So me and
@Juju are looking for an alternative to Redbubble because they charge way too much for a t-shirt as base price so to take any profit at all we would have to charge more than what some expensive clothing boutiques are charging.
I know some alternatives myself but there are a few problems with them:
-Cafepress: very poor print quality, according to many reviews
-Redbubble: Base price is too expensive
-Zazzle: No merch store feature
-1and1: requires hosting account, if they still even have a merch store feature at all
-Audiolife: Lots of errors such as missing or misaligned pictures. Some people even got blank t-shirts or CDs. RN terminated their partnership with them as a result.
It needs to be a free merch store creator that creates/ships items for you like the above.
I have used VistaPrint several times in the past (for business cards etc.), but they appear to do clothing as well: http://www.vistaprint.com/category/clothing-and-accessories.aspx
yeah vistaprint is good to make/sell merch, but i dont know if its free tho
It obviously is not free, but currently we are with redbubble and that's pretty darn expensive.
Quote from: aeTIos on June 06, 2016, 03:39:24 PM
It obviously is not free, but currently we are with redbubble and that's pretty darn expensive.
vista is like €8 or €9 for 1 tshirt
Quote from: Jokeriske on June 06, 2016, 03:40:17 PM
Quote from: aeTIos on June 06, 2016, 03:39:24 PM
It obviously is not free, but currently we are with redbubble and that's pretty darn expensive.
vista is like €8 or €9 for 1 tshirt
Darn, that's pretty cheap; RedBubble is like, 20 bucks off the bat.
Quote from: aeTIos on June 06, 2016, 03:42:39 PM
Quote from: Jokeriske on June 06, 2016, 03:40:17 PM
Quote from: aeTIos on June 06, 2016, 03:39:24 PM
It obviously is not free, but currently we are with redbubble and that's pretty darn expensive.
vista is like €8 or €9 for 1 tshirt
Darn, that's pretty cheap; RedBubble is like, 20 bucks off the bat.
yeah, but thats with the discount code on the belgian version, so i dont know about the US. on the belgian one you have like 33% discount
But even 13 euros is pretty cheap. I'd pay 20 bucks for a cw shirt including shipping, up to 35 for a hoodie.
Quote from: aeTIos on June 06, 2016, 03:49:34 PM
But even 13 euros is pretty cheap. I'd pay 20 bucks for a cw shirt including shipping, up to 35 for a hoodie.
yeah, thats the price you pay in a normal clothing shop.
Quote from: aeTIos on June 06, 2016, 03:39:24 PM
It obviously is not free, but currently we are with redbubble and that's pretty darn expensive.
The issue is not that Redbubble is paid or anything, because it's actually free to use. It's just that the profit share they take from your sales is batc insane. I think for a t-shirt that isn't white they take about $25 for themselves.
If VistaPrint is free, but takes a profit share then I'm fine with it, as long as that profit share isn't as insane. But I don't want to pay a monthly/yearly/upfront fee just to keep a shop open with no guarantee that there will be enough sales to offset such cost.
For example, when I sold music, this is how it worked:
Bandcamp: Free of charge. Takes a 15% profit cut from your sales. They have optional paid services you can opt out from after just a month.
Reverbnation: $35 upfront per album then $35 a year (later $20 upfront and $50 a year). No profit cut taken, but other stores where your music was distributed (eg iTunes) could take up to 40% of your sales
CD Baby: $50 upfront per album, no profit cut, but like every other music store you're in constant danger of seeing them change their TOS at any moment then start charging you yearly like RN did without grandfathering your old releases
What I want is Bandcamp style, but for t-shirts. And Bandcamp is not a solution for merch because they don't create/ship the items for you.
And of course it needs to be like Redbubble/Audiolife/Cafepress where the customer buys an item, and the store creates the t-shirt then ships it to the customer. I don't want something where I have to do bulk orders and ship them to my home, then manually ship sold items to each customer, because that puts strain on my free time and double-shipping is very expensive.
Oh like that, yeah I see.
Here's a few others:
Shopify - Not free.
BigCartel - Dunno, they probably don't do t-shirts either.
Make our own storefront - Could be doable if we do printing shirts and shipping ourselves.
Yeah, Vista looks interesting, but can we setup a store? Bonus: can we customize it? If not we can always une another service that isn't doing t-shirts in conjunction with Vista.
EDIT: seems they doesn't. VistaPrint has reseller accounts so they take care of printing and shipping themselves, but guess we have to install some store software. Plus we can always add things from other sources if we ever want to.
EDIT2: White shirts are $10 but $17 if it's black wtf
I checked VistaPrint and they don't have a merch store service it seems. Or at least I can't find it anywhere. And it looks like they require you to order t-shirts to be shipped at your home or store rather than shipping them themselves whenever a customer orders one. Can you give a link to the reseller accounts? And why do we need to install some software?
And yeah sometimes black t-shirts are more expensive.
We don't need to install custom software, but, eh, why not. That or use some service that doesn't sell anything.
On VistaPrint there's a Resell link on the extreme top right. Unless you meant those resellers (https://youtube.com/watch?v=9N6lQSWSsY4&index=1&list=PLGh5hVbC0N16b6CqT4lqxkEmyB69HmKV5)?
Oh, did you mean a forum mod? I thought you meant we needed an Android app in order to setup a merch store on VistaPrint. I'll check the reseller thing at the top.
Could be a forum mod or a separate website.
Ideally I would prefer avoiding on-site shop mods, though. Many people don't trust them and Paypal often changes their API lately, meaning the mod could stop working completely. But I would definitively like a topic where we have links to each item.
EDIT:
@Juju VistaPrint has been ruled out. While they only charge $10-14 for t-shirts, they offer no Merch Store service, so we have to order items ourselves then get them shipped manually.
There is a way to have people buy stuff there themselves if we share the t-shirt link, but they will take all the money since there's no option to choose pricing.
Merchify looks interesting, but I don't know if they're legit. I'll have to check. https://www.merchify.com/
https://www.ecwid.com/ might be something for you guys
But do they produce the t-shirts and ship them to the customers themselves?
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 07, 2016, 04:20:35 PM
But do they produce the t-shirts and ship them to the customers themselves?
ahh no, they are just a webshop application :/
Darn, too bad. I don't really want just a host, beecause we could just do it ourselves in such case. I'll take a look at Merchify later.
What about SpreadShirt?
I have not checked them yet. I will do so tomorrow. So now that makes it two to check:
Merchify
SpreadShirt
One issue with those stores is we have to subscribe/register an account in order to fully know what they offer. So we end up with like 5-6 shop accounts everywhere that we will never use >.<