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We’ve chatted with Wes Taylor from to let you know how you can sell custom designed products printed and shipped on demand, under your own brand.

Transcript

Jesse: What’s going on, Richard?

Richard: What’s happening, Jesse?

Jesse: Yeah, it’s good, good. I’m pumped today about the guest we have on, because this is kind of for people that just have this little bit of an idea in their head of a business. This is the perfect opportunity for them.

Richard: Yeah, I mean we talk a lot about how to get on Google Shopping feed and if you’ve got a product here’s the things you should do with SEO and we’ve covered so many things, but we’ve never really covered a topic, where someone just had an idea or maybe they had a following and they wanted to get something to market, but they didn’t want to have inventory and what do they want to do, and so we specifically want to cover what we call “print on demand service” basically, and some of the things that you can do with print on demand.

Jesse: Yeah, that’s awesome. So, let’s bring on our guest Wes Taylor from Printful. How is it going, Wes?

Wes: Hey, pretty good. Thanks for having me.

Richard: Thanks for coming down as the fun trip from Los Angeles to San Diego.

Wes: Exactly.

Richard: Worst places to come visit though. Thanks for making your way down.

Wes: Yeah, absolutely love it done here.

Jesse: Yeah, awesome. So, we talked a little bit prior to the podcast here so, you know, give us from your view, why print on demand?

Wes: Oh, so print on demand is pretty much a no-brainer if you ask me. It’s just a really great way if you are very business-minded, you have ideas, you have that entrepreneurial heart, but sometimes you don’t necessarily have the financial ability to just go hardcore and buy lots of inventory and all this stuff for your ideas. So, print of demand allows you to start a business or start a merch store with little to no cost, especially with Printful, that is. So, yeah, it lets you test out the market, let you just do one off. So, it’s just a really great opportunity to test out your market and get things started for yourself.

Jesse: Sure. So, in case we lost anybody with print on demand and merch store. So, what are we talking about, what kind of products does Printful allow people to sell?

Wes: Sure. So, with Printful, we have a very large catalog of products. They range from apparel to assessors. So, you can do now cell phone cases, totes, we have like throw pillows for your couch, that you can have outdoors too. So, that’s a good thing for you, yeah. And then we also have traditional T-shirts, tank tops, hoodies. We have leggings, swimsuits, beach towels. That’s nuts.

Richard: So, does the merchant have to pick which cues or can they kind of, say they have a customer, to pick specific example. We have a customer, that we’re going to actually be building a store with, he’s an author, one of the things he’s saying in the name of his book is “What is your What?”, and was thinking of doing a T-shirt with that. Did you use that as an example. Does he have to pick the four skews with that logo or that scene is going to go on or is it open for one of his clients to put it on anything they want, or is it either?

Wes: Sure. So, from the store owner perspective, which would be the author in this case, he would go through and choose which specific shirt that he wants to print on and then also the colors as well. So, we have a very wide range of products from oldschool Gilden, to like new school Bellah canvas, that’s much more like fashion fitted, form fitted, you know. So, depending on your target audience and who you’re selling to you can find the product that they are going to want, which is also a nice thing that you can do with drop shipping, you can test that out as well. You can kind of put up the boxy old school tee and the new form fitted tee and see which one is there, but it also allows you to give your customer that option of if they want kind of the baggy blue shirt or the tight shirt. So, yeah, and even from there there’s, you know, different fabric blends that they can choose to work with, so, there’s lots of different options for them, but we offer sample products, so they can always test out for themselves which they want.

Richard: So, they put in some sort of code so they can: “I want to try these four things, put in a code and get it some sort of discounted rate?”

Wes: Yeah. Well it’s even simpler than that, you just have your personal account and you just, there’s a button that says “new order”, you hit it, and then there’s an option that says “Sample” quick it and then it’s going to be 20% off.

Richard: So, wow, that is so cool, so basically someone’s sitting there they have an idea, they’re watching that debate, they’re some sort of saying that was grown up with the kid they just want to do it for a family reunion. They have the option to go in and buy one or buy 25. Is there some sort of way.

Jesse: Or buy zero.

Richard: Yeah that’s right, or just the sample. But, in general could you, say now you’ve proved it, it work, and now, they could easily sell 500. Is there a system, how could they get it now potentially discounted cost not that they prove something out?

