Zazzle is proud to have partnered with Ubuntu Life; the company behind Afridrilles, the world’s first customizable African espadrilles. Zazzle Creators can now join in on the movement of change, and help make a life-changing difference for a community of mothers in Kenya. Your designs will now directly empower a community of mothers with special needs children achieve financial independence. Learn more about this amazing partnership here.

Help make the difference, one design at a time.

Afridrilles on Zazzle 

Although Afridrilles have been a Zazzle customer favorite since 2018, choices were limited to only a select number of preprinted designs. Our customers wanted more. You, our Creators, also wanted more. And so, we listened. We worked closely with Ubuntu Life to develop a truly custom-printed shoe: handmade by the Kenyan ‘Mums’, and now, designed by you.

Because Afridrilles are handmade-to-order, there are a set of designing guidelines and considerations that must be met in order to get approved to sell your Afridrille designs in the marketplace.

Design Constraints

Afridrilles are handmade-to-order shoes that are first printed on canvas, then cut to size for assembly. Due to the complexity of this process, the following design criteria MUST be met:

I. CUSTOMER CUSTOMIZATION MUST BE DISABLED The shoes MUST be published with customization turned off.  Please switch the ‘Show "Customize it" button?' to No during the Post Product for Sale process. NOTE: This is easy to miss according to feedback from the designing community, as most Creators never un-check this box during the 'Post Product for Sale' process.

II. TEMPLATE OBJECTS MUST BE DISABLED The product cannot have any template objects enabled. If you have created template objects in the design, disable them before posting for sale.

III. ONLY PATTERNED OR ALL-OVER ART WILL BE ACCEPTED Due to the subtle differences that are inherent in handmade shoes, we cannot guarantee an exact placement of designs. Therefore, any uploaded artwork MUST be either: a seamless repeating pattern, or abstract enough that one area is indistinguishable from any other area of the artwork The RealView™ of the design applied to the shoe is an approximation, so do not rely on particular design elements to be placed exactly on the toe or side of the shoe as it’s been shown. Here's a few examples:

IV. COLORS  MUST REMAIN CONSISTENT THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE ARTWORK Afridrilles shoes are hand cut from a single sheet of printed canvas prior to being sewn; we cannot guarantee which part of the canvas will be cut. Therefore, all artwork must contain colors that remain consistent through the artwork, regardless of the orientation.

V. ALL PUBLISHED DESIGNS MUST ADHERE TO G-RATING GUIDELINES UBUNTU Life is a non-profit organization, and therefore any content on the Afridrilles shoes must adhere to the "G" Rating guidelines as described in our Zazzle Maturity Ratings System policy.

Shoes that do not meet all of these constraints will NOT be approved by our Content Review Team, and will be deleted. Continued violation of these constraints may result in your access to the product being revoked.

Designing Considerations

Afridrilles are hand-cut, and hand-crafted from a printed canvas material, and therefore, we cannot guarantee the exact placement of your artwork. Also, due to the nature of the handmade process, shoes produced will have a natural variation in appearance.

• The design area is 40 cm x 45 cm in size.
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• The printing process used on the canvas will employ a white-ink underlay, so feel free to use any combination of colors.
• If the design contains any elements of transparency, the customer will have the option to choose their own underlying color. This feature is useful to enable the customization of single-color patterns.
• To prevent designs from appearing completely opaque, or to prevent customers from choosing an underlying color that may be undesirable for any reason, consider using the Product Merchandising options when publishing to set it to "This canvas color only". This will prevent the “canvas color’ option from appearing on the product detail page.  
• Please use SEO best practices when writing your metadata for the shoes.  See this article to learn more.
• All designs will need to be approved by our content management team to ensure they are designed correctly.  It will take up to 48 hours for your product to be approved or rejected before it will appear on the marketplace. 
   

Who Can Design on Afridrilles?  Not everyone! 

How to Determine if You’re An Approved Afridrilles Creator

Due to the unique nature of this product's designing process (as detailed above), only those Creators who have published at least one product in the last year and who have proven their abilities by designing on multiple product types, have been pre-approved to publish on the Afridrilles.

Currently, only pre-approved Creators have access to the following product link:

https://www.zazzle.com/pd/spp/pt-zazzle_afridrillespro 

YOU ARE APPROVED	If you see the Afridrille shoe when clicking the link above, then you have been approved. Go ahead and start designing!
YOU WILL NEED TO APPLY	"Request Error" indicates that you have not yet been approved, and do not have access to the above link.

How To Apply To Become An Approved Afridrilles Creator

Interested in designing on the Afridrilles? You can apply to become an approved Creator by filling out a short Google form.

On the form, you will be required to submit a link to a Zazzle product that demonstrates your understanding of the 4 Design Constraints as detailed above. 

If you are making this product specifically for the approval request, consider setting the 'Product Visibility' to "Direct-only" during the Post Product for Sale process. 

Click here to submit your sample product via the Google Form

Please allow at least five business days to be approved. Unfortunately, due to the volume of requests, we will not be able to respond directly to every application. Therefore, we recommend you check back in, using the product link to determine if your application to access the Afridrilles Create Your Own Shoe product page has been approved. 

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A few notes from the launch

• The Afridrille create-your-own product will not show up in the listing of all create-your-own products here: https://www.zazzle.com/custom/gifts. It can only be accessed via the direct link provided.  
• You, as an approved Creator, will still see the Customize button on the product detail page.  When your product is approved and in the marketplace, if you log out and look at your product, you should not see the Customize button.  
• Here is the Zazzle Forum announcement for more details https://forum.zazzle.com/news/new_product_custom_afridrilles.