Zazzle Shirt Model Petition

Dear Zazzle Management-

We, the undersigned contributors, wish to make it clearly known how vehemently opposed we are to the new use of models for displaying our shirts on your site.

The new method of displaying shirts on models causes several issues:
Some of the models poses cause the shirt to twist or crease in such a way that the preview of the design is distorted or displayed in such a way that it is impossible for the customer to appreciate.

The position of the design fluctuates from model to model within the exact same shirt style, making it impossible to give an accurate indication of where the image will print and often resulting in an undesirable looking product preview for the customer.

Some poses distract from the designs and are, quite frankly, silly and ridiculous. Not every design on this site is created for a young "hip" guy or girl and the model choices make it inhibitive to put our designs on the shirt we'd really like to choose.

The majority of the models are from a young demographic. First glance at the site will not be very welcoming to the 40 and over shopper.

Many women like to wear men's style shirts. Considering that most of the Women's line of shirts on Zazzle run small and are form-fitting, it is only natural to expect that women will also order the men's sizes, yet, there are no female models available for them.

The prior version of shirt previews provided a good indication of how a shirt would appear with the design, allowing the customer to imagine themselves in the shirt. The new models inhibit this and for some, perhaps, make that impossible. The models create a specific idea of the personality, age and type of person to wear the shirt.

Shirts that feature text-only designs are nearly impossible to read without using 'Maggie' or detail view. This will cause some potential customers to overlook these shirts on the Zazzle site itself, but it also makes it worthless to have flash panels that feature these designs.

With the last style of shirt preview, the designs showed large enough that they easily caught a customers' eye, even in the "If You Like This" section of a product page. Now, a great many designs are so small or obscured by the models poses that there is nothing there to capture a customers' attention.

While we appreciate the tireless efforts to maintain and further Zazzle as a premier Print On Demand site, we are overcome with numerous, unpleasant sentiments at this latest development, not the least of which are anger, resentment, disappointment and in some cases, disgust.

In the past year Zazzle has undergone a great many changes, and for the most part, these have been improvements. The contributors feelings have been made note of after the fact in each case, yet Zazzle has never seen fit to consider us prior to any significant altercations. After all, these are our designs, our art, our blood, sweat and tears, and when you make such a monumental change in how they are presented to the customer we really should have been consulted, even if it was only a select number that were chosen to participate as a sort of focus group. In far too many cases, our hard work now appear as jokes, and we're not laughing.

We do realize that it is your site and that we have access to it and your services for free, but it is also an indisputable fact that you depend on your contributors for income and promotion, and emotions on this issue are strong enough to move many to give serious consideration to leaving Zazzle. In this instance, we sincerely hope you will please take our concerns in earnest and give substantial and sober consideration to our request that you remove the models and return to the former version of shirt preview.

Thank you.


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NOTE: Zazzle Contributors: Please keep any comments calm, respectful and constructive. Thank you

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