Zazzle is an American online marketplace that allows designers and customers to create their own products with independent manufacturers (clothing, posters, etc.), as well as use images from participating companies. Zazzle has partnered with many brands to amass a collection of digital images from companies like Disney, Warner Brothers and NCAA sports teams. Zazzle claims to have over 300 million unique products listed on the site. Zazzle was launched from their garage by Robert, Bobby, and Jeffrey Beaver, and went live in 2005. The company received an initial investment of

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

16 million in July 2005 from

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

investors

John Doerr L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the Pre ...

and

Ram Shriram Kavitark Ram Shriram (born 1956/57) is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is a founding board member and one of the first investors in Google. He was earlier employed by Amazon, working for Jeff Bezos. Shriram cam ...

, and an additional investment of

30 million in October 2007. The site was recognized by ''

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

'' as 2007's "best business model" in its first annual

Crunchies The Crunchies was an industry award given out from 2007 to 2017 by several technology blogs to the Silicon Valley companies and venture capitalists they cover. The awards have been sponsored and co-hosted by blogs such as GigaOm, TechCrunch, Vent ...

awards, and has been noted by industry experts, such as B. Joseph Pine, for its easy-to-use technology. It is based in

Redwood City, California Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a ...

. Zazzle.com offers

digital printing Digital printing is a method of printing from a digital-based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small-run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large-format ...

, and

embroidered Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen on c ...

decoration on their retail apparel items, as well as other personalization techniques and items.

Font lawsuit

In August of 2022, graphic designer Nicky Laatz sued Zazzle, saying that the company had secretly purchased a one-user license for her

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...

ed and

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

-protected

fonts In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a " sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

and then made them available to all of its hundreds of thousands of designers and tens of millions of users, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of profits for Zazzle from products that incorporated her fonts. The lawsuit claims that Zazzle had recommended her font as their second most popular font, and that five of Zazzle's twelve most-popular business cards, as well as several of its most-popular wedding invitations used her fonts.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zazzle 2005 establishments in California American companies established in 2005 Companies based in Redwood City, California Companies established in 2005 Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Online marketplaces of the United States Internet properties established in 2005 Retail companies established in 2005 Self-publishing online stores