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John Barton
06-21-2010, 1:26 PM
Has anyone here had any experience with any of the online design software solutions.

Google "online t-shirt design software" to see what I mean.

We sell pool cues and cases and other laserable items and I really want to create a site that allows people to design on our products and when they are done the price is quoted and they just need to hit the order and pay button. We get the design with most of the work already done.

Right now we spend a lot of time in the back and forth when we get a job and it really eats up the profits in addition to being frustrating sometimes.

In 2000 I read an article in INC. on Tmbuk2, which is a company that makes messenger bags and laptop bags. They had an online design-your-own section (still have) and they said that the revenue from this was 15% of their total but accounted for 50% of profits. I went there to play around with their designer and ended up buying a $200 laptop bag. Which I still have and use and which is super durable and high quality. The point was that after playing for two hours I HAD to see this for real so I bought it.

Soo, ten years later I am seriously looking at doing something similar in regards to our lasering capabilities on our existing stock items.

One of the biggest drawbacks I see to this is that people can spend time using our designer and then take the resulting design to a competitor and have it made there. Not such a big deal for us since we are currently the only ones who own our own laser engraver in our business (as far as we know) but later it could be an issue.

Advice? Experience?

Mike Null
06-21-2010, 2:52 PM
Did you consider contacting the company you bought the computer case from?

Ross Moshinsky
06-21-2010, 5:23 PM
It's not a big deal or difficult for programmers to do. You basically have three options.

1) Get a development team from India. If you search, you'll be able to find something. They are cheap, fairly decent coders, and want to make you happy. Bad thing is they aren't creative typically and are difficult to communicate with. They also don't offer aesthetically pleasing designs although the code might be very functional. I also find although they want to make you happy, things like deadlines and the specifics are often ignored/overlooked.

2) Meet in the middle and find someone in a poorer European country or a freelancer in the US. Rates are moderate, you can find talented coder/designers, and they are easier to communicate with. They completely IGNORE deadlines. If you want something done in a week, expect it to take a month. I'm not joking. They are the least professional people in the world. Complete flakes.

3) Find a professional team in the US. You will pay a lot, but if you do your research, you will get what you want. Easy to communicate with and fairly decent customer service. They again will ignore deadlines, but it will only be something like a week past deadline instead of a month. Expect to pay 5-10x what you'd pay for an Indian design team and 2-3x what you'd pay a freelance person. In the end, with this type of group, you are paying extra money for a project manager to email who can deligate to their coworkers. They also will offer ideas and thoughts on how to improve the process. Typical coders/freelance guys just want to get the job done so they will respond with, "whatever you want to do, I'll do." It's good if you know what you want. It's bad if you want to work through a process with a team.

I have some experience in this type of project and remember one thing, if you offer this type of service, what they design HAS to look like what they receive. This can be very difficult as you need to perfectly integrate what they designed in a web application into Corel Draw or whatever you use to engrave. Sometimes this can be tricky and the customer may perceive things as being different even though they are nearly identical to what they designed. Honestly, when I was put in the same position, I decided to stick with designing things myself and offering customers proofs at a charge. This way I'm able to design things the way I want and they can offer special instructions and they are worried about the layout, pay the $3-5 for the proof and you can tell me what you want changed.

Frankly, about 3% of our orders are not "happy" with one of our layouts. In these cases we either fix it for them at our cost or apologize and let them know that although they may not be satisfied, we do this as a profession and we promise the person who receives the item will be happy in the end. In a very rare occasion, we basically tell the customer to take it or leave it. That's only with extremely difficult customers who order $10 items and we've had enough.

In the end, I would guess a Indian design group would charge you about $1000-1500 for this type of project. A european group or American Freelance designer might charge $2500-5000. An American firm will get $7500-15000.

John Barton
06-21-2010, 7:12 PM
Did you consider contacting the company you bought the computer case from?

I never considered asking them to provide me with their software because that is something that they built and to give it away or sell it puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

I did however contact them back then to talk shop and found out that it took them quite a while to develop the code where it worked fairly quickly. Remember this was in 2000/2001 when most people were still on dialup.

