Anita (a long-time tapir fan with interesting stories) sent e-mail on September 5:Thank you so much. My tapirs & T-Shirts just arrived & they are
mighty cute---Anita
Just a note on our tapir t-shirts and totes. We had considered having our shirt and tote bag designs transferred over to our CafePress tapir store because it would be easier to manage the inventory. However, as of now, we've opted to keep the old designs on the original system, which is to have them screen printed and keep them in stock at our shop. Our printer does beautiful work, and the quality of the shirt material is very good. We're very happy with them. It sometimes means we're out of an item you order and we have to backorder it, and it means we bear the cost of carrying inventory that hasn't sold yet (think lots of sizes for each design). It seems worthwhile to us at this point. With CafePress, we can deliver more designs, which are printed as-needed and delivered from CP directly to you. Cafe-Press can also offer a much wider selection of products because they don't need to store printed inventory. We get a percentage of the profit, which helps support tapir conservation and research. CafePress uses an optical printing method, which is quite good, but it's different than screen printing with ink. We'll continue to grow the CafePress option as well. So, with multiple sources there are more and more choices for tapir gear! And we believe this is a good thing :)