Wes: Sure. Well, so in general kind of like the ideal scenario is like they would work with 51��Ƶ, for example, and you would put your product for sale there, and that is where you would direct your customers to purchase. So, let’s take the debate for example like you mentioned, or maybe something really popular just happened on this TV show or the sporting event and the whole world saw it and everyone’s talking about it, and so you make your product for that, you place it up on your store, you tweet out the link, you publish it wherever you want to social media, you can do it on Instagram and use the “Shop now”, so that you can sell it that way. Yeah. And, so, you’re not paying anything on the offline until a customer buys it. So, that’s kind of the nice thing there. And so that’s how you can go about doing that. But, let’s say, it is something super popular, you mentioned printing like 500 shirts. So, we do everything one off using technology called DTG — Direct to Garment, which is just kind of this cool new thing, that it’s kind of like a big inkjet printer if you will some, all the colors at once, which makes it affordable to print everything one off. But we also have screen printing available at Printful. So, in that case if you do know, like, I’m doing a pop-up shop or a trade show and I want to have a bulk inventory therefore that, you can contact Printful and we can do a little bit cheaper pricing for you, for doing screen printing for a big bowl quarter and then would ship that to you.

Jesse: Got it. So, I mean the basic T-shirt. So, let’s kind of go, let’s go average numbers here, so somebody says: “All right, I got this perfect saying for this T-shirt, I’m going to make it on Printful”, you know, what does that normally cost the merchant for that T-shirt?

Wes: Sure. So, we have a very wide range of prices also with our t-shirts, because that’s kind of depending again on the target audience you’re going for. So, our cheapest shirt is $8,95 and that does include the printing on it. So, that’s what that is and then shipping is on top of that, which you are going to charge your customer for saying not to worry about that really. But, yeah, so that’s how it is, the prices are always listed on our site, and that includes the, like the fulfillment cost of that and the printing as well.

Jesse: So basically, like we call it like somewhere between 8 and 15 bucks for.

Wes: Sure, yeah, I would say, like average mid level sure is like thirteen dollars. Yeah. And, so, from there you can kind of, we have more some that are more expensive and that’s kind of more of a premium fill, which you can also then charge more for, because it is a premium shirt premium product and you can sell it as such. So, yeah, there’s lots of options there for you to be able to run whatever type of business or merch store you want to run.

Jesse: Okay. And, so now we kind of skipped over the design of this so, like, with the example Rich mentioned, you know, we had a previous podcast Steve has, his name of his book is called “What is your what?” So, if he has just the text “What is your what?”, or for other people listening to whatever’s going on the news or sporting events, you can literally just come with text and then design it on Printful? Is that the case or do you need to have a designer?

Wes: Well, so the answer is yes. So, there’s lots of different options there for you again. And it just kind of depends on where your skill level is in the world of design. So, let’s say you don’t have any skills or access to any programs to design anything yourself.

Jesse: So, you have no skills, no talent, nothing (laughing.)

Wes: You just have the idea. So, you can actually create a very basic text design within Printful and have it pushed directly to your store. So, if you do have just a saying you can hop on Printful, you can plug in those text, you can move them around however you want. You can change the colors, pick the font that you want. We also have a little clip arts and emotions on there, so you can even put cute stuff like that. We just added for the holiday season coming up kind of ugly sweater designs. So, now you can’t even go in and create your own, like ugly holiday sweater in there if you want. So, yeah.

Richard: So you have some prefab stuff there too?

Yeah, it’s really great. So, that’s kind of like basic the idea “I can’t do anything else”, so I can do it that way. And then we do have print file guidelines on our website for whatever product it is and you can download those, open them in Photoshop Illustrator, whatever. So, if you are a designer have little skills you can do all that stuff yourself and then just load your file into Printful.

Jesse: So. Okay, perfect. So, if you don’t really have a whole lot of skills, there’s a way there to do it, if you have photoshop experience or your friend has Photoshop experience, your design can be a little more, I don’t know a little fancier, I guess.

Wes: Right, for sure, and then we also have an in-house design team, so even that is just another way to remove an obstacle, if you have the idea, the drive, desire, but you’re just unable to do it yourself, you can contact them and commission them to create whatever it is that you’re wanting.

