As a Print On Demand seller there are many different providers and vendors to think about regarding quality and ease of use depending on where you are intending to sell your products. In this post we will look at all those variables and figure out which are important to you!
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Why I Wrote This Post
I had a gal ask me this question and I just had too many thoughts about it to be able to craft a good email response so I am writing a whole dang post!
I have a question for you, if you don't mind answering it… Have you ever had any clothing items printed via Printful? If so, what did you think of the quality (of both the printing and also of the fabric the T-shirt was made of? One of the “something new” things I want to dive into and learn is print-on-demand garments. (I've done hand-carved relief block printing on fabric in the past — very time consuming — so I'm looking at POD as a possible alternative method.
Carol of www.poppenga.com
With this broad question in mind, I will give you my feedback from having sold POD in the past myself!
My Print On Demand Story
Years ago Printify was starting as a vendor with Etsy and I wrote a blog post that remains one of my top ranking posts to this day.
At that time I wasn't a print on demand seller per se, I just wanted to have some cute tshirts I could use as giveaways to my peeps and wear myself.
Later I did put some of my artwork onto custom products like pillows, tshirts and home decor items to sell in the world and so I have a pretty broad range of knowledge about how print on demand products work for all kinds of different businesses!
Here are some the POD items I have with my artwork on them!
So let's dive into some of the considerations when choosing which print on demand provider to use.
Where Are You Going To Sell Your Items
Before you even think about which print on demand companies to use, you want to think about where you are going to sell your items. Here are some examples that come to mind for me…
Selling In Person Or Consignment To Retail Stores
If you are doing an “inventory” situation where you are having to stock different designs, colors and sizes, then you don't need to make a online store or have online ordering. You can simply use a print on demand service that prints and ships directly to you. For this you could use Printify or Printful.
We shall call this “IN PERSON”
Creating Art To Sell On “User Submitted” Site
If you aren't techy and still want to have an online store, you can upload your artwork and the site will handle all the ordering, customer service, fulfillment and shipping for you. Some examples of this are Amazon, Redbubble, Spoonflower or Society 6.
We shall call this “USER SUBMITTED”
Using An Online Marketplace
If you want to have a bit more control of the products that you sell AND have a built in audience for your products, you will want to sell on a site like Etsy. For this you will need a vendor that is approved by the marketplace. For example, both Printify and Printful are approved vendors for Etsy.
We shall call this “ONLINE MARKETPLACE”
Here is my bestys print on demand store on Etsy, Rebekah and Co!
Setting Up An Online Store
If you are going to go all out and set up an online store, either on your own site or a ecommerce platform like Shopify, you have the highest level of control but the most work. You have to set up the shop, hook up all kinds of apps and also do the marketing for your store.
We shall call this “YOUR OWN STORE”
Here is my online storefront for my artwork…
How Much Does Quality Matter To You?
Now this might seem like a “duh” moment… OF COURSE production quality matters to you, but there really are considerations here that are more nuanced.
First off, if you are doing IN PERSON sales, you will want to have the ability to choose the kinds of vendors and products that you want to provide. This would be Printify or Printful. Once you have chosen on of those, you can drop down and choose different companies in those services (don't fret, I will tell you more about this in a minute!)
USER SUBMITTED gives you absolutely no control over the production quality of the products. You can choose to offer different quality levels like “classic tees” or “tri blend tees”, but overall, the site picks the products that they want to print on.
ONLINE MARKETPLACE or YOUR OWN STORE can both be accomplished with either Printify or Printful and you have total control of the quality of products and printing options that you are ordering. (BONUS… most of the companies on those sites will let you order “samples” for a super low price so you can check for quality.)
2 Systems… User Submitted or Everything Else
Now, before we dig in to the world of print on demand, let's take a quick second to say that there are functionally two kinds of print on demand sites. USER SUBMITTED or everything else.
With USER SUBMITTED you can get up and running super fast, but you don't own any part of the process and can't control anything. Some examples of this are Amazon, Redbubble, Spoonflower or Society 6.
Everything else means that you have control of the process, but you have to have more technical abilities than just uploading your artwork.
Aggregators or Independents
Sites like Printify and Printful (which I recommend for most of my peeps) are aggregators of print on demand compaines.
This means that you can order products from different printers all through one site, rather than having to go to all different sites.
That said, there are amazing independent printers like Awkward Styles who do print on demand but don't necessarily hook up easily to your own online store or even to marketplaces like Etsy.
What you choose all depends on what you need for your business!
Quick Overview of Print On Demand Process
One of the main reasons I suggest using Printify is that they give you the most flexibility to sell products. (I think Printful does too but I have never used them so I really can't comment about their ease of use or anything else.)
You can use them to fulfill your POD products on YOUR OWN SITE, order for IN PERSON or even send the products over to an ONLINE MARKETPLACE.
Here is a quick overview of how it works!
Pick A Product
I think Carol was wanting to sell “garments” but I will call that tshirts for ease of understanding! (I have a whole post about selling tshirts with Printify if you are interested!)
You can pick different criteria like where you want the printer to be located, the quality of the tshirt and how much you want to spend on the base tee.
Choose Your Printer
Once you pick the type of products you want to print on, you get to pick which company prints it. I like a v-neck tee, so I can choose from 6 print providers who are in the USA.
Customization options you might want to consider are the product costs, shipping costs, shipping time, production time in business days, sizes offered and colors available. You get to set the profit margins at the sites you list on or in person sales.
Upload Artwork & Preview
You can then upload your artwork and see what it will look like on the tshirt you chose and decide how to place it on the tshirt!
Note: If you want to have your artwork all over your item like mine in the above picture you need to choose a vendor that offers AOP (All over print).
Choosing A Print On Demand Vendor Wrapup
I hope this helps you (and Carol) figure out what kind of vendor to use if you are going to start a print on demand business.
It is just so hard to know what to choose depending on what your goals are for the physical products you are looking to sell!
If you have specific questions, feel free to reach out to me [email protected] and might be able to point you in the right direction!
