Libra Café Blog

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

Do you dream of owning your small business, but don’t know where to start, how much money to invest, or how you will run it all yourself? You calculate how much merchandise you need to order, at what prices to buy it, and at what prices to sell it to make a profit.

And will you sell everything you’ve already bought? You imagine the piles of unsold merchandise, and the dream of running your own business isn’t as appealing as it was in the beginning.

How about starting your own store without a single-dollar investment? With no risk of loss? Where you can sell unique products and create your own brand?

There you can have it. You can launch your signature line of all-over print clothing and accessories without having to invest anything but passion and creativity. It’s called Printful, and they will take care of every detail.

WHAT IS PRINTFUL

Printful is an on-demand printing and fulfillment company that helps you turn your ideas into brands and products. The print-on-demand system allows you to print a single copy or a small quantity when you have confirmed orders from the end customers. This way you avoid the investment in stock and have the freedom to test more prints.

You can sell high-quality, custom products from the comfort of your home. Or from the beach. Choosing products and adding designs is like a piece of cake with Printful. You can test it yourself.

HOW DOES IT WORK

You don’t pay for the products until you’ve sold them, so there’s no need to buy or hold inventory yourself. Plus, with print-on-demand services, Printful handles everything once the order is in place.

Printful integrates with top e-commerce platforms and marketplaces. When you get an order, it’s imported into their system and sent to fulfillment. Once you set everything up, it only takes a few clicks to fulfill the order after you make the sale.

Printful got locations across the globe, so you can sell to customers worldwide. You might grow big from day one. It’s so exciting, isn’t it?

Printful doesn’t have any upfront costs. You’re charged for fulfillment and shipping only when you get an order. With that said, you can start with zero investment.

ALL-OVER PRINTING TECHNIQUE

You can create high-quality designs with free design tools, or upload your own designs and add them to products. Enjoy the easy-to-use templates, options to add your own branding, customize boxes with stickers, and personalized notes. 

Create unique pieces with the built-in Design Maker, even with no design experience! Simple or intricate, patterned or minimalist—the features are versatile. Explore your customization opportunities with fulfillment techniques like printing, embroidery, and more.

Printful will print your design onto special sublimation printing paper and then transfer it to fabric by using a heat press machine. Precision cut the patterns from the fabric, and the seamstresses sew the printed fabric cut-out into the final product.

Besides apparel, Printful also offers mugs, pillows, poster frames, beach towels, aprons, jewelry, and much more. Your unique all-over print creation is ready to go.

SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL WITH LESS WASTE

Today, society is facing a significant shift in the way it consumes fashion, but also in the way it perceives humanity’s role in conservation efforts. Surprising or not, the fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters on the planet. In fact, fashion is second only to oil in terms of pollution. Every purchase, big or small, has a footprint.

You choose the size of the mark to leave on the planet, and Printful wants to help you choose wisely. By choosing print-on-demand, you choose apparel that’s created only as the order is in place, creating less fabric waste than conventional manufacturing.

Printful uses post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic packaging for all apparel orders shipped from their in-house facilities. They took this step to minimize the environmental impact, as recycled materials save virgin resources and require less energy to produce. Now they’re increasing the recycled content and gradually switching to 90%–100% post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic packaging all over North America. Printful also reduced the use of packaging altogether and introduced triangular cardboard boxes for poster orders to replace tubes with plastic end caps.

To reduce their fabric waste, Printful has introduced two new products—All-Over Print (AOP) Scrunchies and the AOP Headband. They are small enough to be created from fabric scraps that would otherwise have gone to waste. To the greatest extent possible, the damaged and unclaimed returned products get recycled or donated to local charities.

HIGH QUALITY STANDARDS AND DURABILITY TESTS

The better the quality, the longer the product lasts. Before adding new products, Printful does durability tests to make sure they’ll stand the test of time. They work with suppliers that produce high-quality products lasting many washes, keeping print colors vibrant and the fabric soft.

To make their product sourcing more transparent, Printful added a Source tab to every product in their catalog, which tells the customer about each item’s manufacturer and country of origin. Customers can also download product certificates in the Description tab of all their eco-friendly products.

Printful delivers around 81% of orders in the same region they’re fulfilled. Having fulfillment centers close to their customers is good both for the business and the planet. Strategically located fulfillment centers allow for faster shipping times and lower shipping costs, and it also helps with reducing the CO₂ emissions produced when transporting orders.

Printful takes everything into consideration. All you have to do is to find your product niche, tap into your creative imagination, and launch your signature line.