# Can you really make a profit with a fulfillment company



## MRRG (Oct 4, 2016)

Hi all, I'm very new to the forum so I would like to start by saying hello and thanks for accepting me. I'm at the beginning stages of starting my own clothing line starting with T-Shirts first. I plan on venturing into sweatshirts, hats, and bookbags eventually as the line grows. I was thinking about starting off with designing t-Shirts and having printul fulfill the orders because I don're really have much start-up cash to get a hundreds of shirts printed up. My question is, can people make a decent profit with selling t-Shirts through fulfillment companies ? If so what are some of the strategies that you used to make it a success? I was going to use prideful as my fulfillment company and squarespace as the website host but I would like a little guidance or read some other post about how people went about using a fulfillment company and making a decent profit from it. Sorry if this post is long but I have so many questions and so much to learn. I'm definitely going to use this forum as a school to learn about the t-Shirt business.


----------



## DoubleDaggerTees (Sep 22, 2016)

Hi @MRRG, 
I just started my website on Shopify last month and the only thing I can say right now is that on each item I get printed by fulfillment, I make some profit. This excludes ones that I've bought to use as samples because when I tell friends I started a t-shirt company, they say "Can I see what your shirts are like?"

I also have a few designs on RedBubble, and my first sale to a total stranger was last week to a woman in Germany via RedBubble. That or other tshirt sites or even CafePress might be a good place to start. If you wait for a sale at RedBubble, you get a discount on your own stuff + the discount (I think), so getting samples can be equivalent or cheaper than your fulfillment supplier.

Oh, plus the fulfillment company I use is digital direct to garment (DTG) print on demand (POD) so even moving to handbags is just the same as printing Tshirts. Sites like Redbubble and DesignByHumans also allow you to upload a design, then they print it on a number of other imprintable objects, like mugs, canvas bags, clutches, mouse pads, phone cases, etc.

But also note you can find a fullfilment company whose product cost is lower than something like RedBubble. In fact the one I use has shirts lower priced than the Printful.

The Shopify store costs $30 US a month. I'm working on an order of custom printing for my Chiropractor for about 10 shirts and I can make about $150 CAD profit, so that one order can pay for my hosting site for almost 3 months.

I also am trying to make a clothing line (or two, or 3  ) so I market mostly on Instagram and I'm working more Twitter in since Instagram is so visual. I set up a Facebook page and most of my traffic still comes from Facebook, and I did pay for post promoting a couple of times which brings eyes to my site but so far no sales.

I just found out GoDaddy also has an ecommerce option available and I'm testing it out, though I don't think it integrates directly with my fullfiment company. But if I was really on hard times, I'd just drop Shopify and find a cheaper website for taking orders but I hope to have this run itself which is why I went POD with Shopify.

A popular site nowadays for indie designers is Society6. You can post 5 products on a store on their site for free, and even more options start at only $9.99 a month I think. Unless I have that confused with another site I checked out.

So, depending on what you do you can make a profit. It cost me nothing to have a shirt put up on Redbubble and I just made $5.65. On DBH they have a set rate of $3 profit per shirt sold. Society6 gives you $2.40 US per shirt, but other products like art prints you can set your own price.

I hope all that helps, contact me via Direct Message (DM) if you want any more info.

I'm still new too. 
-Rick


----------



## KaymaXX (Apr 14, 2012)

This guy seems to be pretty good at explaining things in his blog: https://www.michaelessek.com/

I came across his posts and his blog in discussions in this reddit group which you can also search for related keywords like Printful, etc.: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/

Hope this helps.


----------



## MRRG (Oct 4, 2016)

KaymaXX said:


> This guy seems to be pretty good at explaining things in his blog: https://www.michaelessek.com/
> 
> I came across his posts and his blog in discussions in this reddit group which you can also search for related keywords like Printful, etc.: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/
> 
> Hope this helps.


Yes it definitely help!!!! Thank you so much for the info and the entire encouragement. If it's ok I will like to DM you when I get closer to the release date just to make sure I'm starting out on a good foot.