Richard: It’s not like a cost per hour, per project?

Wes: Yeah, you just contact them, because there’s lots of things. Yeah, it’s kind of like time, complexity of what you’re working with, how many things you’re wanting, all that stuff, so.

Richard: But it’s available and it’s there so someone can come in and they just have an idea that could get going. They can A/B tested. They could even have someone to do a design for five dollars and it may or may not be good.

Wes: Exactly.

Richard: But these are all options available around them all the way up to hiring and professional services. Do you guys actually have a designer. And so, now they know what print on demand is, they don’t have to have this big inventory, they understand that they don’t even have to have great design experience, but should they want to work with someone they can or if they have someone they work with and they want to now it’s just follow those design files, that you’re referring to make sure that this type of file, size. And then, I’m sure when they’re picking out the products, is there some sort of layout, where they could see what it looks like on the shirt ahead of time and decide what that actually, before the hitting sample button?

Wes: Yeah, absolutely. So, it is a little tricky, because you are, I mean it’s not tricky at all, actually, but you just have to keep in mind you’re looking at a computer screen versus an actual physical product. But we do have a mockup generator that will show you kind of the placement, that mockup generator is free and actually when you’re syncing it over to your store it pushes those mockup images over, so that you don’t even have to do your own product photography if you don’t want to, because again that can cost money. So, there’s this free option that your customers will see, we can even choose some of the shirts have people already wearing them, we’re adding lifestyle mockups, so we have a backpack for example that someone can sell and we already have images of like a person wearing the backpack and a setting, and so, you’re gonna have these nice lifestyle photos, that you’re generating with your images on it, so you can get an example. But, yeah, it’s always just keep in mind that it is a computer screen versus a real product.

Richard: To say we’ll stick with the 80/20 rule, 80 percent of it is pretty, the general concept is there, might be a little bit closer to the strap on the backpack than that it’s a teeny difference, but you’re going to have a pretty darn good idea, like: “Wow, that’s way too big for that backpack, let me shrink that down just a little bit, or that’s a perfect size.” For the most part, you’re going to have a good idea with that.

Wes: Yeah, absolutely. And we even have a hat mockup generator. It’s all the same generator, but with the hat it actually generates it to kind of look like a thread and it’s like the only one out there, like there’s not another hat mockup generator that’s going to show you, like, this kind of looks like bread. So, really impressive stuff that we have there that’s available for free.

Richard: So, these services have been around for a while, the print on demand. Man, I can’t even remember some of the names, but I’m sure you have competitors out there, but why Printful? What is it that Printful do and that’s unique, because I’ve heard a few things, it sounds like you have other services or other things. What is it that makes, why should people other than the obvious easy integration with 51��Ƶ, which is partially why we had a super easy concept that how quick and easy you can set up the 51��Ƶ store and then connect the two, they don’t even have to have product images, they don’t have to have inventory, they don’t have, like, literally bare minimal effort other than a creative idea and a desire to try to do something. Sounds like you got some other things going on there. What is it about printful, they should know?

Wes: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think the biggest thing, that sets us apart from other print on demand companies is our quality. We work really hard at that and with just even quality control, we do tons of testing always on everything every product we had. We do tons and tons of testing on to make sure that we’re going to be able to offer a product that’s going to have good printing on there. Another huge thing that has to do with our quality is that we do everything in-house. So, some other print on demand companies, you will have to pick which supplier or manufacturer you want to use within the print on demand companies. So, a shirt might come from Michigan and then the next one might come from this other store somewhere else. So, we do all that stuff in-house, so we have three locations right now: Los Angeles, Charlotte North Carolina and then Riga, Latvia. So, that’s really cool, because let’s say you have a customer in England and they buy something from me, so we can now apprenticeship from Europe and that’s going to cut down some of the shipping costs and customs fees, stuff like that.

Jesse: It looked the same too.

