Just days after POD Printfection announced an increase in base prices Cafepress makes a similar announcement. The increases are not all that big so I doubt they will have a huge effect on sales.  Well, not the t-shirt sales. Magnets and buttons on the other hand have had dramatic increases in price (up to almost 100% in one case) which I am sure will affect the sales. In this regard I expect many shopkeepers will suffer but I imagine that Cafepress will make much more money than before. In the short term at least. During election season buttons are surely a hot item but come November, when Barack Obama is elected president (crossing my fingers) there will be a big downturn in button sales.

I have read the arguments that Cafepress haven’t increase their prices in 9 years with some exceptions but I don’t buy that as a reason to increase them now. Cafepress has been growing and growing and economies of scale dictate that their costs have been falling. Of course after 9 years purchasing power has decreased and increased fuel prices are affecting everyone so that does have to be taken into account. I suspect the reason for the increase is that growth at Cafepress has slowed due to increased competition from other PODs and t-shirt companies which are popping up all over the place. See List of PODs. If this is the case it may be better to decrease the prices to attract  more and more people to Cafepress rather than other PODs but it is ver rare in my experience to see price decreases.