What's going on with Zazzle?
For the past 20 years or so Zazzle has been my favorite POD, allowing for design for many different products. It had by far the most sophisticated design tool of all POD’s. Also, as a designer, I do not want to turn my home into a shipping office and have all sorts of inventory that is needed to run a business. Zazzle takes care of all shipping and handling and also the payments. Thus a designer can spend their time at what they are best at and enjoy doing the most. Right?
Well maybe not.
Zazzle chooses to go out of business?
Since April Fool’s Day in 2025 Zazzle took several measures that indicate they are not really interested in continuing the business.
► NOT PAYING DESIGNERS A DECENT ROYALTY ANY MORE
This decision involved significant cuts in designer’s income (50-70%) overnight. It’s an ill-thought-out measure that may look attractive (for Zazzle CEO’s) in the short term, but will prove to be disastrous in the long term.
It’s not clear if manufacturers are faced with the same strangle-contracts.
►REMOVING A FULLY DEVELOPED DESIGN TOOL
This even more desastrous decision resulted in designers not being able any more to create what they want. And for what they still can create, they need a lot of scrolling and clicking, resulting in frustration and endless time loss. Customers have to deal with this as well, which will lead to an exodus of existing customers and not attracting new ones.
►TAKING AWAY CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Customers are now facing the endless loops with a totally useless AI. Need I explain more?
►DOWNGRADING PRODUCT QUALITY
For instance tiles: a product widely used for kitchens and bathrooms. Zazzle used to have an excellent quality tile, but now the tiles can’t be used in a wet environment.
What Zazzle did NOT do
There are several things Zazzle COULD have done, but chose NOT to do, which could have boosted sales.
► FIXING SEARCH ISSUES
It’s very hard to get good results trying to use the search function on the site. Product categories can’t be found and there is so much spam, that it’s impossible to find anything attractive
► REMOVING SPAM FROM PRODUCT PAGES
Despite many designers requesting numerous times, Zazzle leaves so much “other products” on a product page, that Google does not index the pages any more
► ADAPT TO CHANGES IN CUSTOMER BASE
Zazzle is still relying heavily on wedding stuff, whereas less and less people choose to get married. Not only that, once they have attracted a customer for wedding products, they fail to create a follow-up. There is hardly any focus on products for an aging population (which could very well be an interesting market)
► SHOWING PRODUCTS OUTSIDE OF TRENDS
Some searches result in endless pages of basically the same (or “Editor’s Picks”) designs. If you don’t like the current fashion, you’re out of luck. Even a small change, like adding a “RANDOM” search, could help
► UTILIZING THE VAST EXPERTISE OF DESIGNERS
In line with the previous: There is a wide range of designers on Zazzle, catering to almost any niche and style you can think of. They cannot be found on Zazzle. Worse: customers have NO idea that the products they are looking at are created by individual designers.
► OFFERING ECO-FRIENDLY SOLUTIONS
Many people are demanding eco-friendly solutions, as in products that do not pollute as much (I am referring to real pollution here, not CO2 madness). Zazzle just ignores this.
World changes that affect POD's
There are many developments in our upside-down world that have a huge impact on how a POD might florish in the time to come.
► THE ANTI-CONSUMERISM TREND
Younger generations are not interested as much in buying so many things (even if they had the money). This is politically motivated
►INFLATION, STAGFLATION and HYPERINFLATION
Most people are very aware that we are facing huge financial challenges
►TRANSPORTATION
Carrying products to individual homes might not be the most effective way to transport products to their end destination. Given the mess in the energy situation, one can only hope that the free energy resources that exist, will become available to the public
My response
What options do designers have?
I am not an artist in the traditional sense. I’ve always worked with computer software. Most of the software I used dissappeared through all the downgrades created by Microsoft. Several other POD’s have gone. My gallery was on Imagekind, which silently just left the scene. On Artwanted, where I started 20 years ago, there are messages that orders are not being fulfilled and customers are not getting answers. A big red flag.
Honestly, I do not know where to go from here. AI is a discussion for another time.
For now I have removed all links on the web to Zazzle, as I do not feel comfortable recommending a site that is so disrespectful to designers, customers and the environment.
To be continued … (or not) 🙂