Special Announcement: CaféPress Acquires Imagekind.com
Imagekind.com to maintain current business focus
Imagekind.com has been acquired by CaféPress, the leader in user-generated commerce. After months of discussion and consideration, we are thrilled to be announcing the news of this acquisition. There have been many positive changes here at Imagekind over the past couple months, but none more exciting than this. This partnership will allow your work to be visible to a continually growing number of CaféPress members (more than 6.5 million worldwide) and part of a combined product offering that will provide you greater visibility than ever before. We have effectively gone from a quickly growing online marketplace to the market leader.
Acquisition Q&A:
Q: Will Imagekind change its focus on art?
A: No, we will continue to build our community and feature our member artists and their unique work, while offering the very best printing, framing quality and assortment in the industry.
Q: Why did CaféPress acquire Imagekind?
A: CaféPress is continually looking for ways to deliver innovation and new merchandise to its community of over 6.5 million members. We represent a natural extension of this effort - it allows them to offer high end art solutions and for member artist to enjoy greater exposure.
Q: Will Imagekind start selling other products?
A: Imagekind is proud to be the industry leader when it comes to the highest quality giclee prints and posters combined with museum quality papers, canvases and framing options. We will maintain the focus on what we do best.
Q: What are CaféPress’ plans for Imagekind?
A: There are no foreseeable plans for any organizational changes as a result of this acquisition. Imagekind will remain in Seattle and CaféPress will continue to operate from its headquarters in San Mateo.
Q: Will CaféPress integrate the websites?
A: CaféPress and Imagekind have no immediate plans for integrating the two websites. We will be taking some time to learn more about each other’s communities and better understand the best path for integration for our customers.
Q: What is CaféPress saying?
A: Imagekind is great at what they do. In a very short time, they’ve built a successful business with an impressive community - we admire the business they’ve created and feel the synergy between the brands will combine to offer our collective users an unparalleled user experience.
An expanded assortment of merchandise for artists has been something our community has been asking for over the years. With more than 5 million high quality custom framing options, Imagekind allows CaféPress a fast path to delivering this service to our customers at the highest quality in the industry.
Imagekind, known as the best-in-breed print-on-demand art provider, is a perfect fit.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:11 am
An interesting development - I think I’m largely neutral on this one as I can see potential pros and cons.
I’ve referenced this post and commented on the acquisition on my art blog Making A Mark in this post CafePress acquires Imagekind - what next?
I’ll be waiting with interest to see what happens next!
July 10th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I was getting ready to sign up with CafePress this week. If we are members at ImageKind, is there a different process for doing this now? Or, does one just sign up with CafePress directly and do businss as normal with them?
July 14th, 2008 at 6:31 am
[...] more details, check out Imagekind’s announcements here and here or read CafePress’s blog post about the [...]