Artists For Fair Play

In these tough economic times it is particularly distressing to hear of one company’s virulent, and highly questionable, actions against many millions of artists.

Artists, CafePress insisted through the years were partnering members in a community. A community CafePress itself has laid ruin to. Artist members of that community also laid ruin to by CafePress.

Artists For Fair Play is currently investigating the business practices of print-on-demand company CafePress against its Shopkeepers, numbering 6.5 million, according to CafePress’s own reports.

CafePress Shopkeepers are independent owners and/or licensees of Intellectual Property in the form of graphic art and/or text slogans applied to CafePress blank products, such as T-shirts and various apparel items, mugs, buttons, stickers, posters, etc. Many Shopkeepers pay an ongoing fee to CafePress to have a shop on its website with more available features than its free shops.

June 1, 2009, CafePress changed its Terms Of Service on the Shopkeepers, whereby it price-fixed the CafePress Marketplace: the main landing portal of the CafePress website where shoppers enter, largely. It negated the Shopkeeper’s, till then, self-set profit margin in favor of awarding a mandatory licensing fee, which at no time did CafePress enter into discussions with the Shopkeepers concerning this sweeping change. All Marketplace sales made now earn the Shopkeeper ten-percent (10%) of CafePress’s fixed retail price. This change represents, for many Shopkeepers, between a sixty- (60) and eighty- (80) percent decrease in earnings.

At time of going to press, Shopkeepers can continue setting their own retail prices and receive their own marked up profits, known as commissions, in their own shops hosted on the CafePress website. However, CafePress has since removed all links to Shopkeepers’ shops, replacing them with links to the Shopkeepers’, now called Designers, inventory locked within the Marketplace.

We are researching whether CafePress has coerced its Shopkeepers into a price fixing conspiracy, a criminal violation of federal anti-trust statutes. By remaining opted into the Marketplace, Shopkeepers are, by proxy, agreeing to allow all competition to be consummately excluded between Shopkeeper and Shopkeeper in the Marketplace, in favor of a fixed price on a per product basis, set firmly and, apparently, solely by CafePress. However, it is not at CafePress’s sole discretion, but rather at the unwitting coalition of the Shopkeepers still opted into the Marketplace, who are technically and legally agreeing (conspiring) to prevailing price fixing practices.

CafePress, in all fair play, offers Shopkeepers an option to not play under its reversed Terms Of Service, that is: Opt out of the Marketplace. Therefore, Shopkeepers not desirous of such a massive income cut, as the 10% licensing fee now represents, can instead go for the no show no sell no fee option. A take it or leave it deal. Given the fact that many Shopkeepers have spent many years creating designs for their shops, building and custom coding their shops, paying fees for their shops, optimizing their shops for the search engines, marketing their shops, continually encouraged by CafePress to tag their images (designs) with the benefit of receiving better customer search results in the Marketplace. Moreover, therein lays another point of possible legal contention:

Once actively encouraged to populate the Marketplace with designs specially tagged for search engine optimization (tags which CafePress also uses to market itself via AdWords ads and product feeds to Google) Shopkeepers are now presented with a reversal of the original Agreement (Terms Of Service.) CafePress has enticed its Shopkeepers with an Agreement, only to take that original Agreement away and replace it with an alternate, and mostly undesirable, one. Thus, additional to our inquiries into price fixing, we are researching bait advertising, akin to bait and switch, as it applies to deceptive marketing practices, as this decision to introduce such a wholesale change in the CafePress-Shopkeeper contract was likely to have been in the planning and drafting stage well in advance of its implementation.

In conclusion: For some Shopkeepers, CafePress was their sole income; for many, CafePress provided a necessary source of extra income that covered their bills; for most, CafePress has robbed them of their economically viable artistic expression. Directly quoting from their own website, CafePress in a headline writes: “Self-expression spoken here.” Yet, on their Shopkeeper-only forum, Shopkeepers are consistantly berated by Moderators and assorted CafePress diehards when they dare to express their own true selves in criticism of how CafePress conducts its “community” business. Equally, at no time, has any of the management and/or staff at CafePress ever uttered a word on this radical and destructive change in contractual Agreement. So, much for self-expression, and so much for companies confusing a community of artists with village idiots readily accepting whatever their overlords opt to dish out!

We continue to research and monitor CafePress’s business activities, and will report further on our findings. Meantime, if you’ve got anything to add to this, or just want to comment, please feel free to do so, as – unlike CafePress has proven time and again – self-expression is not only spoken here, but is positively encouraged and nurtured at Artists For Fair Play.

Corporate Headquarters
CafePress.com
1850 Gateway Drive, Suite 300
San Mateo, California 94404
Phone: 650-655-3000
Toll Free: 877-809-1659
Fax: 650-655-3002
Email: info@cafepress.com
URL: http://www.cafepress.com