Zazzle, a customized products marketplace, and Pitney Bowes, a document and mail management company, have teamed up to launch Zazzle's newest product line, customized United States postage. Consumers can select from an array of colors, layouts, text styles, and denominations. Images can be supplied by the customer, or can be selected from Zazzle's collections, which include images from Disney, Harvey Entertainment, The Family Guy, Robots, Neopets, Build-A-Bear Workshop, The Pemberton & Oakes Collection, and Zodiac Girlz.
Zazzle and Pitney Bowes Team Up to Deliver Custom Stamps to Consumers
Zazzle Takes Their On-Demand Manufacturing, Vast Image Collections and Community to Stamps
PALO ALTO, Calif., July 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Zazzle, (www.zazzle.com), the Internet's leading customized products marketplace, and Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) , the world's leading provider of integrated mail and document management systems & services, today announced the launch of Zazzle's newest product line. Consumers and business owners alike now have the power to create their own customized United States postage at www.zazzle.com.
At Zazzle, individuals, groups and businesses can share their interests by creating, buying, and selling high quality, uniquely customized products including apparel, posters, cards, and stamps. Zazzle combines a just-in-time manufacturing process, easy to use design tools, and the world's largest collection of online customizable digital images to empower users to create on-demand products to their own exact specifications. Users can create one-of-a-kind products for themselves, to send as gifts, to share with others with similar interests, as well as to sell through Zazzle's online user-created marketplace.
Creating and buying stamps is simple at Zazzle.com. Customers can quickly and easily upload their own digital content or choose from Zazzle's special partner collections such as Walt Disney. Stamps can be customized using a broad array of colors, layouts, and text styles, before choosing the denomination and placing the order. Each sheet includes 20 individual large-format stamps and is available at most common rates.
"Zazzle's focus on providing high quality on-demand consumer products together with a great online user experience make them the logical trusted partner for Pitney Bowes," said Ian Siveyer, Vice President Strategic Marketing at Pitney Bowes. "Zazzle gives people the capability to make unique, high quality creations on a wide variety of products. Pitney and Zazzle together now extend this capability to include valid U.S. postage."
"The range of products that have been created through Zazzle so far is amazing -- and we know we are just beginning," said Robert Beaver, chief executive officer of Zazzle. "Our partnership with Pitney Bowes gives our users a new and innovative avenue for self-expression as we continue to build the most compelling marketplace for on-demand user-created products."
How to Zazzle
Want to celebrate a child's birthday, a family reunion, commemorate a significant event, or just share your original creations with a wider audience? Whether it's creating one shirt or a thousand holiday cards, finding a special collector-quality map or sharing a fun family reunion photo, Zazzle allows consumers to easily share their creations with the world for a variety of purposes including:
* Commemorating events such as birthdays, graduations and family reunions
* Generating exposure and enthusiasm for charities and causes
* Uniting teams, schools and businesses for various events
* Building communities for special interests such as maps, sci-fi,
photography, politics and more
* Creating galleries and selling products to generate exposure and earn
royalties
Zazzle's marketplace includes hundreds of thousands of digital images from artists and creative consumers worldwide, in addition to special collections from well-known brands. Many of the images have never before been seen by the general public or been available for customization purposes.
Zazzle Special Collections
Zazzle's world-class content partners have millions of images that users have always wanted to make their own. Before Zazzle, it wasn't feasible for these companies and institutions to provide all the product combinations and customization options that consumers desired. With just-in-time manufacturing and unmatched personalization options, Zazzle empowers consumers to create unique, on-demand products with their favorite images from leading brands.
For the first time, The Walt Disney Company has made its legendary characters and artwork available to the public for creating personalized gifts and apparel. The collection of over 3,500 authentic Disney images features vintage Mickey Mouse, Snow White, classic Pinocchio and Peter Pan, as well as modern favorites, such as Stitch and Nemo.
Other Zazzle Special Collections include historical images from The Library of Congress, the California State Library, the Boston Public Library, the Linda Hall Library and The Hoover Institution. One-of-a-kind characters are also available on Zazzle from collections such as Harvey Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox's Family Guy(TM), Robots(TM), Neopets, The Pemberton & Oakes Collection, Zodiac Girlz, Build-A-Bear Workshop and more.
Zazzle Community Collections
Zazzle is also home to contributors who are individual artists, photographers, designers, and creative consumers worldwide. Contributors can choose to make their creations public in a Zazzle gallery where anyone can browse, comment or connect with others who share their interests. Contributors earn royalties every time their creations are purchased by others.
"Without Zazzle, I'd have to get into the printing and production business," said Ryan Bliss of digitalblasphemy.com, "Zazzle lets me focus on my artwork. They are the only partner that can provide high quality production, without minimums, to a world-wide audience."
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Pitney Bowes Press Release:
Pitney Bowes Enters Personalized Postage Market With Zazzle Alliance
Consumers can Customize Stamps With Photos and Hundreds of Thousands of Licensed Images
STAMFORD, Conn., July 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) today announced it is launching a customized postage service through a new alliance with Zazzle (http://www.zazzle.com/), the Internet's leading customized products marketplace. The new service allows customers to create full-color customized stamps using images they upload at the Zazzle website, or a vast collection of images already available on the site, including famous characters from The Walt Disney Company and other special collections.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050718/NYM076 )
"Letters are such a personal form of communication, and our new service allows that personal expression to go outside of the envelope as well," said Ian Siveyer, vice president of postal solutions at Pitney Bowes. "This alliance gives consumers unprecedented choices to create one-of-a-kind, colorful stamps."
"We like Zazzle because it's an established, high-volume site where thousands of customers are already designing and ordering a wide variety of customized goods," Siveyer continued. "Extending this product line to include stamps is a great way to reach creative people who are looking for new ways to express themselves."
The alliance calls for Pitney Bowes, the world's leading provider of integrated mailing solutions, to provide the software that manages the postage transaction between the customer and the United States Postal Service. Consumers can go to Zazzle's website, quickly and easily upload their own images or choose from Zazzle's special collections. Postage can then be customized using Zazzle's design tools that provide a broad array of choices for colors, layouts, styles, fonts and more. The combination of Zazzle's online interactive marketplace and Pitney Bowes' expertise in postal technology creates a fully-integrated customer experience that is both highly secure and easy to use.
Visitors to the Zazzle website can design sheets of 20 stamps available in the most common denominations from $0.23 (postcards) and $0.37 (first-class letters) to $3.85. After the order is complete, Zazzle will review all uploaded images for adherence to USPS guidelines for customized stamps. Once approved, the stamps are printed and shipped to the customer within 24 hours.
Siveyer noted that customized stamps are a relatively new product category. "This new product line is made possible thanks to recently-released guidelines from the United States Postal Service. We think it's a terrific way to make mail an even more appealing communications channel, and we look forward to working with Zazzle and USPS to ensure the success of this alliance."
Zazzle, a customized products marketplace, and Pitney Bowes, a document and mail management company, have teamed up to launch Zazzle's newest product line, customized United States postage. Consumers can select from an array of colors, layouts, text styles, and denominations. Images can be supplied by the customer, or can be selected from Zazzle's collections, which include images from Disney, Harvey Entertainment, The Family Guy, Robots, Neopets, Build-A-Bear Workshop, The Pemberton & Oakes Collection, and Zodiac Girlz.
