CafePress, Inc. is an American

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" o ...

retailer Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...

of stock and user- customized on-demand products. The company was founded in San Mateo, California, but is now headquartered in

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

along with its production facility. In 2001, CafePress.com won the People's Voice Webby Award in the Commerce category.

Business model

CafePress.com sells T-shirts, bags, mugs, wall clocks, calendars, and a myriad of other products. Customers can upload their own graphics design, logo or text, which will be added to the product by the company. CafePress.com also offers

print on demand Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other documents, packaging or materials) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While oth ...

services for wall art and

stationery Stationery refers to commercially manufactured writing materials, including cut paper, envelopes, writing implements, continuous form paper, and other office supplies. Stationery includes materials to be written on by hand (e.g., letter pape ...

. The site also allows the user to have a virtual CafePress "shop" including an online storefront and website hosting,

order management An order management system, or OMS, is a computer software system used in a number of industries for order entry and processing. Electronic commerce and catalogers Orders can be received from businesses, consumers, or a mix of both, depending on th ...

, fulfillment, payment processing, and

customer service Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but in the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that ...

History

CafePress, Inc. was founded as a privately-owned company in 1999 by Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain. As of February 2006, the site hosts over 2.6 million online shops with over 200 million products. As of March 2011, CafePress.com has more than 13 million members and over 325 million products are available on the site. In July 2008, CafePress acquired the specialist photographic art printing business

Imagekind Imagekind is a commercial website that prints and sells images created by participating artists on-demand. It also includes a social networking and marketing site for artists and their customers. It was founded in Seattle, Washington in 2006 by A ...

, and in September 2010 acquired photo-to-canvas company Canvas On Demand to their platform of brands. In June 2011, CafePress filed with the SEC to raise up to $80 million in an initial public offering. On March 29, 2012, CafePress debuted at $19/share on the NASDAQ under

ticker symbol A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. In short, ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters (generally Latin letters ...

PRSS. The stock hit an intraday high of $22.69/share. On April 30, 2012, CafePress announced that it would move its corporate headquarters from San Mateo, California to its production facilities in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

, at a cost of $16.5 million. Louisville and the state of Kentucky had offered

incentives In general, incentives are anything that persuade a person to alter their behaviour. It is emphasised that incentives matter by the basic law of economists and the laws of behaviour, which state that higher incentives amount to greater levels of ...

as high as $10 million for the move, up to $1 million per year for ten years. On September 28, 2018,

Snapfish Snapfish is a web-based photo sharing and photo printing service owned by Shutterfly based in San Francisco, California. History Snapfish was launched in 1999 by business partners Rajil Kapoor, Bala Parthasarathy, Suneet Wadhwa, and Shripati A ...

agreed to acquire CafePress for approximately $25 million, purchasing all outstanding CafePress stock for $1.48 per share in cash. The buyout was completed in November.. In February 2019, CafePress suffered a data breach. The exposed data included 23 million unique email addresses with some records also containing names, physical addresses, phone numbers, and security question/answer pairs. Over 180,000 records contained social security numbers. A 2022 FTC complaint alleges that CafePress was negligent in its security practices and failed to notify customers promptly after it became aware of this breach, waiting until after security researchers disclosed it publicly. On September 1, 2020, it was announced that PlanetArt had acquired CafePress from Snapfish/

Shutterfly Shutterfly, LLC. is an American photography, photography products, and image sharing company, headquartered in Redwood City, California. The company is mainly known for custom photo printing services, including books featuring user-provided im ...

Brands

CafePress, Inc. has its flagship brand, CafePress.com. CafePress, Inc. also partners with other businesses to provide licensed content on their site, and power online custom shops for large companies, such as

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

Urban Outfitters Urban Outfitters, Inc. (URBN) is a multinational lifestyle retail corporation headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Operating in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, select Western European countries, Poland the United Arab Emirates, K ...

, and

Peanuts Worldwide ''Peanuts'' is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz. The strip's original run extended from 1950 to 2000, continuing in reruns afterward. ''Peanuts'' is among the most popular and i ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cafepress 1999 establishments in California American companies established in 1999 Companies based in Louisville, Kentucky Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Internet properties established in 1999 Online retailers of the United States Retail companies established in 1999 Self-publishing companies Self-publishing online stores 2012 initial public offerings 2018 mergers and acquisitions