't think so, visit Custom T-Shirts - Design Your Own T-Shirts Online - Free Shipping! and play with theirs. I ordered a shirt last month and it was as seamless as it gets. I uploaded my company logo in Ai, it looked great on the design tool and when I got my shirt it was spot on. Yes, I understand I am giving props to my competition but hey, if the accolades apply...
I'm not sure the market has defined where this tool will fit in to the industry yet.
With Inksoft you have to pull teeth to upload a company logo. Yes they have a great tutorial on how to prepare your artwork in order to be successful, but really? Come on.......How many customers are going to go thru that to order a shirt? They can pop on over to the above mentioned and be done in the same time as it takes for them to contact the person who designed their logo - if they even know who it is - I'm tired just thinking about it. The band director at "your name" high school with their school mascot logo is not going to go and get their logo optimized. Period!
Deco does have a good idea when you upload your logo it askes you how many colors are in it. At least the price quoted to your customer will be correct even if there are other issues with Deco's pricing model.
As you can tell, I am FRUSTRATED at where the industry is. Partially because all of the companies are charging thru the nose like their products are "ready to go" when in fact they are far from it. Advanced artist "openTshirts.org" seems to be the only level headed business man who wants to make sure the product is ready to go...and even then it's FREE. I will tell you, however, if I could find a solution that works....I will pay for it.
Who created custom inks??? That's the one I want....for now.
Anyway, If you are looking to jump into this new area of our industry, I STRONGLY encourage you to first define how you are going to use the design tool in regards to your business platform. How are your customers going to use it? And then, make sure it delivers what you expect!!!!
I would love to here from anyone who is using a tool, which one, and how it works.
I called an inksoft "customer" to inquire how they liked it, and within an hour inksoft called me and said...."We heard you talked to our customer so and so."
What's up with that??? What customer would call the company and advise them that someone called to get a reference???? A bit weird if you ask me.
Best of luck to ALL the companies and their efforts, and to all the business owners looking to utilize them.
We are working that module and I have been thinking to put that disclaimer in there and in the shopping cart also. Just in case.@TOM - I think the MOST important element of an online design tool is the ability to upload their company logo or artwork. This is where it shines or fizzles.
Companies like CI or Zazzle have got it down.
The ability to convert to transparent background is crucial. I understand that the computer may not be able to identify how many colors are in the logo so it is CRUCIAL to allow the customer to input the color choice. I would even add a disclaimer that if a different color count is determined by an art department that price adjustments will be made.
I'm very impressed with your work so far and plan on implementing it once you have worked thru the different releases.
Thanks again for your contribution to our industry!
That's fully true and I'll agree to that. Printer companies have to care on customers first and drive the traffic to the online design tool, not the vice versa. The online design tool won't bring customer to site on itself.... sorry skipped
The online design tools are your barrier and you need to get one set it up and market it. You need your local customers looking to your site to design online not the nationals. You need your local customers looking to you and you need to provide them with the solutions for art, designs, templates and marketing both online and off line.
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I feel your pain. Over the last three years we installed and implemented OSS Designer, RSK, Pikiware, Inksoft and Deconet all in the hopes of having a site that offers on-line design capabilities but that does not look like all of the thousands of on-line design sites using the standard templates.I just want an online design tool that I can ADD to my existing website, with MY designs, and the items/apparel that I offer for decoration. I have spent countless hours talking and researching design tools and it always fizzles out because everyone is offering a "e-commerce package". I don't want another website, I don't want to pay a monthly/annual fee and then have to pay again for someone to "see if we can configure this to be used with your existing site. I don't want pre-packaged clip art, I don't want a tool that HAS to use a specific shopping cart, so it's actually a separate website within my website. Oh well, maybe one day
I don't understand your post. Why would I use Zazzle??I'd recommend Zazzle for ease of design tool. It depends on what you're willing to pay as Zazzle can be pricey depending on the quantity you need.
Actually, these design tools are very complicated. A lot of hours go into designing and testing and re-testing to get them to work simple and intuitive on the front side. There is no simple way to have an online design tool. You either spend the money and time to have someone design you a proprietary tool or you use something that is available to the public. IMO, if you already have a business and are looking at adding to it, something like Deconet looks to be a fairly easy way to get into the "online design" business. If you don't already have a business and want to start a business around an online design tool, then you either need to have a tool created or use an available solution. The other alternative would be to follow along with the OpenTshirt project and use that when it becomes available ..Which seems like it will be soon. They're even developing a design tool module that will integrate with Opencart. This is really a fantastic system, but like I said it isn't quite ready, yet. You can pretty much demo all the design tools available right now, and I think you will see a lot of them really aren't very intuitive on the front end. If customers can't figure them out easily, no one will use them. Deconet is fairly reasonable from a pay as you go perspective but none of them will be completely free. You have to consider the cost of art, fonts and graphics, too. Most of the art houses don't want their artwork online, so that really limits you. If it is all your own art work or you’re just having people upload a photo or graphic, that's fine. If you’re considering creating all your own artwork, expect to create at least 2000 or more pieces. Also, keep in mind even if you were to buy a solution outright, your still going to be responsible for populating it. Adding art, graphis etc isn't all as easy as you might think. Most of these platforms use some sort of Flash and php, so you'll need to know what your doing, setting it up and maintaining it. You really have to look at what you have or what you want to accomplish with you website. I think a lot of people want on online design tool because, They think it will generate business for them. This isn't true. You still have to generate the business to the website to use the tool. I know it's frustrating ..Good Luck!Hey guys im getting really frustated now , all i want is a single tshirt designer software ( like a template ) that i can modify and upload to MY website. HOW HARD CAN IT BE? i dont want those expencive programs with alot of fees.. any ideas?? i want it simple, i pay for it and i get all the needed codes etc
