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During the COVID-19 crisis, the digital economy exploded. Are you a creative artist who wants to monetize your talents? Do you want to be an entrepreneur to start an ecommerce business with a low-risk investment? Print on demand (POD) might be the perfect way to launch your brand and sell custom products. There are various platforms, like HugePOD, to help you achieve success even if you have no design background or the means to fulfill orders.
We will go through what print on demand is, how to establish a print on demand, and how to leverage HugePOD at Shoplazza to help you succeed in this post. By the end of this article, you will have a better knowledge of the concepts and will be more confident in launching your print-on-demand journey on the internet.
Print on demand is a business model in which products are not printed until the company receives an order. It allows you to customize goods such as t-shirts, mugs, phone cases, and many other items. You only need to create eye-catching designs, configure your products, and sell them online; the rest will be handled by a print-on-demand service provider.
Print-on-demand is a sort of dropshipping that eliminates the need for merchants to manufacture and keep goods in stock. When a customer purchases a t-shirt with your design from your online store, the order will be sent to a third-party POD provider for fulfillment, packing, and shipping. This means that you won’t have to worry about excessive inventory costs, or the possibility of product being stuck on your hand. As a result, if you are an entrepreneur looking to turn your ideas into brands and products, print on demand is just the thing for you.
Print on demand, like any other business models, has both benefits and downsides. On the one hand, because there is no inventory and upfront costs, print on demand is a very low-risk investment for businesses. Furthermore, with a set of tools and services provided by POD service providers, print on demand businesses are easy to set up. Additionally, thanks to the automated printing and shipping services, you won’t have to spend much time on it. So even though you work full-time, you can still exploit this business model to showcase and monetize your skills.
However, this also comes with several drawbacks. The first one is low profit margins. While you gain from the simplicity of hands-off fulfillment, your service providers share a big percentage of the revenues. Plus, shipping is not cheap, which ate into your profit margin. Another major concern is that you have very limited control over the customer experience because you don’t really handle the products.
After knowing the basics, let’s move to discuss how to start a POD business and what tools we can employ. Essentially, there are three critical steps, including Create, Sell, and Fulfill products.
The first and most important step in running a successful print on demand business is to create merchandise that entices customers to take impulsive actions. If you are a creative person with a lot of exciting ideas, this is a perfect business for you to make money. Even when you have a full-time job, you can still focus on the creation and design part and let your suppliers take care of the rest. No need to worry if you are an ecommerce entrepreneur with no design skills. Most platforms provide easy to use tools to facilitate the design.
In addition, there are plenty of resources you can use on the internet. Canva, for example, is a free design tool that allows users with no design experience to express themselves. There are also some platforms like Behance or 99designs where you can find many talented designers that can assist you in visualizing your ideas. All you have to do is tell the designers what you want and provide clear instructions. The open access resources provided by the world’s top art museums is another excellent source of inspiration. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, introduced its Open Access Initiative in February 2017, which makes 492,000 images of public-domain artworks available for free and unrestricted use. You can always check out these treasures for design ideas.
After you’ve finished designing your product, the following step is to generate sales. Joining online marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy and tapping into their millions of active shoppers is one way to get started. But the truth is that, in order to keep generating visitors to your store, you may end up spending enormous costs for advertisement to compete with other merchants. The experience is that, using an ecommerce platform like Shoplazza to create your own branded website is a better way to market your design.
Having your own branded store has several advantages. To begin with, when you sell products via your own website, you can enjoy more control of your store setup and might customize your brand. Shoplazza provides our merchants with a range of free themes and templates to design their stores and decide how to interact with their customers. With your own brand narrative and image, you can cultivate a loyal customer base and expand your business’s potential. Furthermore, you can also utilize the marketing tools in Shoplazza including email list, remarketing ads, and social media feeds to stay connected with your customers and build a relationship that extends beyond the marketplace.
Now that you have your own products on your own website. When a customer places an order, it is your responsibility to fulfill it. However, if you do some research online, you will come across so many print-on-demand service providers to choose from. What criteria should you consider when making a decision amid so many options? There are three factors to take into account.
Your consumer will never return if your product has quality flaws, no matter how beautiful your design is. So before selecting the supplier, be clear about customization and printing options they offer and make sure to order some test samples and consider the product features that your customer cares about, such as fit, material, sizing, softness and weight.
2. Shipping rate and time
Fast fulfillment and reasonable shipping rates are also important considerations, because how the shipping rate is calculated has a direct impact on your profit margin, and the time it takes to deliver the order will affect customer satisfaction. The advantage of the POD business model is that entrepreneurs pay no monthly or upfront expenses. When a POD service provider receives an order, they normally charge for fulfillment & shipment.
Another thing to consider is whether or not the provider has any distinctive features or offerings that set them apart from the competitors. For example, do they offer to add custom labels, clothing tags, and patches to brand your products? Do they provide high-quality professional product mockups? If you are a writer, you might want to seek a POD service that offers book printing.
HugePOD is a global print-on-demand supply chain facilitator focused to supporting both start-ups & established brands in the fashion industry. HugePOD oversees the entire process for its customer, from design through prototyping, manufacturing, quality control, and shipment.
The following are some of HugePOD’s competitive features:
If you go to Shoplazza App center, you can see several navigation menus. Click “Sourcing and selling Products”, you can easily find HugePOD.
Click “Install App” to link HugePOD to your Shoplazza account.
After logging in, go to the HugePOD homepage and click the “DESIGN NOW” button to begin your journey.
Let’s use a t-shirt design as an example.
First of all, you can choose what materials you want to use for your design. Options include polyesters, cotton, and viscose. Let’s choose a cotton cropped tee.
Then you can either use a design from the library or upload your own design. HugePOD has a design library with over 500 options to choose from for your products.
Here I added a woman’s figure selected from the library on the front of the tee.
You can also modify the size and color of the product design, as well as add text to it, using free and easy-to-use design tools.
When you’re finished, remember to save your creation. Then you can see the option to save the design for dropshipping and push it to your store will appear.
You can choose the size and color to offer in your business before importing them.
You'll be able to locate them in your Shoplazza store after they've been published. Customers may now choose what they want from your inventory.
As long as HugePOD receives the order, they will fulfill and ship it directly to your customer under your brand name.
You may always go to the help center or contact customer care if you have any questions.
Now that we have covered what is print on demand, how to kickstart a print-on-demand business with limited initial funding at Shoplazza and provide a guide to use Huge POD as well to help you achieve success. As long as you can extend what you can print and sell and keep up with what’s popular with your target demographic, you can stand out in a crowded market.