Wes: It’s going to look the same, because across all of our locations we’re using the same technology, the same printing, the same codes. So, you don’t have to worry about getting different types of quality from different locations, so that’s a huge thing as well. And so, we’ve grown really to kind of be just a really great solution for anyone starting out or anyone who is already established, so, let’s say you are an author, you do have your own books, you’re shipping them yourself. We also offer warehousing and fulfilment. So, let’s say you have your book or maybe you’re selling jewelry, that’s stuff we obviously don’t have, but we can warehouse that for you. And then, you can still have that product synced to your 51��Ƶ store and every time a customer buys it, it sync to Printful, we pull out of your stock and ship it for you. And that really frees you up to now start writing your next book or start creating your next product, and you can start concentrating on marketing and all the stuff that you’re good at, that’s gotten you to the place where you need someone to fulfill for you. So, it’s going to allow you to step your game up and your business. So, that’s kind of like the big things that’s making Printful stand out from the crowd.

Richard: Love that extra. So, this kind of ties in people who, as we started this broadcast, were like: “We’re going to have this conversation to help people that maybe don’t have a product yet.” But what you’re saying is, they could also have a product, right, so they could be trying to test them, maybe they’re going to specifically use these shirts to help market a product. So, maybe they just turn the shirts into marketing that, it’s helping pay for the marketing.

Wes: Right. We have lots of people, that customers that are selling exercise equipment for example, and so we offer leggings, and sports broads, and other apparel. So, now they’re able to expand their current product line that has nothing to do with apparel and now they’re being able to add additional income to what they already have going on. So, that’s another just you know amazing perk.

Jesse: Yeah, that’s great. And then, they don’t have to necessarily buy all these different sizes of, you know, leggings and sport bras, like you guys have them, when you want to print them, they’re ready to go. So, it’s a way to expand another product line without having to buy any product, that’s what I love.

Wes: Sure, yeah. And you can test it too. So, it’s like: “OK, great, the people that buy this gym equipment, they are not interested in t-shirts and I know that, because I didn’t spend any money, but I offered and no one bought it and that’s great. So, yeah, I didn’t lose any money on that. So, now I know that they’re not interested. So, it’s just a really great way to test out your market and your target audience.

Jesse: Yeah, I could see a lot of, kind of to Richie’s point there are people that might have an existing store, selling a bunch of products, but they have a brand and they have a logo. Well you can now take that logo, go to Printful, upload that logo, try it on, you know, a hat, a T-shirt, a tote bag, all these different things, see what sells, and you don’t even have to buy the sample. You could just go with the standard mockup, you know, right, now you have maybe five or six different products. See, if they sell, you buy one for yourself, you know, I kind of want a hat of a couple different brands, so, I think that’s a cool way to test out, whether you’re adding revenue to an existing brand or the idea of just, you have no product, you want to start a merch store basically.

Wes: Yeah, absolutely.

Jesse: Now, we talked about creating the product and you guys take care of the shipping, now, when somebody buys from an 51��Ƶ store, how does the order get over to Printful?

Wes: Great question, all right. So, 51��Ƶ and Printful are friends and they’ve, they’ve connected APIs. So, everything is integrated there, which means that they’re talking to each other, what happened after you have connected Printful, you can download the app within 51��Ƶ and you go to your Printful account and you start adding your products. We have, what’s called a ‘product push generator’ and it’s crazy simple, you can add a product literally in like two minutes, if even that, it’s so quick. So, you click on what you want, upload your designs, right there within the Printful you can add the product description, your product title, you pick the price, all that stuff that you want, and that syncs over to 51��Ƶ. And, so, now it’s just connected, like, Internet magic. So, the customer now will go to your storefront, whenever they click ‘place order’ that automatically sent over to Printful for us to fulfill.

Jesse: So, that’s awesome. So, now you could, you’re basically making money in your sleep and there’s no need to cut and paste this order instant over Printful and send an e-mail, like, you just you just sell, Printful, you take the money, and Printful ships it.

Wes: Right. The whole thing is you do the legwork upfront, which isn’t even that much work, because you the store owner would set up all that stuff beforehand you pick out, you know, the product, the colors, the design, and then everything is automated after that. And the beauty of it is now you get to continue to work on the marketing of that creating the next product, all the things that are really going to help you sell, what you just did, you know.

