Anybody here doing Print on Demand? or thinking about it?

[blue moon]

My definition of POD is ... and order comes in and you print and ship within 48 hours either by DTG or transfers.

When I was investigating what my interested party had requested, I looked at her site on Teespring on Friday, 12/4, it said order today, and it will ship by Dec. 15th or sooner...

Steve

I've seen that somewhere else too. I guess the shipping speed is not part of the requirements...

in my eyes is POD is print what's ordered. The big deal is you can order anything from 1 to 1,000. It could all be done on a press or a DTF or DTG. Don't think that plays a role. So, any quantity after it is ordered.
the problem is, again, the small numbers. How do you efficiently print 1 shirt and still make money on it?
There are companies out there needing thousands of those one off pieces. Does that make it easier to make it profitable? Printing hundreds or thousands each day?

pierre

[Frog]

My definition of POD is ... and order comes in and you print and ship within 48 hours either by DTG or transfers.

When I was investigating what my interested party had requested, I looked at her site on Teespring on Friday, 12/4, it said order today, and it will ship by Dec. 15th or sooner...

Steve

I've seen that somewhere else too. I guess the shipping speed is not part of the requirements...

in my eyes is POD is print what's ordered. The big deal is you can order anything from 1 to 1,000. It could all be done on a press or a DTF or DTG. Don't think that plays a role. So, any quantity after it is ordered.
the problem is, again, the small numbers. How do you efficiently print 1 shirt and still make money on it?
There are companies out there needing thousands of those one off pieces. Does that make it easier to make it profitable? Printing hundreds or thousands each day?

pierre

I've always taken "Print on Demand as just that. No stock kept with which to fill orders, but merely printed as needed. Delivery time is a completely separate issue. That said, I have had a great increase in folks asking about "same day printing". For me, and my market, those are most often 1 or so piece orders. And I charge accordingly.

[rusty]

My definition of POD is ... and order comes in and you print and ship within 48 hours either by DTG or transfers.

When I was investigating what my interested party had requested, I looked at her site on Teespring on Friday, 12/4, it said order today, and it will ship by Dec. 15th or sooner...

Steve

I've seen that somewhere else too. I guess the shipping speed is not part of the requirements...

in my eyes is POD is print what's ordered. The big deal is you can order anything from 1 to 1,000. It could all be done on a press or a DTF or DTG. Don't think that plays a role. So, any quantity after it is ordered.
the problem is, again, the small numbers. How do you efficiently print 1 shirt and still make money on it?
There are companies out there needing thousands of those one off pieces. Does that make it easier to make it profitable? Printing hundreds or thousands each day?

pierre

My thing with the 24 minimum and the $250 deposit is basically for $250 you get 24 shirts to start. Launch your store an we print and ship as orders come in. You only sell 6 shirts? they were 6 expensive shirts then.

Like you said I am looking for a model that is profitable and looks appealing to customers.

If someone doesn't have any. money to start then they will probably be a PITA customer. For me the POD part comes own the roa...

I am still working this out but I don't want to be printful or whoever who have to pump out terrible quality to keep up. Cause the people who start with them don't stay with them. I don't know how those companies do it.

As for Teespring... they really turned their company around and their partnership with youtube and billing a plug in for TWITCH is brilliant what I am looking to do.

I think the better part of a POD type system is where you run the store model an its a set up an sell .

Either way the whole POD system that others are doing needs to be rethought

[tbarnes]

POD does not have to do with the speed in which you print, look at it more like supply and demand. In POD you are not supplying anything until somebody makes a purchase, once the purchase is made you create the supply to meet the demand (usually one piece at a time).

Our software integrates with shopify, so we can essentially connect to a clients shopify webstore (or etsy or wherever they are selling their products) and when they have a customer place an order (they pay in full on the website when they check out) the order is officially placed with us. We usually try to batch the jobs weekly, so we will collect orders for all of these different one off designs Monday-Thursday and then Friday we will go ahead and print and fulfill them all. It is much easier to schedule that way instead of trying to fit in one or two pieces between your larger jobs for your regular clients.

I don't think that POD is going to make contract printing or screen printing in general obsolete, but the market for it has shown continued growth and I think the industry will keep moving in that direction to meet the demand.

The margins per piece when printing on demand far outweigh the margins when contract printing, but contract printing you make up for it in volume (we do both).

[AntonySharples]

Following.  We have a DTG here and it's running decent.  I'm using it to relaunch our brand that we used to have an actual retail tourist shop.  But I've been looking at offering POD fulfillment to certain customers...I think the money can be there to make, it just needs to be efficient.  But I too have thought about the "$300 buy in to start" and a monthly service fee.  I think the initial buy in stops the "dope clothing line" guys like Rusty said lol and also buys stock for them only.  I'm not interested in becoming a full on warehouse with 10,000 items on hand.

[blue moon]

Our software integrates with shopify, so we can essentially connect to a clients shopify webstore (or etsy or wherever they are selling their products)

which software are you using?

pierre

[rusty]

Our software integrates with shopify, so we can essentially connect to a clients shopify webstore (or etsy or wherever they are selling their products)

which software are you using?

pierre


you can do this with shipstation. Thats what we are starting to do.

[tbarnes]

Our software integrates with shopify, so we can essentially connect to a clients shopify webstore (or etsy or wherever they are selling their products)

which software are you using?

pierre

We use a software called Stokkup. It is similar to Printavo but a little bit more sophisticated. Definitely a software that is made specifically for this industry. We use it for order entry, scheduling, data tracking, etc. It is a great software/system but it is a bit expensive...our shop produces enough to justify the cost. Here is a link. www.stokkup.com

[blue moon]

Our software integrates with shopify, so we can essentially connect to a clients shopify webstore (or etsy or wherever they are selling their products)

which software are you using?

pierre

We use a software called Stokkup. It is similar to Printavo but a little bit more sophisticated. Definitely a software that is made specifically for this industry. We use it for order entry, scheduling, data tracking, etc. It is a great software/system but it is a bit expensive...our shop produces enough to justify the cost. Here is a link. www.stokkup.com

did you look into anything else? trying to figure out what's available.

I know of smake, BDLinx and now stukkup.

anybody else know of any other packages?

pierre