Cafe Press

Print-on-demand giant CafePress empowers individuals, groups, businesses and organizations to create, buy and sell customized and personalized products online using the company’s innovative and proprietary print-on-demand services and e-commerce platform.

Operating from a 400,000-square-foot global headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, CafePress was founded in 1999, and is widely considered the grandfather of customization printing. Today, CafePress touts an impressive catalog of more than 800-billion unique gifts with roughly 20,000 new products added each day. CafePress’ selection of products includes more than 650 uniquely customizable products that span apparel, home, wall art, stationary, case and cover categories. To accommodate the growth of both CafePress’ business-to-business and consumer facing divisions, CafePress has invested in 50 Brother GT-541 printers since 2007. Those same machines continue to operate today running an average of 12 hours a day seven days a week during peak season and are credited with producing roughly 180,000 individually printed products each year.

“The reliability and durability of Brother printers are essential for our success,” says Chris Freeman, Director of Engineering at CafePress. “During the month of December, one Brother GT-541 printer will generate upwards of 3,300 print-on-demand products in a single week, and with tens of thousands of orders coming in every day, we need absolute assurance that our printers will perform at the highest levels.”

CafePress considers Brother an essential partner in the customization arena due to the flexibility and consistent quality of its printers. The flexibility of Brother GT printers has supported the firm’s product catalog expansion and the consistent quality of the Brother printers has had a noticeable impact on an overall reduction of misprints.

The adaptive nature of the Brother GT-541 and the GT-782 printers has also been a welcome partner in servicing CafePress’ robust collection of premiere licensed properties and broad collection of partnerships that include popular entertainment brands, well-known non-profit organizations and a number of the world’s largest e-commerce retailers.

To meet demand during peak holiday periods, CafePress adds a significant number of seasonal production workers. Because Brother printers are user-friendly, temporary staff is easily trained on how to use the printers and able to maintain the fast workflow production.

“They are impressive in that they are really are no fuss. They consistently work,” says a CafePress worker who operates a GT-541 printer.

CafePress sees its partnership with Brother as a relationship that will continue to grow and develop in years to come. CaféPress management looks forward to being introduced to new products and innovations.