Jesse: Wow. So, let me give an example of, you know, if people listen this podcast right away, like the World Series is going to happen pretty soon here. So, potentially there could be a hero of Game 3 and that we don’t know yet, and you could, maybe there’s the announcer says something you could take that scene, go to Printful, make a design, publish it, put on your store and like right away you’re on Instagram, you’re on Twitter, and that could be a viral hit. By the morning, there’s money in your bank account in Printful,printing shirts, hats whatever.

Richard: I mean, didn’t you do something similar you were, I think we were talking earlier.

Wes: Right.

Richard: We didn’t get to hear the whole story, but I think it had to do with something like that.

Wes: Yeah, absolutely. There’s always, I would say pretty frequently we have a store owner that kind of goes viral, like that’s a pretty common thing, you’ll be walking around the fulfillment floor and all of a sudden you’re realizing everything is the same. They’re all printing the same product. Yeah, and it’s people just paying attention, having a niche market. And, so, yeah, like the debates for example a few years ago lots of very great quotes were being said and people were on it, they were sitting there at their TV with their laptop, creating the designs as quotes were being made. People would go to bed after they created their product tweeted out that mockup generator literally would wake up with a couple of hundred thousand dollars in profit and all that just cost them the time to make that. And, even myself, again, like if you talked about the World Series, so there is a certain sports team that I like. And we were up for the national championship, and so I created a shirt in the event that we did win the national championship and prayed that I was not jinxing the whole thing, took that shirt with me to the sports bar, watch the game, we won, I put that shirt on real quick, took a photo had already done the legwork and set the product up I just had it from a store, and yet took a picture of myself wearing the shirt, posted it, tweeted out there, Instagram, Facebook and I made about 500 bucks that night. All of that and it just cost me them, I use my sample order to print the shirts, so that I had it there. So, yeah, it’s a little bit of planning predicting and, yeah.

Richard: So, hopefully they didn’t see those sales took place to the next day otherwise you were buying the drinks all night right (laughing.) Like, ‘it’s on you tonight..’

Jesse: The video as you’re out drinking and having fun and you were able to launch this from your phone. I know you did work ahead of time, but, you know, from your phone basically two thumbs you’re basically making a store live, tweeting, posting the picture on social and let it happen.

Wes: Yes, exactly, all on-the-go.

Richard: So, this is a perfect example of that never ending debate, saying, Is it the idea or is it the execution. Well, I know there’s a little pun here, but with 51��Ƶ and Printful, it’s literally, it literally is, it’s the idea, because the execution is going to be so flipping easy. That really does put the power back on that idea and just do you do these simple steps to get it implemented, because you could just as easily, you could have made a mean for if they would last, so you could have been covered both ends, you know, just thinking ahead what could happen, what might not happen.

Jesse: Not a true fan there (laughing.)

Richard: You know, this is a business you are talking about, you know, protecting downside risk to your point. You have the options, you just have the option, that’s what we’re getting at. You have an idea. You want to see if something’s going to fly, if it may or may not turn into something. This is a very compelling, it’s not even an argument it’s kind of a no brainer that why wouldn’t you want to do this to some degree. Is there like a set up fee or like how much cost does this take, other than the monthly for the 51��Ƶ, the minimal they have?

Wes: Sure, yes. So, with Printful it’s pretty much just like your time spent as kind of the cost. I mean, you, have the prices listed on the website, I think I mentioned that. So, whatever that prices is what you will pay, once it has been sold. So, there isn’t any subscription fees when it comes to Printful, there’s no startup monthly fee anything like that. So, it’s FREE, it’s free to set up your products in regards to print, you just pay for whatever you just hold.

Richard: Got it. So, let’s do this hypothetical game, we’re setting one up or Steve and he’s going to have a shirt or hat or whatever it is, he sets the, again, making up numbers, let’s just say it’s $15 for the cost of the shirt he picked he wanted a higher-end shirt. K’nex, PayPal, or whatever, I’m sure you connect to a multiple, whatever is going on with 51��Ƶ, right. They’re just using whatever they have already set up. Let’s just say in this in this hypothetical PayPal, the order goes through, maybe the orders for Steve sets the price or whoever sets the price that they make could be 25 bucks to make be 30 bucks they can make it be 50 bucks, if they wanted to. Has anyone made it a limited supply? Can you do, like, numbered shirts? This is me as a sports fan, thinking this out, like if there was a limited amount, like: ‘Oh, hey, there’s only going to be 50 of these made.’

