Printerview with SoothedByRainfall on CafePress
This is the 2nd in our series of "Printerviews". The last one was a
printerview with Amorphia Apparel on SpreadShirt. This time we're talking with Derby regular
SoothedByRainfall about her experience with
CafePress.
Printer Stats (cheapest shirt / cheapest dark shirt / shipping prices)
$8.99 / $18.99 /
$5.00. All shirt prints are Direct-To-Garment (which CafePress calls "
Direct Printing").
How did you get into t-shirt designing?
I studied art in college with a focus on illustration. I've yet to attempt a career as a freelance illustrator but I now that my daughter will be starting preschool, I'll have more time to devote to it. Meanwhile, I had all these paintings and illustrations and designs languishing up in my attic and on my hard drive and one day I thought, "maybe I can make some money off of these things online somehow." So I started up my CafePress shop which motivates me to make more and more designs.
What t-shirt competitions have you participated in?
So far, just
Threadless and the Derby but I plan to give
DBH a shot in the near future as well. I really enjoy the challenge and the feedback I get from these contests and at the very least I end up with more designs for my shop and/or portfolio.
How long have you had your shop?
February 20th was my shop's first anniversary.
Could you give me a ball-park number of how many shirts you sell?
Heck, I'll tell you the total: 140 items (shirts/hats/bags etc) with "Make Everyday Earth Day" being my best seller...which to be honest was something I cobbled together rather quickly around that holiday last year since I saw it was a popular search topic in the CafePress marketplace.
How long did it take for things to start to take off after you started the shop?
I don't know if I can really say that things have quite "taken off" yet, but my shop more than pays for itself.
Any advice to people opening up print-to-order shops?
Check out
statcounter.com . It's a free service that allows you to generate a code that you can insert into your website that lets you track traffic to your shop. Pretty neat!
Any comments on print quality?
The colors are quite faithful and although very fine details can get lost, I've generally found the overall print quality to be fairly good.
