Selling t-shirts online

Factual Questions
1

A client of mine has a side project he’s asking me to help him with. He wants to sell t-shirts online from now through Christmas. One option is to create a website and have a bunch of shirts produced. The other option, with which I am not very familiar, is to use a company like Cafe Press. You pay them a flat fee per shirt and they produce and ship them. You get $x per shirt sold. As I don’t think he’ll sell more than a couple or few hundred (it’s for a small audience), I think something like this is a better way to go. There are also companies like Zazzle who do the same thing.

My questions are:

  1. does anyone have any experience with selling things through one of these companies?

  2. Can he charge whatever he wants? They charge $15 for a shirt, but I’ve heard that have something like “fair trade” or “fair price”. Is there a limit as to how much over the $15 he can go?

  3. If he’s on Cafe Press with his own “store”, might his item generate sales through other, similar Cafe Press stores?

  4. Is his design protected through the company. Or can someone just steal it and put it on a competing website.

  5. How private is his whole involvement? (It’s not his main business and would like to keep it on the down low.)

Anything else he/I should know?

Thank you.
Oh Great, Wise, and Powerful Mods, if this is not the right forum, feel free to move it. Thanks.

2

…bump of hope…

3

I’ve used CafePress before. For small runs like you are talking about they are probably your best bet. The quality is so so but it’s a LOT less hassle than registering a domain, setting up a website that allows you to take money, getting a state licence to resell, ordering blanks, getting them to a silk-screener, paying the set up charge, picking them up, packaging them, paying shipping, dealing with returns, etc. All of that won’t save you any money either with the quantities you are talking about.

4

Wow-- I just realized that if I ever have a question like this, I can start a thread, and then click the links that’ll magically appear!

Seriously, just ask the question and Google Ads show up – this time for cafe press and zazzle.com.