----------



## oneoffdtg (Mar 19, 2013)

MRRG said:


> Hi all, I'm very new to the forum so I would like to start by saying hello and thanks for accepting me. I'm at the beginning stages of starting my own clothing line starting with T-Shirts first. I plan on venturing into sweatshirts, hats, and bookbags eventually as the line grows. I was thinking about starting off with designing t-Shirts and having printul fulfill the orders because I don're really have much start-up cash to get a hundreds of shirts printed up. My question is, can people make a decent profit with selling t-Shirts through fulfillment companies ? If so what are some of the strategies that you used to make it a success? I was going to use prideful as my fulfillment company and squarespace as the website host but I would like a little guidance or read some other post about how people went about using a fulfillment company and making a decent profit from it. Sorry if this post is long but I have so many questions and so much to learn. I'm definitely going to use this forum as a school to learn about the t-Shirt business.



Just be prepared for a lot of work! It will be rewarding in the end though.


----------



## RayRay970 (Oct 31, 2016)

DoubleDaggerTees said:


> But also note you can find a fullfilment company whose product cost is lower than something like RedBubble. In fact the one I use has shirts lower priced than the Printful.


Hey Rick, do you mind sharing which fulfillment company you are using that is lower priced than Printful?


----------



## Desweaver (Nov 15, 2015)

Thanks for this.


----------



## MRRG (Oct 4, 2016)

Thanks for your reply, would you be willing to share the fulfillment company with me????


----------



## BandPrints (Feb 4, 2007)

There are a few companies as competitive or more than Prihtful. The biggest thing you want to find is a printer that you like the quality and can stand behind it. Pricing can be a reason to switch but in the long run you may find yourself sacrificing quality and spending more time on customer support and or product replacement.


----------



## ultraprintworks (Mar 2, 2015)

Depends on how great your marketing is  I have clients who can sell 1000 shirts in an hour through their social media platforms. There are so many ways to create a market and "brand" yourself. Be unique and take advantage of all the free knowledge that's on the internet!


----------



## DoubleDaggerTees (Sep 22, 2016)

Sorry for the delay folks. I was using Gooten for DTG POD.

The prices are very good, but their interface is kind of clunky. Very good support though, and they have good business oriented emails.

I switched to Printful because it's integrated into TicTail (no sales yet) and it easily integrates into WooCommerce.

However, I have one commission for christmas that I processed via the Printful site. I tried to do a custom label inside the shirt but forgot the required information (first timer!) so the print got delayed.

Then I removed the inside label and they didn't restart fulfillment right away.

Now it's taken more than 3 days for fulfillment (actually I fixed the label on Nov 27, so its been almost 7 days for fulfillment). I checked this morning and it still hasn't shipped yet. Printful is in California and I'm in Canada, so it might not get to my client before Christmas due to my mistake.

But I also think Gooten would have handled it quicker. No problems with their quality. I have at least one shirt I printed through Gooten and it's great. They do have a lower choice of colours and brands though.


----------



## printpreneur (Jan 13, 2017)

DoubleDaggerTees said:


> Sorry for the delay folks. I was using Gooten for DTG POD.
> 
> The prices are very good, but their interface is kind of clunky. Very good support though, and they have good business oriented emails.
> 
> ...



I'm thinking of giving Gooten a try. Would you still use them if they had the WooCcommerce and TicTail integration over Printful?

Thanks


----------



## sinGN (Oct 12, 2016)

Hi,
you can make a profit with selling t-Shirts through fulfillment companies but it depends on your product quality and marketing.marketing and quality are the two important things in the tshirt business.


----------



## DoubleDaggerTees (Sep 22, 2016)

printpreneur said:


> I'm thinking of giving Gooten a try. Would you still use them if they had the WooCcommerce and TicTail integration over Printful?


They actually do integrate with WooCommerce it turns out. The tshirt from Printful just arrived FRIDAY, as it didn't ship until January 4th.

Gooten has also been doing some updates to their process, and they have invited some of us to beta test the new site which sounds interesting. They also added a few new products.

However I have had mugs done with Gooten and they arrived in 4 days so if I had to do mugs I would go with them for sure.

As a recent development, a company in Georgia emailed me offering to be my POD DTG fullfillment company, and it is a lot closer than California. I'm thinking about having an order sent through them to see what happens.


----------

