Online store on my site Vs. POD services?

Jri

Member
I'm adding a shop to my website to sell illustrations that I have done, primarily on T-shirts as a sort of mini 'brand' attached to my work.

For the most part, items will be DTG printed and stocked by me - so I'll be handling all shipping from my office at home. This extra effort means that the cut I take from what I sell will be significantly better than if I were to use a service such as Society6 or Zazzle and I feel that I will get much better overall control. My reasons for not using these print on demand services are numerous, but mainly:

- You are limited to their stock (basic brand T-shirts for example, nothing high end), which I feel ultimately compromises the product that I am selling.
- The amount they charge is often prohibitively high, particularly if you want to add on a decent share for yourself. This is silly for things like budget T-shirts
- Their items are not shipped under plain cover, often containing promotions for Zazzle, Society6, CafePress etc...
- Those sites are geared towards funnelling you toward their marketplace as a whole, not necessarily just to your products.

While my primary drive will be to sell work on my website, I have also been considering putting the designs online on the major print on demand sites - just so that I have a sort of online presence there too. This could be a useful alternative for me to link to during any store down-time that I experience and could snare the odd extra sale. Alternatively, I don't really want to dilute what I am offering with what I consider to be cheap 'sell your art through us' sites.

Does this seem sensible?
 
There are drop shippers where you can bolt a Shopify or Woo-commerce app and it links to them directly via another app.

You can get POD suppliers that also ship white label with none of their information and it appears to have come from you.
Some will even do a print on label in the back of the neck with your logo/info at extra cost.
If you get a certain amount of orders they'll even include a custom packaging label and put some of your bumph in there.

They do take quite a chunk but you don't really have to do anything or carry any stock.
 
I never liked POD stuff. It's always lower quality than I expect, especially for the price. As a designer I do like the appeal of being able to have basically no investment/risk into a product. However, as a consumer I'm just never happy with the POD stuff I've ordered.
 
I never liked POD stuff. It's always lower quality than I expect, especially for the price. As a designer I do like the appeal of being able to have basically no investment/risk into a product. However, as a consumer I'm just never happy with the POD stuff I've ordered.

Things have moved on greatly with digital POD technology in recent times from when they were wishy-washy prints only available on white t's.

I think the quality can vary quite a bit so I'd get some test prints from any POD suppliers first before comitting and rolling out designs with them but I do get where you're coming from.

I've worked as both a screen printer, printing t-shirts to working for a gift company that outsourced the POD stuff to other suppliers.

I still have one of the early test prints from YEARS back.
A black and white design on a grey t-shirt and I've worn it to death (literally).

It's now faded but in a similar way to how a screen printed t would have and was almost indistinguishable when new.
 
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