Currently there are several companies who already offer software that will fit our needs with us just needing to design our product templates. The question really wasn't one of obtaining the software. I really wanted to know if anyone in the laser engraving business had ever used such a solution to allow their customers to design and what the experience is.

There is a fundamental difference in designing a computer bag from pre-made parts in a mix and match format vs. overlaying decorative elements/images/text onto product images/templates.

In my mind the "instant custom" tagline is resonating but I am still hesitating as to which direction to go - full bore design what you want or restrict it to only certain choices.

John Barton
06-21-2010, 7:27 PM
It's not a big deal or difficult for programmers to do. You basically have three options.

1) Get a development team from India. If you search, you'll be able to find something. They are cheap, fairly decent coders, and want to make you happy. Bad thing is they aren't creative typically and are difficult to communicate with. They also don't offer aesthetically pleasing designs although the code might be very functional. I also find although they want to make you happy, things like deadlines and the specifics are often ignored/overlooked.

2) Meet in the middle and find someone in a poorer European country or a freelancer in the US. Rates are moderate, you can find talented coder/designers, and they are easier to communicate with. They completely IGNORE deadlines. If you want something done in a week, expect it to take a month. I'm not joking. They are the least professional people in the world. Complete flakes.

3) Find a professional team in the US. You will pay a lot, but if you do your research, you will get what you want. Easy to communicate with and fairly decent customer service. They again will ignore deadlines, but it will only be something like a week past deadline instead of a month. Expect to pay 5-10x what you'd pay for an Indian design team and 2-3x what you'd pay a freelance person. In the end, with this type of group, you are paying extra money for a project manager to email who can deligate to their coworkers. They also will offer ideas and thoughts on how to improve the process. Typical coders/freelance guys just want to get the job done so they will respond with, "whatever you want to do, I'll do." It's good if you know what you want. It's bad if you want to work through a process with a team.

I have some experience in this type of project and remember one thing, if you offer this type of service, what they design HAS to look like what they receive. This can be very difficult as you need to perfectly integrate what they designed in a web application into Corel Draw or whatever you use to engrave. Sometimes this can be tricky and the customer may perceive things as being different even though they are nearly identical to what they designed. Honestly, when I was put in the same position, I decided to stick with designing things myself and offering customers proofs at a charge. This way I'm able to design things the way I want and they can offer special instructions and they are worried about the layout, pay the $3-5 for the proof and you can tell me what you want changed.

Frankly, about 3% of our orders are not "happy" with one of our layouts. In these cases we either fix it for them at our cost or apologize and let them know that although they may not be satisfied, we do this as a profession and we promise the person who receives the item will be happy in the end. In a very rare occasion, we basically tell the customer to take it or leave it. That's only with extremely difficult customers who order $10 items and we've had enough.

In the end, I would guess a Indian design group would charge you about $1000-1500 for this type of project. A european group or American Freelance designer might charge $2500-5000. An American firm will get $7500-15000.

Thank you. I have been looking at these options for several years now. At the moment there are several companies that do already offer such solutions and the price appears to be between $3000 and $7000 to purchase the code and run it on our own server. Previously I had found another company who leased access to their solution for $1500 a year and I really liked what they offered but I lost the link several hard drives ago.

Your experience is exactly what I was looking for. I am thinking that the best way might be a combination of the t-shirt business and the printing business online.

The T-shirt business does not typically offer proofs for one-off orders. The printing business allows you to design on the fly and then offers you proofs for an extra fee or you can elect to not get a proof and agree to take it as it comes.

My thinking was that for all of the clipart that we offer it would be already set up to be pretty much drop into Corel and resize proportionately up to the existing template.

Well, I will probably pull the trigger on something in the next month - I am going to try and see if some of these companies will work me on a demo using our templates to see what a pool cue would look like.

I already have an idea using customink's design template for pens.

Again thanks for the advice!!!!

Doug Griffith
06-21-2010, 10:30 PM
I'm a programmer and have programmed what you are talking about in Flash AS3 / Perl for a yet to be released project. Positioning vector art, primitives, and user entered text with rotation, scaling, color, fill pattern, and z level. It is not an easy task. Most programmers would have a very difficult time. The tough part is dynamically rebuilding what is online and saving as a laserable vector file. All attributes for all elements need to be stored in a database and then retrieved at "save" time and processed.

