I have been a fan of Cafepress, the online premium vendor, for their ability to grow a business around other peoples desire to make money off of their crazy ideas turned into a t-shirt, mug or bumper sticker. Their interface is so simple that just about anyone can have a t-shirt shop running on the CafePress site in minutes. However, one of their competitors is apparently taking it one step further and releasing an API into their product customization engine. Zazzle is enabling content owners from around the web to turn their digital content into physical products. I have not tried it yet but it does sound encouraging when I can carve out an extra minute in my day (I seem to have a t-shirt idea a minute)….I’ll give it a shot.
The Zazzle Product Engine is an effort to enable product creation for the masses by opening Zazzle’s customization tools and technologies to third party websites. such as images, designs, photos and text — into custom products such as t-shirts, mugs, posters, cards, real U.S. postage, and more. The key to this program is in the API strategy because it enable tech-proficient entrepreneurs to build products that Zazzle does not expect. I love API strategies because they are almost passive OEM strategies without the expensive business development teams that go with them.
Zazzle claims that is has secured partnerships with websites employing the Zazzle Create-a-Product API, including Dogster.com/Catster.com (a competitor to our own PawSpot.com), TheFreeDictionary.com, TheFamilyPost.com and more. In particular, Dogster.com/Catster.com and TheFreeDistionary.com have recently deployed the Zazzle Create-a-Product API and their customers can now create and order branded mugs, t-shirts, and real U.S. postage directly from their sites.
To participate, Zazzle provides a URL linkover-based API where websites simply specify the source of images and text within special links to Zazzle.com, and customized products — such as apparel, posters, mugs, and real U.S. postage — are automatically generated. Users can then further customize these products with fonts and colors using Zazzle’s design tools, and proceed to order or share with friends. Upon ordering, Zazzle’s proprietary manufacturing systems take over and the products are created on-demand within 24 hours, and then shipped to the customer. In addition, websites have the ability to create product templates allowing them to incorporate their logo or additional default designs on the products. Lastly, Zazzle provides monetization for these websites with a referral fee on all sales of products created through the API.
Looking through the Zazzle products, I still think the most creative producers are over at CafePress but this may help Zazzle out a bit.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Related posts:
- Web3.0 = Thank you, Now Please Leave Me Alone If you have been following the latest undercurrent to the...
- First Annual Blogger Awards – Free Trip to Any Music Festival MelodyTrip.com, an online community focused around music festivals has announced...
- MIT Enterprise Forum – Brave New Web 2007 I recently attended The Brave New Web conference put...
- Busy, Busy, Busy – Launch of 2 New Websites! It’s been a busy year so far…and it’s only April. Most...
- Webinno13 – Growing, Growing, Growing! It was an excellent turnout at the webinno13 event last...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Leave Your Response
You must be logged in to post a comment.