My mother, may she rest in peace, used to be a junk dealer. One of the items she sold was old postcards. Now just about every other junk dealer at the flea markets would put out a box of old postcards, and they all charged 25 cents apiece for the old postcards, as they saw their market as postcard collectors, period, and that was the going standard rate. But one day my mother put a price on her box of postcards of five dollars each. With the other dealer saw this, they all laughed. “This is so stupid,” they said. “Who’s going to pay five bucks for an old beat up postcard?”
But my mother knew that, not only would this unexpectedly high price draw attention to the postcards in the first place, if someone found an old postcard that had a picture of the house they grew up in, or the elementary school they went to 40 years ago, price was not an object. They just had to have it. They would have paid $10 for it, as they might never find another one. And by the way, the postcard that doesn’t have a picture of something of interest– no one would pay even 25 cents for it. A lower price was not what drove the sale. In fact, the higher price made it all the more appealing, as the customer perceived it as having higher value.
This, my friends, is what you call marketing.
I tell you this story because I found out today that Café Press, where I sell a collection of fun little snarky orchestral musician specific t-shirts, has altered the deal we agreed to last fall. I no longer have the ability to set the “markup” on my own products. It’s now 10% across the board, for every single design. For all of mine, as well as for millions of others.
They made a little announcement about this decision here http://announcements.cafepress.com/?p=167
They mention “declining sales due to redundant content.” But oddly enough, in answer to this problem, instead of continuing their business plan of offering highly unique and original custom made items available nowhere else, they have made the whole shopping experience even more redundant, generic, and conformed, by making no difference in the prices, of who knows how many millions of designs. So now, every single black t shirt on cafe press, no matter what the design, whether it’s garbage or genius, is the same price. OY.
So now, the garbage copycat designers get the same as the successful clever ones.
This is like K-mart Shirts costing the same as Armani shirts. Great concept, to get Armani shirts for $15. But in reality, in less than a week, all you will have available is K-mart shirts.
Will this lead to greater effort by the better designers? Of course not. And of course, café press hasn’t lowered their prices. So they stay where they are, and they lessen the money paid to the people providing product. Makes sense in terms of an immediate short term jump in sales and profits, but in the long haul, the better designers will jump ship, and guys, that’s where all your money is. Lower prices are a Hawthorne effect. Will have a short term effect, then nothing. And once perceived as cheap, a higher priced brand is impossible to build back up.
To be fair, I can still price things differently in my “shop” (i.e., for people who click on my web links to enter my shop) but I’m not going to screw my customers like that, when I know full well they can get my stuff cheaper. People have an amazing sense of having been screwed, and it’s just not good business. What a pain.
Well anyway, call me suspicious, but I just have this paranoid fantasy that some Ivy League MBA-toting consultant came in to café press and told these guys that the way to make more money was to cut prices and make everything THE SAME. And yes, regimenting the process, making everything nice and neat and consistent, creates a marvelous sense of managerial power and control. BUT . . . instead of sticking to a plan that made them the biggest online custom t-shirt retailer, they are becoming more like their competitors. Big mistake.
The same, the same . . . their problem, they say, is “redundant design,” (i.e., a lot of the items available are the SAME) and apparently this problem of sameness is to be fixed by making the prices the same too. Ay caramba.
This is why I teach performance skill and and non conformity in my talks and workshops. Stage fright affects business decisions. Coping with being in the limelight, dealing with the fear of being out of step with others, is not taught in business school. It makes most music students dull and generic. It’s what killed GM. Café Press, I am here for you. Gimme a call. 781-330-8143.
There is a book I have mentioned before, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding.” Café Press, you need to read it. Being the cheapest, competing on price alone, is not branding. When you’re the cheapest it means you’re charging the least, but you’re also offering the least. No one goes to K Mart to buy an Armani Suit. GM cars all look the same, and they’re priced competitively, and yet they’re falling apart, while the high priced brands of Mercedes Benz and BMW are doing just fine.
Café Press, if you are reading this, you have a distinct case of the “getting too much academic advice to follow the conformity track” here . . . the consultant made a big fee and it was a great PowerPoint presentation and it all made sense on paper . . .
And yes, if you price some old beat up postcards at $5, no one will buy them . . . right?
© Justin Locke