What I would do is find a very good programmer to work on a contract basis. Offer them enough to cover their expenses while they develop plus points per unit sold using the system. This will encourage them to create a good working system and get it online as quickly as possible. All the while not having to take on other work. How to find that programmer isn't easy. I, personally, would have them program a test specific to the application. Then I'd look at their code to make sure it wasn't copied and pasted. But that's me.

As for freelance programmers being complete flakes: usually they oversell their skills and when they end up in a situation where they can't swipe other people's code they choke. Then they have to learn on your time, give substandard work, or excuses that it can't be done. Deadlines being ignored: There is almost always some unforeseen stupid issue that arises such as an Explorer bug or other client-side incompatibility. Least professional people in the world: I almost agree except that programming is not a typical profession. Example: when I'm deep into programming, I may not answer the phone for several days. Some might consider this unprofessional. I happen to know that if my mindset is shifted for just a moment, it can take hours if not days to catch up. One misplaced character can kill thousands of lines of code and be hard to find.

I could go on and on about this topic.

John Barton
06-22-2010, 12:59 AM
I'm a programmer and have programmed what you are talking about in Flash AS3 / Perl for a yet to be released project. Positioning vector art, primitives, and user entered text with rotation, scaling, color, fill pattern, and z level. It is not an easy task. Most programmers would have a very difficult time. The tough part is dynamically rebuilding what is online and saving as a laserable vector file. All attributes for all elements need to be stored in a database and then retrieved at "save" time and processed.

What I would do is find a very good programmer to work on a contract basis. Offer them enough to cover their expenses while they develop plus points per unit sold using the system. This will encourage them to create a good working system and get it online as quickly as possible. All the while not having to take on other work. How to find that programmer isn't easy. I, personally, would have them program a test specific to the application. Then I'd look at their code to make sure it wasn't copied and pasted. But that's me.

As for freelance programmers being complete flakes: usually they oversell their skills and when they end up in a situation where they can't swipe other people's code they choke. Then they have to learn on your time, give substandard work, or excuses that it can't be done. Deadlines being ignored: There is almost always some unforeseen stupid issue that arises such as an Explorer bug or other client-side incompatibility. Least professional people in the world: I almost agree except that programming is not a typical profession. Example: when I'm deep into programming, I may not answer the phone for several days. Some might consider this unprofessional. I happen to know that if my mindset is shifted for just a moment, it can take hours if not days to catch up. One misplaced character can kill thousands of lines of code and be hard to find.

I could go on and on about this topic.

I have been down that road when I contracted someone to create a custom ecommerce solution. $40,000 and a year later I had it and it was good and then I sold my stake in the company I had it built for and they trashed it. (and let me tell you that the solution "I" dreamed up was the nuts! Really, it was and is as it still exists just not in use).

What I am looking at here is existing 'off the shelf' solutions that already exist.

Here is how I see it going down.

1. I buy or rent the code from someone else who already has developed it for other uses - t-shirts/pens etc...

2. I insert our templates - so instead of T-shirt it's pool cue and set the parameters of what area can be lasered.

3. I use all the existing controls - I can't publish links here or I would show you some cool existing solutions.

4. The designs created are understood by the customer to be in rough draft form and may be modified to fit the actual piece. Work proofs on request for an additional fee.

5. All the art that is offered standard will correspond to art that exists on our machines and is laser-ready. So really an order comes in and we literally put in the cue and import the art to the template - position it correctly and burn it. I already have experience with hundreds of cues and have created foolproof templates on Corel to laser 360 degrees using the rotary. The actual process is settled as to how we do the work.

6. Customer uploaded art will be evaluated as to it's fitness and extra charges will apply if we have to work on it. Also customers must sign a waiver testifying to their right to use whatever art is uploaded. (same as Kinkos does.)

What I don't really know is how good any of these companies who are offering the turn-key solutions are to deal with and so I thought I'd start here and see if any of you have done anything like this in the laser engraving business. 3-6K is a healthy investment for me for this and the last time I did invest 10k in something like this I got pretty well burned on it as the service was TERRIBLE and the software was buggy and they constantly were trying to upsell me instead of fixing the issues that were present. (Mail Order Manager)

I suppose I need to get back into the T-shirt forums to see how any of those people's experiences have been.