Wes: Sure, yeah. I mean, that’s kind of the beauty of it all is that you can do that. I mean, the nice thing about print on demand is you can leave something there forever, but marketing-wise that might not necessarily be the best idea, because people do tend to move more when there’s a sense of urgency. So, if you let them know that this is like a limited product it’s only here for this month, you can only get it till the end of this date and then it’s done, that is going to encourage people to purchase that. So, as far as marketing goes, that is kind of a smart move that you can play around with. And then of course if it does go well you can always bring that back next year, a couple of months later, if you maybe it was something you put on a sweatshirt. Well, now it’s summertime, so maybe now whatever that design was that was popular it’s like: ‘Hey, now it’s on the beach now. Surprise! You can only get it until August.’

Richard: So, so to figure out the rest of this PayPal things just real quick, in this hypothetical, say it’s decided $30, hypothetical cost $15 from you, you’re shipping it. Forget about shipping costs for a second. Sell it for $30, does it instantly get charged right then $15 and the money goes to him, how does that actually work?

Wes: Sure. That’s a really good question, lots of people ask. So, the first, there’s kind of two transactions, that happened close to the same time. And so the first one is between you and your customer and that transaction runs through, however you have it set up on 51��Ƶ. So, that is where that money takes place, your customer pays you the 30 bucks for the product and then you need to look into whatever setup you have to when you get that money deposited from that. In the meantime over Printful you want to have a default payment method set up as well, so that we can charge you the base rate for that stuff and then we can start automatically.

Richard: Credit card on file, because that card.

Wes: Yeah. Yeah, you can do credit card, debit card, PayPal. You can do, we have a Printful wallet, which is kind of like a prepaid debit card so you can just upload X amount of money on that and we’ll pull from there. Yeah, so lots options there.

Jesse: So, let’s just say it’s, let’s say it’s PayPal on both sides. It could be a lot of different things but. So, in Steve’s example, he charges 30 bucks, he gets paid in his account, like maybe a day or two later, the order goes to you guys immediately, or is there like a little delay, or is it, you know, API sends that order right away?

Wes: Yeah, it is right away, it might be, like, whatever, 15 minutes, 30 minutes. But, yeah, it goes over pretty immediate. If anyone is concerned about that, because especially when you’re starting out you’re, like: ‘Well, what if I get these orders coming through and I’ll have the money for it.’ You can setup Printful to where you have to manually approve orders. So, it comes in, it’s saved as a draft, you can wait for that. The only downside about that is it does extend your fulfillment time. And so, that’s totally ok, you just need make sure you’re being very transparent with your end customer about that with, you know, giving them the right estimation. But, there’s always, you know, solutions for stuff, like…

Richard: And there are good problems to have all of a sudden you wake up, and you had a hundred thousand dollars in orders. It’s still going to potentially be an issue, but it’s nice to have the issue of: ‘Oh, man do I have enough on my credit card, to make sure?’ So, let’s just say one of those hypotheticals, where someone did they hit a homerun, you know, they’re watching debate or literally someone hits a homerun in the World Series and they have some sort of sane. What’s the worst case scenario someone could find themselves in, and I don’t usually ask those kind of question, but say they sold $100,000 but they only have $10,000 on their credit limit, what, do you guys warn him or say we can’t ship these until I do get that, or what, how does that work?

Wes: Sure. So, that’s kind of a lot happening at once. Yes.

Richard: But it’s something that, someone was sitting there dreaming of happening, right there, like: ‘I had that same nor knew it was a stable genius or whatever you know.’

