CafePress.com Releases 15,000 Custom Postage Designs For Use by Webmasters

An image of the Custom Postage page on the CafePress.com website

2005-09-08 - Foster City, CA, USA: Customized products marketplace and micro-manufacturing specialist CafePress.com has released 15,000-plus Custom Postage designs for sale in the CafePress.com Marketplace.

What the deal means is that a webmaster can use any of the 15,000 stamp designs available from CafePress.com, market them on their website, and share the income from sales with CafePress.com, who process the order. The webmaster can also use their own designs as the basis for their custom postage offerings. Webmaster partners of CafePress.com can charge a premium for their custom postage over the face value of the stamps.

Custom Postage is the newest addition to the growing list of CafePress.com product offerings. This new development is made possible through a partnership between Stamps.com(R) and Cafepress.com. Stamps.com is the creator of PhotoStamps(R) - the popular form of postage that lets consumers turn their digital photos, designs or images into valid U.S. postage. This deal was the subject of an earlier report on this website.

"For the first time in history anyone can design postage and make a profit," explains CEO and co-founder Fred Durham. "Other companies have never offered quite the same opportunity to consumers or entrepreneurs. It's a new form of self-expression, and a revolutionary new retail opportunity."

Pets, original artwork, baby photos, military art and political images are among the 11 million unique products currently sold through the CafePress.com Marketplace. With more than 80 printable items including t-shirts, bumper stickers, calendars, baby bibs, messenger bags, the boundless imagination of CafePress.com Shopkeepers, and new designs added everyday there doesn't seem to be a limit to the retail opportunities.

"With designs coming from all walks of life, we are the biggest customization Marketplace on the web," says co-founder Maheesh Jain. This claim is credible because CafePress.com is a growing network of over 2 million members. "In one day we are releasing over 15,000 custom postage designs, it's an incredible number. With our release today and the limitless imagination of our Shopkeepers, I can only imagine where this trend will go."

The 15,000 images have drawn from artwork previously submitted by CafePress.com members. Some 750,000 of CafePress.com members operate about 1.4million websites.

Custom Postage can be used as regular U.S. postage to send letters, postcards or packages, and is currently available for the most common mail rates in denominations ranging from $0.23 to $3.85. Each sheet includes 20 individual stamps.