Thanks Creekers!

Doug Griffith
06-22-2010, 1:28 AM
If you just want to position pre-existing art, it isn't rocket science. Customer uploaded graphics are a pain because it won't be in vector form and cr@p in equals cr@p out. The ability to design online is complicated programming because of all the parameters involved.

What customers (of programming) don't appreciate is the hours involved. Not only for the particular project but the years involved to get to the skill level to create what is requested. Plus the thousands of lines of code the programmer has previously developed and is in their arsenal.

Turn-key solutions have many years of development behind them and most likely have been streamlined or dumbed-down to cover the broadest market. They'll be template based, look template based, and offer template based solutions. Most likely, not exactly what you want. It'll be a compromise.

I guess what I'm saying is with programming, you get what you pay for.

I also agree with you that it's easy to get burned.

John Barton
06-22-2010, 2:08 AM
If you just want to position pre-existing art, it isn't rocket science. Customer uploaded graphics are a pain because it won't be in vector form and cr@p in equals cr@p out. The ability to design online is complicated programming because of all the parameters involved.

What customers (of programming) don't appreciate is the hours involved. Not only for the particular project but the years involved to get to the skill level to create what is requested. Plus the thousands of lines of code the programmer has previously developed and is in their arsenal.

Turn-key solutions have many years of development behind them and most likely have been streamlined or dumbed-down to cover the broadest market. They'll be template based, look template based, and offer template based solutions. Most likely, not exactly what you want. It'll be a compromise.

I guess what I'm saying is with programming, you get what you pay for.

I also agree with you that it's easy to get burned.

Trust me I wasn't disrespecting what you do. As I said I hired a programmer to develop a specialized online commerce solution - I called it the Order Pad and it was and is way ahead of what's on the market. It was written specifically to handle the exact things my business (and a lot of businesses) required and it worked when we were done as I envisioned it. Cost me $40,000 to build and I worked every day right beside the programmer on each section. The programmer kept the developed code and as far as I know he has many clients using versions adapted for them. I dreamed up a CMS coupled with a wholesale/retail online store with embedded item control so my dealer's websites would all be updates at once whenever we changed any item and had it built long before it became fashionable. Even today there is no solution that I know off like what I had made. I am sure that in another time and space I could have taken that idea and ramped it up for broad appeal. But my head was somewhere else back then.

Regarding this particular need I have been tracking the field for ten years ever since being so impressed with Timbuk2's solution and their numbers.

The turnkey stuff out there now is pretty impressive and does everything I need it to do, seemingly, which is why I am now at the stage of looking for anyone who can give me their experience in this area.

I also understand the issues surrounding customer art. Right now I am doing some work for a well known celebrity's sponsor. You would think that these folks could provide me with proper art in vector format without me having to ask. Instead I get crappy jpegs and have to beg for something usable.

My apologies if you have been offended. That wasn't my intention. I have explored the idea of hiring in-house as well as hiring freelancers to do this and I have received a few bids through a freelance website a few years ago.

My thing is that I don't really need a custom solution here. Well, other than that my primary products are long and thin so the interface would need to reflect those parameters.

What's out there already seems mature and seems as if it works and the bugs have been worked out.

Other companies are using the software so I guess there has been plenty of user experience to tweak it.

Here is an example of one I am considering -
www - dot - customshirts -dot- com/designyourtshirt.php

And another one:
www dot makeaball dot com

The makeaball site is using this solution - www dot productsdesigner dot com They seem to be able to customize the template area fairly easily for any particular product.

Doug Griffith
06-22-2010, 11:12 AM
Hey John, I've been told I come off rather cold and dry by people. No offense taken. In fact, I don't see where it happened.

I just checked out www dot productsdesigner dot com. It looks like a good piece of software. I like the interface. My question is about the backend. What does the software save for the manufacturing side of things? Is it just the same dynamically built jpeg of the art presented to the consumer which has to then be copied during production. Is it all the attributes such as x, y, scale, rotation, etc..? Is it a PDF with a placed high res image? Is it a file (such as an Illustrator script) that can then be imported into a graphics program that does the work? That, to me, would be a large part of my decision process.

