Zazzle

Last updated
Zazzle Inc.
Company type Private
Industry Internet, online retailing
Founded2005;19 years ago (2005)
FoundersRobert Beaver
Bobby Beaver
Jeff Beaver

Headquarters,
United States
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Robert Beaver (CEO)
Website zazzle.com
Zazzle
Type of site
E-commerce
Available inEnglish, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Swedish, Korean, Canadian French, Dutch
OwnerZazzle Inc.
URL zazzle.com
Launched2005
Written inC#/ASP.NET
[1]

Zazzle is an American online marketplace that allows designers and customers to create their own products with independent manufacturers (clothing, posters, etc.), as well as use images from participating companies. Zazzle has partnered with many brands to amass a collection of digital images from companies like Disney, Warner Brothers and NCAA sports teams. [2] [3] Zazzle claims to have over 300 million unique products listed on the site. It now one of most popular platform for customizing [4] apparel in the USA.

Contents

History

Zazzle was launched from their garage by Robert, Bobby, and Jeffrey Beaver, and went live in 2005. [5] The company received an initial investment of US$16 million in July 2005 from Google investors John Doerr and Ram Shriram, [3] and an additional investment of US$30 million in October 2007. [6]

The site was recognized by TechCrunch as 2007's "best business model" in its first annual Crunchies awards, [7] and has been noted by industry experts, such as B. Joseph Pine, for its easy-to-use technology. [8] It is based in Redwood City, California.

Zazzle.com offers digital printing, and embroidered decoration on their retail apparel items, as well as other personalization techniques and items.

Custom stamp printing

Starting in 2005, Zazzle offered custom stamp printing in a partnership with the United States Post Office (USPS). [9] However, on May 15, 2018, Zazzle stopped the custom stamp printing due to new regulations by the USPS. [10]

Font lawsuit

In August 2022, graphic designer Nicky Laatz sued Zazzle, saying that the company had secretly purchased a one-user license for her trademarked and copyright-protected fonts and then made them available to all of its hundreds of thousands of designers and tens of millions of users, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of profits for Zazzle from products that incorporated her fonts. [11] The lawsuit claims that Zazzle had recommended her font as their second most popular font, and that five of Zazzle's twelve most-popular business cards, as well as several of its most-popular wedding invitations used her fonts. [11]

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A personalised (or personalized) stamp is a postage stamp on which, for a fee, an image and/or text of the purchaser's choosing may be placed. The stamps vary from country to country, and while some are normal stamps with a personalised label on the left attached by perforations, elsewhere the stamps are more properly regarded as one-piece personalised meter stamps with a colourful design next to the indicia. Stamps produced by Zazzle.com for the United States, for instance, are one-piece, self-adhesive with die cut margins to emulate perforations, and visually very similar to normal United States postage stamps, except for the addition of an information-based indicia (IBI) encoded by little black and white squares along one edge. A serial number appears next to the IBI.

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References

  1. "zazzle.com Traffic Statistics". Alexa. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 15 December 2016.
  2. "About Us". zazzle.ca.
  3. 1 2 Olsen, Stefanie (2005-07-18). "Google investors find new project". ZDNet. Retrieved 2008-09-13.
  4. "Top 10 Popular Platforms for Customizing Apparel and Accessories". Styled. Retrieved 2024-01-26.
  5. Dishman, Lydia (2013-10-18). "How Two Companies Partnered To Turn Design-On-Demand Into High Growth Retail". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-12-25.
  6. Michael, Arrington (2007-07-27). "Zazzle rumor: big hedge fund investment". TechCrunch . Retrieved 2021-10-07.
  7. "2007 Crunchies: The Winners". TechCrunch. 2008-01-19. Retrieved 2019-09-12.
  8. Antonucci, Mike (2008-02-08). "Customize your Valentine's Day gifts". The Mercury News . Retrieved 2019-09-12.
  9. "Zazzle It". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
  10. "What Happened to Zazzle Custom Postage?". WeddingStamps.US. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
  11. 1 2 Baron, Ethan (2022-08-25). "Redwood City e-commerce firm run by family of Stanford grads accused of making fortune off stolen fonts - Trickery made Zazzle hundreds of millions of dollars, lawsuit claims". San Jose Mercury News .