CafePress Purchases Imagekind
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In a move that has taken the print-on-demand industry by surprise, t-shirt giant CafePress has purchased the fine art site ImageKind.
Rumors abound concerning the purchase…. according to some sources, CafePress beat out rivals Zazzle and Art.com by paying as high as 15-20 million dollars.
So now what? Will ImageKind disappear completely? Will they continue to operate as a seperate entity? What about the affiliate program?
My guess? Absorbing the company into CafePress completely will be made easier because ImageKind does not do it’s own framing in-house. I don’t think the ImageKind brand will survive and the existing SAS affiliate program will be discontinued to combine everything into CJ. New York affiliates may find themselves with yet another set of walking papers.
I also suspect that the recent rash of subdomains that CafePress has created are going to be used to organize a bit more and pull Imagekind’s artwork onto their site. Check out http://art.cafepress.com, http://gifts.cafepress.com and http://t-shirts.cafepress.com. Revamp in the making?
At this point it’s all speculation. What do you guys think?
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3 Comments
July 8th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Holy cow… I really hope they don’t just dissolve IK, and I’m really not looking forward to IK switching over to CJ for affiliates, I hope it doesn’t all happen that way because I’m both an affiliate of them and a contributing artist. This is insane. hrmph
July 8th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
It is my hope that the Imagekind brand would survive. I believe that customers will be more tempted to purchase a $500 print from a stand-alone site that specializes in fine prints than from CafePress.
That being said…. CafePress is going to do what they feel is best for their business.
Even IF they decide to operate both companies as seperate entities, I strongly suspect that they will move the IK affiliate program to CJ. Some have mentioned that they wonder if the IK program might move in-house, but I doubt that…. CP has already been down that road once and I don’t see them returning to it with a different branch of their company.
It makes business sense to keep all affiliate programs together… as bad as I hate to say it, if it were my company, I would want to combine affiliate programs.
And again… it’s all speculation at this point… CafePress may simply leave Imagekind alone and allow it to operate as it has. Hopefully, CafePress/Imagekind will make a statement clarifying a lot of issues soon.
July 8th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Pssssttttt….. looks like Imagekind is safe… for now… http://www.podforyou.com/cafepress-welcomes-imagekind