If you have your own brand or work for an e-commerce platform, you probably think you don’t have many other options.
However, there are several other ways to sell branded clothing lines that don’t involve having your own brick and mortar store or partnering with an outside vendor like a clothing manufacturer.
The good news is that POD (print on demand) can be as simple as creating a website, uploading photos of the garments you want to sell, and taking payment through one of the many accepted payment platforms available today.
In this post I’ll explain with 9 Steps to Launch Your First Print On Demand Clothing Line.
Create Your Brand and Shop Website
Now, while it’s typical when starting a traditional business, you should design your clothing first, and THEN build the site and take pictures of your products, when you’re starting a POD business, you sort of put the ‘cart before the horse’ so to speak.
When you create a POD business, your items and images will all be uploaded to your website as you create them on the POD platform. Which is why you’ll be building your website before you create your products.
Create everything from your home page, to your copyright message in the footer.
Your product categories are your main concern. Let’s say you’re making adult clothing. Your categories might be “Men’s T-Shirts”, “Men’s Hoodies”…you get my point.
Add your categories first so that your products have somewhere to upload to while you’re creating them. You can add things like Privacy Policy, TOS, etc. after you’ve created and loaded your products.
Create Your Product List
With your brand and website established, it’s time to create your product list.
A product list is a list of all the products you intend to sell online. To create your product list, begin with a thorough product search on your brand’s and products’ most popular search terms. From there, create a spreadsheet template that you can use to track all your search terms as you add products to your list.
Creating Your Products
Print on demand lets you create items of clothing, or household items, with a specific design ON them. So if you designed a graphic style character that you wanted to print on clothing items and sell, POD would be the easiest, least expensive way to do that.
Using a platform like Printify, you’ll be able to take a look through a catalogue, and decide exactly what type of item you want to sell. Once you’ve chosen a product (I suggest you stick to one type of product, or niche down), you’ll upload the design that you want to have printed on it.
And there are so many items that you can have your designs printed on!
Set Up a Payment Processor
Next of 9 Steps to Launch Your First Print On Demand Clothing Line is a payment processor.
A payment processor is what helps you receive and track payments for your orders.
For POD clothing lines, you will want to find a payment processor that allows you to take various forms of payment, such as cash on delivery (which I DO NOT recommend), PayPal, and credit card.
If you are selling your clothing online, you will also want a payment processor that helps you send customers invoices and keep track of their orders. For the best results, you will also want to find a payment processor that has a high rate of success for POD orders. Credit card companies, for example, are more likely to approve POD orders than Paypal.
Print and Ship
You may be wondering what comes next, as you have created all the pieces of your online clothing line, but have yet to set up a printing and shipping process.
To print and ship your items, you will want to partner with an online printing company like Printful that allows you to print on demand with just a few clicks.
For each item you want to print, you will want to upload a form that includes all product details, along with print and shipping information.
Track and Manage Orders
Now that customers are finding and loving your products, your items are being ordered, printed and shipped, you will want to create a system for managing and tracking your orders.
You will want to use a cloud accounting and billing system like FreshBooks to manage and track your orders, as well as track your sales and income.
For each order, you will want to create a custom label for the package that you will then drop off at a post office. You will also want to create a system for handling returns and exchanges.
Stay Connected with Customers
One of the best ways to grow your POD business is to stay connected with your customers.
To stay connected with your customers, create a welcome email series and send them welcome emails every time they place an order, every time they return an item, and every time they get a discount.
Bottom line
Launching a POD business can be as simple or complex as you make it.
POD businesses are relatively new, so regulations are still being developed. However, with careful planning, you can launch a successful POD business.
With proper branding and product search, you will be able to create a custom product list, print and ship your products, track and manage your orders, stay connected with your customers, and more.
