Cap That raises $2.3M for personalized merchandise

Faith Merino · November 20, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/2bd6

Cap That users can create apparel, iPhone cases, and more using their own images or movie stills

Remember Hypercolor shirts from the early ‘90s?  Yeah, someone thought it would be a good idea to make shirts that changed color with body heat, which meant you had bright red armpits.  In hindsight, that was a bad idea.  You know what’s a good idea?  Finding a way to produce shirts and other products that customers design themselves. 

That’s the general aim of Cap That, a company that allows users to design and sell their own apparel, jewelry, tablet and Mac skins, and more using their own photos and videos.  Cap That announced Tuesday that it has raised $2.3 million in a Series B round from Canadian incubator Intertainment Media.  The company has raised $2.5 million altogether.

This isn’t really a new idea—you can create and sell your own products on sites like Zazzle and Café Press.  But Cap That offers a unique patent-pending technology that allows users to create products using video capture, which means users can take an image from a video and turn that into a T-shirt, mug, or a pair of dog tags.

Cap That has also integrated with Instagram so that users can turn their Instagram photos into laptop skins or whathaveyou.

Cap That CEO and Co-founder David Hibbard tells me that more than half of the products in the Showroom (a fancy Pinterest-like layout of products available for purchase) have evolved from an existing product.

“We are seeing this incredible creative cycle where completely unrelated users are in a sense working together to create an organic store front for exiting brands like Machine Gun Kelly and Assassin's Creed III,” said Hibbard.

One user might create an iPhone case using an image from Assassin’s Creed III, and another user might purchase that case and further customize it.

Hibbard says that Cap That will use the new capital from this round to ramp up marketing and development, with a focus on tightening the Web activity surrounding the showroom.  The company will also be developing a mobile presence.

“Going with Intertainment Media was the easiest choice we have made as a company,” said Hibbard.  “In fact, to suggest that we chose Intertainment Media rather then being fortunate enough to be chosen by them would be a revision of history. Once Mr Lucatch, the CEO of Intertaiment Media, indicated his interest in investing, we completely shut off all other investment conversations.”

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