Connect a print provider
Link the provider account you want to fulfil through first. Doing it first means the blueprints and their costs are real numbers rather than estimates when you come to price.
Print on demand
Sell the design. Let somebody else hold the stock.
Connect a print provider, upload your print file and set your own price. A paid order goes straight to them, and they print it, ship it and send the tracking back onto the order.
14-day free trial. No card required.
Printed to order$250
Payment received$420
How do I sell merch online without holding stock?
Print on demand means you sell a printed item and the printer makes and ships it after the order is paid, so you never buy stock up front or store any. In Crate you connect a print provider, choose the blueprint you want to sell, upload your print file and set your own retail price. The item then sits in your catalog like anything else, so it can be sold from your store and in a chat thread alongside products you do hold yourself. When an order is paid it is passed to the provider, who prints it, packs it, ships it to your buyer and returns the tracking onto the order. You keep the difference between your price and their cost.
How to start selling print on demand merch.
Getting started
Four steps, in order. Each one is a screen you can open on the first day, not a project.
Pick a blueprint and upload the design
Choose the blank you are printing on and upload the file at the size and resolution that blank asks for. The preview is what the buyer sees, so it is worth getting right once.
Set your retail price
The provider's cost per item is known before you publish, so your margin is a decision rather than a guess.
Publish it beside everything else
It appears in the same catalog as your stocked products, so one order can contain both and the buyer never has to know which is which.
What is different about selling print on demand.
What is different here
Every kind of product has a detail that decides whether the software fits. These are the ones that decide it here.
The print file is the product
A blank is a blank, so what you are really selling is a file at the right size, resolution and bleed for that blueprint. A design that looks fine on a screen and prints soft is the most common way a print on demand order goes wrong.
No stock held, so no stock to count
Nothing is bought up front and nothing runs out, which removes overselling entirely and replaces it with a different constraint: your provider's range and their lead times are now yours.
Somebody else's queue is your delivery date
The order is fulfilled by a third party, so the honest promise is their production time plus shipping rather than tomorrow. Saying so up front costs one sentence and saves the message that follows every late parcel.
Your buyers are already in a thread.
Where you sell
Merch sells on a design being seen, which is why most of it moves through a profile and a thread rather than through search.
In your market that usually means Your store, Instagram and In person.
Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and bank transfer.
Getting paid
Buyers pay you by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or bank transfer at your own retail price, and your provider's cost is settled with them separately, so what reaches your account is your side of the sale. Automatic payouts to your bank.
Money from card sales lands in your bank account on a rolling two-day schedule. Nothing to claim, nothing to withdraw.
- Card
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
- Bank transfer
How the printer fulfils it.
Delivery
You never touch the parcel. A paid order is passed to your provider, and their production time plus shipping is what the buyer is actually waiting for.
- You hold no stock. The order goes to the print provider automatically when it is paid.
- The provider prints, packs and ships, and the tracking comes back into the same order the buyer placed.
- Your margin is set per product, so you can see what a design earns before you list it.
- A design that stops selling is unpublished rather than written off, because nothing was bought in advance.
What it costs.
One subscription covers the store, the catalog, the order queue, the customer records and the counter. There is no separate charge for selling in chat, and no charge per kind of product.
Priced and paid in US dollars. Every plan opens with a free trial and no card.
What you would actually use.
The product
Named plainly, and each one has a page of its own if you want the detail.
Online store
Build an online store that looks like your brand rather than a template. One catalog, one...
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Orders and inventory
Orders from your store, from social, from chat and from your counter land in one place....
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Analytics
See your best sellers, your top customers and the channels bringing the most orders. Real...
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Selling print on demand, answered.
Do I have to buy stock up front?
No. Nothing is printed until an order is paid for, so a design that does not sell costs you only the time it took to upload.
Which print providers can I use?
Crate ships adapters for Printful and Printify, so you connect an account you already have with either of them.
Can I sell printed items and my own stocked products together?
Yes. A print on demand product sits in the same catalog as everything else, so a single order can contain both.
Who handles shipping?
Your provider prints, packs and ships to the buyer, and the tracking comes back onto the order so the buyer can be told without you forwarding anything.
How do I price it?
The provider's cost per item is known before you publish, so you set a retail price against it and the difference is your margin.
What size should my print file be?
Each blueprint states the print area it needs. Uploading at that size, rather than scaling a small file up, is the difference between a sharp print and a soft one.
Where does the money land?
In your own payout account, in US dollars. Money from card sales lands in your bank account on a rolling two-day schedule. Nothing to claim, nothing to withdraw.
Selling something else?
Nearby
The same platform underneath, told in the language of the thing you make.
