Kicker

Speaking of shedding skin...

A few of you may have noticed that I have a CaféPress store called The Cat and Cauldron. I have worked hard on it in the past few years and have managed to get it to the point where, though it is not a luxurious living, it does pay the bills.

But now I'm not so sure.

Yesterday we all got an email from CaféPress announcing a change in the policy regarding the CaféPress Marketplace, that big search engine of theirs. Starting June first, CaféPress will be setting the prices of products in the Marketplace at a set rate and giving the artist/designer a flat 10% commission.

See, now, this is how CaféPress has always worked: they have a product, say a white t-shirt, that they charge a set price for (they call it a 'base price'). This price includes everything on their end--the actual product, the labor involved in printing it, &c.,--plus whatever they need to make a profit. And then, the artist/designer, the person who has set up a shop with them, adds what they think their design is worth and what they think the market will bear.

So let's break this down. Let's take the example of that white t-shirt. For the sake of round numbers, let's say their base price is $14.00 (that's rather low for the vast majority of shirts, but, you know, round numbers). Let's say then that I add a $6.00 markup (which is about the usual) so that it sells for $20.00.

Under the old system, if I sell a t-shirt I then get $6.00. But under the new system, if that t-shirt sells in their Marketplace for the same price, I will get $2.00. That's one third what I was making.

Now I'm one of the lucky ones, in that I get 70% of my sales through my store, which will not be subject to the 10% rule; still, I'm figuring I stand to see my paychecks drop to 80% of what they were. Some people make 90% or more of their sales through the Marketplace and are now looking at not being able to pay their mortgages and medical bills.

Also, in reading people's stories over at the CaféPress forum (which is really only begrudgingly allowing the discussion there) I am realizing just how much of a Godsend CaféPress has been to people with disabilities. I had just thought it the perfect job for me since I'm an anti-social deeply anti-authoritarian late-sleeping hermit who can't stand the idea of a boss (you could charitably read that I suppose as an 'eccentric artiste' if you like); but I had not realized just how big a difference it was making to people who can't work the standard nine to five.

I am not sure right now what I'm going to do. The loss for me is not huge, though it is still significant; and the nasty moral I'm getting is that I should never have put all my eggs in one basket. Which is unfair, really. If I were working in an office somewhere, and it paid the bills, I would not be expected to have more than one job, would I?

I have already looked at other print-on-demand companies, and I imagine I will be shifting over to Zazzle sometime in the future. But it's a daunting prospect. I have a few hundred designs on, and this floored me when I did the math, some 10,000 products. I'm not going to be able to replicate that somewhere else overnight.

The kicker (and I do mean kicker, as in the phrase kicking someone when they are down) is that in their announcement CaféPress says:

5. How did CafePress determine the commission rate of 10%?

This decision was a combination of what was realistically affordable, what we thought felt was right, and what industry experts recognize as a fair design licensing fee. A 10% commission is lower than the average seller margin in the Marketplace, but fair – relative to current retail design licensing models.

I can think of a lot of four-letter words describing that percentage; fair is not one of them.

Trashholes

It was a lovely day here in New England, sunny and warm; and after attending to some errands I decided I would pick up some trash from the side of the road in front of my house. I do this, or try to do this, every year or so at this time, before the leaves come in and I can't find anything among the undergrowth.

I live on a fairly busy stretch of road. Though it's residential, and rural, my road is the only road into a part of my town that is otherwise cut off by a loop of the river. So if a car goes by once it goes by twice, if you know what I mean.

Now, my town has recycling, so the stuff I pick up has to be sorted before I can get rid of it. So, today, just for kicks, I thought I'd keep track of the crap I picked up. I only did about half the frontage today, which I'm estimating to be about 275-300 feet's worth, at least if the Google map scale on the satellite picture of my house is accurate.

And just what did I find?

Bulk-wise, it was about half bottles, cups, and cans, with the other half miscellaneous bits of junk like lottery tickets, candy wrappers, shopping bags, a good sized cardboard Dell box, a single purple latex glove, and a plastic VW hubcap someone didn't miss. That's bad enough. But when I broke down the bottles and cans, good Christ.

There were a total of 52 beverage containers that I could identify (if I found a hunk of styrofoam that was more than half of a cup, I counted it as a whole). Of those: 22 were liquor containers (42.31%), another 22 (42.31%) were from fast food joints, and the remaining eight (15.39%) were either soda or water containers.

Let's stop a moment, here. Let that sink in. Did you notice that?

42.31%, getting close to half of the bottles/containers/cans I found on the side of the road in front of my house, were ones that had held alcohol.

Keep thinking about that.

Now, ask yourself, where does stuff on the side of the road come from? Well, okay, true, some of it does blow in from the neighbor's when they don't pack up their trash well (which is I suspect where the Dell box came from). But bottles and cans? Don't blow around all that much (and shouldn't be in the trash in the first place since they a) are not burnable, the prerequisite in my town if the truck is going to pick it up, and b) they get returned for the deposit). This stuff, these alcohol containers, are most likely being thrown from peoples' cars. Alcohol containers. That many of them.

Let me tell you it freaked me right the fuck out.

It matches, if you remember, the number of fast food beverage containers I found. That means, or it sure looks like it means (I am not a statistician, after all), that people are just as likely to be barreling down my road sucking down a Bud Lite or Busch or fucking Christ, one of those 50mL bottles of the hard stuff--Wolfschmidt vodka or Jack Daniels or Goldschlager, as they are to be sipping on a Dunkin' Donuts coffee or a soda from Wendy's or McDonald's.

I find this really, really frightening.