Tonight, I review a tee from Cameesa, purchased during their 50% off sale a few weeks back. The shirt I picked was “Listen to the B-Side“, a sharp belt print featuring a stylized record player (currently sold out in all but the largest sizes).
Intro
Cameesa was born amongst an army of t-shirt competition sites, all vying for a piece of the market. They immediately distinguished themselves with a “support” system, where people were essentially buying “stock” in t-shirt designs. They would pay a certain amount in supports towards a design they liked, and when the support amount reached its goal, the design would be printed. Thereafter, supporters would receive a dividend each time the design was sold.
More than a year later, Cameesa has made many changes to their support system. The company has now made it much more attractive to support a shirt. I hope this will bring more cool designs to the catalog, as the more recent ones are lacking compared to their older brethren.
The Shirt
I was really impressed with how this shirt turned out. The printing is extremely crisp and consistent, and managed to cover hard-to-print areas such as the seams and shoulder. The ink does appear to well up a bit at the edge of the fabric, but it’s barely noticeable from a distance.
I was also pleased to see that this shirt was an American Apparel tee. For those of you who don’t know, at one point in time Cameesa switched to printing on Tultex blanks in order to cut costs. Customers complained, and as a result Cameesa switched back to AA and raised their prices. I definitely appreciate the softer, better-fitting blank.
This printed tag is a marked improvement over the big, boring sew-in-tag found on one of the much older designs I purchased from Cameesa (”Electric Terror“). It’s much better branding, credits the artist, and alludes to the support system which makes Cameesa so unique. It also looks a lot better. The old tag was simply a square of white fabric with the size and the Cameesa logo.
Shipping and Service
This shirt did take a while to arrive, and it took almost a week of waiting before Cameesa emailed me to let me know that there was a problem with the service they use for order fulfillment. (Storenvy; their Internet was down or something, which naturally leads me to wonder how on earth a business like that could lose access long enough to not receive orders?) However, once the shirt shipped it arrived quickly in a plain white mailing bag, neatly folded up.
As for Cameesa themselves, I’ve only had to deal with their customer service once, and that was with an older order from several months back. They returned emails promptly and asked for more details about my problem for the purpose of improving; they also offer a no-fuss, free returns service for an entire year. Not only that, but their staff actively seek customer feedback on their forums.
Closing Thoughts
If you see something you like at Cameesa, I do not hesitate to recommend them for the quality printing and great customer service.
What do you think about Cameesa? Share your thoughts at Tee Directory!