Wes: Sure, yeah. So, well one thing, so, let’s say you didn’t have the money or whatever the transaction failed, when it came into Printful, but, let’s say you did have that and whatever went wrong, your order it will say you, like, ‘order failed’ and that’s nothing to freak out about, like your customer doesn’t know about that, everything’s still fine there. So, all you have to do is just take a nice breath, make sure you get the money in there and then you just manually approve that order and it will go through, your customer has no idea that ever happened. Some people freak out there, like: ‘One of us was a customer, they think they’re order failed, they got this email.’ No they didn’t, they didn’t. It’s all good. This is my, this is Wes personal, personal advice, don’t take it out or anything, but PayPal does have a credit card option now. So, that’s a really smart thing that I even use, so now I charge people with PayPal, so the money is going there and then, I have it set up to charge my PayPal credit card. And so now as soon as the funds are available I just pay off the PayPal credit card with that. So, as long as you’re keeping it with that, you’re not going around the problems, you’re going to run into problems, if now you’re on dominoes and you’re, like: ‘Oh yeah, sure, pay with my PayPal credit card I have.’ So, as long as you’re sticking with stuff like that, that’s a good option as well that you can look into. Again, that is off the record personal Wes advice.

Jesse: PayPal has not sponsored this (laughing.)

Wes: And I’m just saying that’s a good option that I have found personally.

Richard: And, what I was ultimately trying to do there was saying, it is a nice issue to have when your only potential issue is: ‘Can I float the money for a minute, because I’ve got all kinds of orders coming in. I didn’t have to buy product. I didn’t have to worry about fulfillment. You’re doing that too, it didn’t have to ship, excuse me, didn’t have to print the product, you don’t have to do any of that, Printful is doing all of it.’ The worst case scenario you’re going to find yourself in is you might have to float some money, because there’s a day or two till your money goes into the account.

Wes: Right, exactly, yeah, that’s awesome.

Jesse: So, Wes, you probably see a lot of these different stores here and a lot of, I mea, do you have any good stories about other customers that have found some of these overnight successes or, you know, anything you can share?

Wes: Sure, sure. So, I can’t necessarily say that the great thing about Printful is we’re white label, so, your customer will never know you’re using Printful. So, we don’t put our branding on anything which is another perk that some of our competitors don’t do. So, your customer will only ever see your store name. So, because of that I can’t necessarily mention our customers, but there are some that have done interviews with us so you can check that out on our blog. We also have a customer section on our page, so you can check those out as well, but, yeah, there are really great success stories where people have done that where they found their niche market and that’s always where the big success comes in, is when they know who they’re selling to, they know what they’re interested in, especially with all the pop culture stuff that’s going around, if you have something that your audience is interested in, you can sell it to them and they will buy it, because you’re speaking directly to them with that product and them and all their friends, they’re all going to love it. And, so, that’s just the biggest success world that you can get into with everything.

Jesse: So I imagine people that already have, like, the 100,000 Instagram followers, right, if they have their meem or, they’re saying or something they could create a couple different products and they have this built-in people that are, you know, waiting for what they’re selling, right.

Wes: Absolutely, there’s one I can talk about, because they’ve done a blog with us before, ‘We rate dogs’ on Twitter, where you can send in your photo of your pet and ask them to rate your dog and then they give you a rating. And that’s always like fun. And so their ratings are always kind of like jokes, right. So, it will be like 32 out of 10, and so one guy one day was, like: ‘Why are you rating all these dogs like this?’ And they just, their response became really popular among their whole fanbase, so they were getting lots of tweets and likes on that response that they gave him. They turned it into a product and that became one of their most popular product. So, if you do have that stuff, even if it’s like, let’s say, you’re an Instagram influencer and one of your posts, like, the most like post that you’ve gotten, you can now take that photo and put it on whatever it can be a pillow, it can be you can, if it’s like a great abstract type thing you can turn it into leggings and sell that stuff to your fanbase, that they’ve already told you: ‘Hey, I like this!’ And you can be, like: ‘Great, glad you liked it, here it is on the coffee mug.’

Jesse: Wow, that’s very cool, because if you have a big following, you already know what’s the most popular post, because it’s the one with all the likes and the retweets or whatever the latest viral signal.

Wes: Exactly, yeah, yeah. There’s lots of influencers, YouTubers that will use us for, if there’s a catchphrase that just kind of organically came up that they found out their audience likes or thinks is fun. Yes all that stuff is really great.

Richard: I mean, it definitely seems in the world of influencers. It truly is, back to that phrase earlier, it’s no brainer, because they could literally even do a poll in their social media, saying: ‘I’m going to do a shirt. What should we do a shirt on?’ And then people want to help support what they think they help create. So, while I built in audience, it’s like the ultimate easy beta test.

