Print on Demand Services

Since 2015 – 2018 there are different print on demand services available around the world that enable designers to produce and commercialize their products in different geographic areas.

The main products sold on this way are shirts, pullover hoddies, zip hoddies and other type of textile products. There are other vendors that offer mugs, caps, backpacks, bags and many other types of products.

A map about the basis of this industry

There are different competitors in the scene, focusing on global delivery or regional delivery.

Right now (2022), the services they offer are very powerful and they are able to offer many details for the brand owner or designer to expand their own products. Things like:

• Design IDE for the products.
• Integration with your e-commerce platform.
• Delivery services across different geographies.
• Tax Management service.
• Inventory (for companies managing major number of products).
• etc.

The case of Amazon: Merch on demand

Amazon has their own print on demand service: merch on demand. They offer just textile products. No Mugs, caps and other type of products are available right now.

It was launched by 2015, and it has not been announced too much.

The way to pay royalties is very standard. For instance this is the table for US t-shirts. I have added the percentage received depending on the price you set to your product.

This way to price the products and the royalties are too basic. Other services offer you the possibility to define your margins with certain guardrails: they don’t cap your brand power.

There is not much information in the investors relations but when looking in Amazon Jobs, you can find they are looking for different roles.

The question ask myself is,

What is the momentum for Amazon Merch within the marketplace and with respect their competitors?

Printful

Right now I use Printful, in my case I generate merchandise for fun or for family presents (the grandma’s mug is the best thing I did, and the cost of sending a customized mug to 6000 kms away is simply ridiculous).

You have all type of merchandise and they are all customized in many ways. They are testing new products and the service support is good.

In Printful you can set your profits, so in case you have a demanded brand you can increase your profits (this is not allowed in Amazon Merch). The revenue for the designer is set in a range as there are some

You have to be careful with the calculation of costs, due to Printful modifies costs and you have to pay attention to it. They offer videos where they explain all costs associated to the manufacturing, inventory and delivery of a product.

This is an example of a price table in Printful for a basic t-shirt. Despite you can think that you can earn between 10% – 20% per shirt, the reality is that is always closed to 10%.

If you are selling good volumes of products you can produce and store them into their warehouses.