Also, with custom art, check to see if the built in ecommerce system prints a picture representation of the job on the invoice. It helps a lot.

Cheers

Mike Chance in Iowa
06-22-2010, 1:11 PM
Hey John, I've been told I come off rather cold and dry by people. No offense taken. In fact, I don't see where it happened.


I don't see where it happened either. I only see you stating the facts and giving your opinion based on your experience. Then again, I come from a computer/technical background too. :cool:

John Barton
06-22-2010, 9:40 PM
Hey John, I've been told I come off rather cold and dry by people. No offense taken. In fact, I don't see where it happened.

I just checked out www dot productsdesigner dot com. It looks like a good piece of software. I like the interface. My question is about the backend. What does the software save for the manufacturing side of things? Is it just the same dynamically built jpeg of the art presented to the consumer which has to then be copied during production. Is it all the attributes such as x, y, scale, rotation, etc..? Is it a PDF with a placed high res image? Is it a file (such as an Illustrator script) that can then be imported into a graphics program that does the work? That, to me, would be a large part of my decision process.

Also, with custom art, check to see if the built in ecommerce system prints a picture representation of the job on the invoice. It helps a lot.

Cheers

I just got the feeling that I might have come across and not appreciating what good programmers are worth. Their weight in gold is my opinion! :-)

Regarding the current solutions I don't think that they do much for the manufacturing side other than to allow the customer to do the initial "designing" and rough draft layouts. This in turn saves a lot of back and forth and communication I would tend to think.

I can imagine that a lot of the T-shirt orders go like this - customer does the layout using the online designer - shop takes the resulting file and lays out the design using their software approximately as shown on the customer's design and prints it - done.

On a higher order I can imagine a situation where the customer's design file is actually used to do the layout. So the customer's file is either ready to open in Corel or some equivalent program or it's autoconverted to be ready to open and from there it's tweaked if needed and printed.

I think that both situations are huge timesavers with the second one being really brilliant.

I mean I can tell you that my templates in Corel for engaving on pool cues are so good that I can do just about any job in less than ten minutes from getting the design to cleaning up the cue. So I could imagine that if I were able to put these templates online and allow people to play around with text and vector images to their heart's content then when they are done everything would be in the proper space to just import it and go.

Honestly though I doubt that the current solutions offer that. I won't know until I get into some backend demos and see what the controls are like.

I am guessing by the responses so far that no one here has any experience using these solutions in their business. So it's off to the T-shirt forums to see what they have and perhaps they can answer some of your questions.

The printing of the job on the invoice is a great idea BTW. I have received a few invoices from printers that have been formatted that way and it's a nice touch as well as helpful to verify accuracy.

Dan Hintz
06-23-2010, 9:21 AM
John,

If you don't mind, I'd be interested in hearing what you find out... I've considered doing something similar for awards, but it's such a low priority on my list it will most likely never get done unless someone else takes the initiative.

Mike Null
06-23-2010, 9:45 AM
Dan

Just for what it's worth, people really don't want to design their own awards.

They like to look at examples or will give you a vague idea and ask you to develop it. I'd say less than 5% of my customers want to design an award.

The other thing that impacts design is that a substantial number of awards are repetitive--same award different name and date. Almost all of my school awards and military awards fit this category. (the old "it's what we've always done")

Interestingly, those who do want to design are almost always military who will give you a Power Point file. Those are usually retirements and the like where each award is an individual effort.

That is not to say that the idea of a "design your own" is not a good one but other categories can make better use of such a tool.

Dan Hintz
06-23-2010, 10:36 AM
Sorry, had awards on my mind... that should have read "windscreens".

John Barton
06-23-2010, 10:51 AM
John,

If you don't mind, I'd be interested in hearing what you find out... I've considered doing something similar for awards, but it's such a low priority on my list it will most likely never get done unless someone else takes the initiative.

It would be my pleasure. I am going to do whatever demos are offered and do my homework. I am fairly sure we will have chosen one by about October so we can get some Christmas business from it.