As the great low ebb of high tech sweeps through the world of online commerce, two kinds of sites are weathering the storm. The first group is often referred to as “clicks and mortar”，online extensions of stores like Wal-Mart or Sears. They take an existing, traditional business and extend it into the online arena. The second group provides a unique service made possible by the Internet’s special characteristics. Job sites and online auctioneer e-Bay are both good examples of the new breed of business that provides that the Internet continues to foster.
Cafepress.com is one of the latter groups. It’s a website that provides users with online stores where they can sell shirts, mugs, and mouse pads customized with their own logos and/or slogans. By itself, this is a fairly useful service, and an example of how the Internet has changed the art of marketing and customer service.
Cafepress.Com，however, is remarkable for another reason. Customers don’t need to talk to another human being to get their store “built” in the first place. The site lets you upload an image and choose what sort of item you’d like it to appear on. You can then choose how much to mark the item up the difference between the item’s base cost and your mark-up price is your profit.
Base prices are high, but understandable when you consider what cafepress.com does for the initial investment. An eleven-ounce mug starts at $10.99. For that,cafepress.com prints the mug on a piece-by-piece basis, provides the ordering software, handles the money, packs it, and ships it for you. The mug’s purchaser pays shipping and handling costs; the store owner’s effort is limited to uploading the original image for the mug, setting the cost, and writing a brief description of the item.
It seems to be catching on. “More and more companies come to us, who want to do some kind of merchandising, who want to offer a range of products to their users, but don’t want the hassles associated with it.” says Maheesh Jain, Cafepress.com’s co-founder and
vice-president. “That’s where we come in—we9re one of the few companies that offer this kind of full-service solution.”
But the most exciting aspect of cafepress.com is not its ability to help major corporations outsource and customize their merchandising efforts. What’s remarkable about the system is how simple it is to open a store. An average individual with an idea that could sell 50 T-shirts or mugs can’t justify traditional merchandising efforts, but with cafepress.com, users can easily bring ideas to fruition with very little time and no financial risk. Moreover, the quality of the merchandising is good; I’ve order a mug and a shirt from cafepress.com, and both were shipped relatively promptly, and arrived exactly as promised.
Cafepress.com is an idea that’s easy to get excited about. It’s a small—but tangible—example of how the Internet can change the way we live.
1.The expression “weathering the storm’’in the first sentence means（ ） .
2.The first kind of site differs from the second kind of site in that（ ） .
3.Which of the following about Cafepress.com is NOT true?
4.What kinds of Customers need Cafepress.com most according to its vice-president?
5.Those that have problem keeping their commodities moving. What is the most outstanding aspect about Cafepress.com according to the author?
