Anyone used the Vistaprint white label fulfilment service?

[Customprintwales]

I'm getting requests for A2 and A1 posters that I can not do but I've found out the VistaPrint do a whitelabel fulfilment service.

anyone using them at the moment and are they pretty good?

looking at the prices I might start to outsource some other items such as mugs. I've never done t-shirt because I don't have the space for stock but I'd consider shipping the workout to Vistaprint.

Anyone recommend them?

[GoonerGary]

The smart people don't print anything I reckon. Find other people to print your work, then concentrate your efforts on designing, marketing, selling, attending trade shows. All the those important things you don't have any time for because you're printing all day in 30 degree heat.

[Customprintwales]

The smart people don't print anything I reckon. Find other people to print your work, then concentrate your efforts on designing, marketing, selling, attending trade shows. All the those important things you don't have any time for because you're printing all day in 30 degree heat.

I am beginning to agree with you. with prices hitting rock bottom on all the major ecommerce platform it's not worth the money anymore to do it yourself.

I've just started with Printful on some t-shirts with full print cover. It's quite expensive but I've made a couple of sales of t-shirts selling at £40. Getting out of the bottom end of the market is what I need to do and that means I need to spend time on marketing and building the brand to let me get the higher prices.

But some items on Printful is a bit expensive because they ship from Latvia where their EU fulfilment centre is. To get a £3.00 gross profit on a mug I have to charge £10.80 plus postage of £4.45. So I need to check with some other fulfilment offers and I think Vistaprint might work out a couple of pounds less - but Vistaprint doesn't integrate with woocommerce like Printful does so there's the time required to fill in the order forms at Vistaprint which I don't need to do with Printful - and time is money.


But the more I look into outsourcing and just concentrating on designing and marketing the more promising it is looking.

[webtrekker]

Am I right in thinking that Printful is a bit like Redbubble and Zazzle in that you set a profit level and they make and ship the items, except that Printful ships them under your own label and expects you to do all the marketing and order-taking (unlike Redbubble or Zazzle)?

I believe I could definitely give this a go as I see it will integrate with my Etsy store.

I'm thinking that, even if the profit levels aren't great, it could still help in bringing more customers to my store who could then see the other items I make myself that have more attractive profit levels.

[GoonerGary]

Just had a look at Printful. It would be nice to hand over your business to somebody else and work on your next design project. But they charge (USD 7.95) £6 per mug, plus a £1 more than I do to post it to the USA for example.

You would have to really increase your prices to make it worthwhile and I doubt that would work online. But then there are those 'supermug' guys selling mugs for £12 and sitting top of every google page with paid adverts. People buy what they see whatever the price.

[webtrekker]

Just had a look at Printful. It would be nice to hand over your business to somebody else and work on your next design project. But they charge (USD 7.95) £6 per mug, plus a £1 more than I do to post it to the USA for example.

You would have to really increase your prices to make it worthwhile and I doubt that would work online. But then there are those 'supermug' guys selling mugs for £12 and sitting top of every google page with paid adverts. People buy what they see whatever the price.

I've been selling on Redbubble for over a year now. I only put a handful of items on just to try it out really, but so far I've sold over 450 of the SAME DESIGN of mug, even though they sell for £10 each. I make £1.50 to £1.70 per sale. Not bad for doing absolutely nothing!

However, I kind of like the Printful idea and would rather sell any future designs through them. If nothibg else, it certainly saves on buying and storing stock.

[GoonerGary]

Am I right in thinking that Printful is a bit like Redbubble and Zazzle in that you set a profit level and they make and ship the items, except that Printful ships them under your own label and expects you to do all the marketing and order-taking (unlike Redbubble or Zazzle)?



I'm thinking that, even if the profit levels aren't great, it could still help in bringing more customers to my store who could then see the other items I make myself that have more attractive profit levels.

No, they are just a print on demand business who integrate with your store directly. They don't have a marketplace site. They receive your order as it comes in, print and despatch it within 5 days...which is too long for an Amazon/ ebay order.

I didn't quite hear the 'transaction fee' bit on the video, so would need to work out the finances a bit more closely. Probably best for a Shopify store where you dictate your despatch times.

[webtrekker]

Just been reading up on a few reviews of Printful.

Product delivery time from their fulfillment centre in LATVIA is 'on average' 5 days. Others say it can be 5 to 10 days.

Also, there are reports of bad quality prints, off-centre prints, etc as well as wrongly printed items (which they replace at their own cost).

Another thing that popped up in the reviews was 'out of stock' items and not receiving a notification that the items were indeed out of stock, which resulted in customer complaints and anything up to 4 weeks before customers actually received their items.

I think I need to research this more carefully before committing to a Printful shop.

[GoonerGary]

There are always complaints with fulfilment centres. In a review based world, you can't really trust your livelihood to a third party.

When I sent off an email to that supermug crowd, it appeared to be an Americanized English Indian customer care system rather than Liverpudlian. So what I'm getting at, is that this marketing firm charge double for a mug and then outsource every part of their business to someone else and seem to be doing very well out of it.

[Customprintwales]

I'm trying it out on my website to see how it goes. to get the £3 profit I have to charge £10.20 for a mug and then there is postage on top - but that is all worked out by Printful.

I see Printful as a way of expanding my offerings in the early stage rather than completely handing everything over to them. For instance t-shirts have been something I've always wanted to do but never had the space for or the spare cash to tie up in stock of all the different sizes and colours. so i've been able to expand in to that.

The big one is the all over print t-shirts which still have good profit margins because not many are offering that type of t-shirt at the moment. Printful uses the print , cut and stitch method so it should be good finished product. They also only use good quality branded t-shirts such as Gildan and American Apparel so the quality should be there.

I like Printful because it integrates with my Woocommerce store so there's little to do. If it works out then I'll look at integrating it with my amazon account.

But Vistaprint is a bit more price competitive so I've started to consider the options for using Vistaprint for some items but it will involve having to manually input all the orders.

But as GoonerGary says people will pay big bucks if they find you quickly and like the design. Spending money on ads can bring in rewards - or not spending money on ads can bring in even bigger rewards if you post out to lots of Facebook buy and sell groups. you've just got to try and keep under the Facebook algos for spammers in you want to keep your account