Zazzle Inc., an online seller of customizable products, now sells self-adhesive labels manufactured by Avery Dennison Office Products that consumers can customize with their own designs or with templates offered on Zazzle.com. The labels offering is the second Avery-branded product category on Zazzle. It has sold customizable Avery binders since October 2009.
Zazzle normally sources most of its own inventory from the ground up because the firm like to control quality, says Jason Kang, vice president of marketing at Zazzle, No. 211 on Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide. But the company is now pursuing agreements with manufacturers that provide the base product Zazzle customers can then customize. “At times we recognize that in some categories firms like Avery will do binders or labels better than we will, and we do the customizing process better,” Kang says.
The two companies also have a cross-promotional agreement. Visitors to the Avery Dennison web site can click through to Zazzle to customize and buy Avery labels or binders on the site.
Self-adhesive labels are available in sizes that work as address labels, return address labels and shipping labels—or anything else that can be customized to work in those sizes, such as gift tags and kitchen labels. Consumers can add their own photos, text and designs for free, and can use free templates created by other users. Kang says more than 27,000 templates have been added since the label category launched last week.
Zazzle also has a supplier agreement with the Keds shoe brand. Keds can be designed using Zazzle’s program from the Keds.com site. “These types of partnerships are something we’ve seen success with and are excited to replicate with the right partners,” Kang says.