Wes: Yeah, for sure. And let’s talk about, like musicians for example, right, like people love finding their indie musician that no one else knows about, they want to support them. Well now that musician who is also independent and doesn’t have the funds necessarily for merch, now they can sell shirts and all this stuff. And we even do wall art, selling posters, so even independent film artists can have their movie poster up for supporters on Kickstarter or whatever they’re like trying to get backers for. So, those are all really great options to monetize what you have going on.

Jesse: I bet, you know, a lot of times for, like independent filmmakers and such. Everybody has the donate button, right. Nobody really wants to donate. So you can quote-unquote donate by buying a poster, you know, like: ‘Yeah, you’re like, I know this poster doesn’t cost you this much. So this is my way of donating, but now I’m going to wear the hat shirt poster, whatever.’

Wes: Exactly, yeah.

Richard: So, we understand now why Printful. It’s pretty obvious why Printful and 51��Ƶ, it’s super easy. Got the idea. You’re going to do it. We have two, three minutes here. What would be an example there are two little limited on time there, that someone would do to market and to get this out there, more obviously if they have an Instagram account and a bunch of followers, that’s going to be pretty easy like we just alluded to, but what are some other creative ways that people use this for marketing, in your opinion?

Wes: Sure. Well, social media stuff is always king right now, I mean, that’s the been the case for years. So, if you don’t have, like, your business profile set up on fill in the blank social media site you should go ahead and do that, because that’s huge and you can do things, like, a giveaway, for example, is a very simple easy way to kind of get started, especially if you’re just trying to get likes and followers on Facebook or Instagram. Everyone always loves giveaways on those platforms. And so that’s just a really great way to get started and you can also use those sample products, that we talked about, to not only test out the product itself, your design, you can now do product photography and then you can use that same product to do a giveaway with, so you’re kind of getting a really good bang for your buck and now getting a base foundation of followers and stuff like that to kind of kickstart your marketing.

Richard: And hopefully you can get a viral loop, because now you have people that are wearing your shirts, that you can get to take selfies and different pictures and use that same hashtag that’s on your shirt potentially as the vitality loop.

Wes: Right, exactly. And best case scenario, right like, people didn’t get the giveaway, but they still love that product and now they just go buy it.

Jesse: Right. Yeah, they wanted that, they entered their name for this contest. They lost. Now, they’re like” “All right, I can buy the hat for 20 buck. OK. Sure I’ll buy it.”.

Wes: Yeah exactly.

Jesse: I can see how you might be able to, like, have a big hit, maybe you buy a couple of these sample products and send them to celebrities too, and try to get them to tweet out, you know, like I don’t know if we get that, the celebrities probably get a lot of free stuff in the mail, so that wouldn’t work. But, yeah I like your idea of: “OK, you buy it, you get the sample, you wear whatever the merch is.” So, now that’s your instead of just a product shot, which is nice, now you have, you’re wearing it, it’s a lifestyle shot. You can now take it. You can boost your post and things like that and now, you know. All right you were the hat, once you can give it away. Nobody’s going to care that you were a one time. Wow. Ok. That’s great. So, Richard any last questions?

Richard: Wow. I mean, I literally could go another hour, like, but I really just want to tie it back to just my takeaways are: with Printful and 51��Ƶ, you can just get back to the good old “What’s a good idea that I just want a test?” And, like that’s my big takeaway, like you can get back to doing what you do best and you don’t have to do it, and if they already have products you can sell those as well, it’s not an either or, you do both.

Jesse: Yeah, I think for people that are influencer, if you have a following that seems like a no brainer to add this, if you have a brand and you already are on e-commerce like adding merchant here to your store as well, seems like, kind of an obvious no-brainer so. So, I’m pumped, I’m ready to start building up my social profiles and, you know, think of my own products to start selling. So, that’s that’s awesome. So, Wes, where can people find out more about Printful, about you? Where can they go next?

Wes: Sure, just printful.com is a great place to start. We have our blog there and all the information. Check out our product that we have available and yeah it’s a great place to go.

Jesse: All right, perfect. Wes, thank you for being on the show. Richard, another great show. I think we, now we have work to do.

Richard: Yes, lot to do, let’s get on our profiles right now.

Jesse: All right guys, make it happen.