If you want to start a dropshipping clothing business, then Printful is definitely a supplier that you want to consider.
Chances are, you’ve already heard of this company as it’s one of the biggest in the industry. According to Printful, it dropships over 1 million products for its customers every single month.
Their brand awareness has helped them to become a go-to option, but is Printful really worth your time?
Printful is a print dropshipping company that offers pretty much everything you could want. It has three main arms to its operations:
Included within Printful‘s range of print-on-demand options are all kinds of clothing products like T-shirts, tank tops, hoodies, sweatshirts, hats, and face masks. That’s not all though, it can also print and dropship posters, canvas prints, mugs, keychains, bracelets, phone cases, backpacks, water bottles, and notepads.
Its warehousing and fulfilment service means it goes beyond your basic print-on-demand company. Printful can also take receipt of your own products, store them in its warehouse, and ship them to your customers whenever your customers buy them, giving you the flexibility to sell almost anything through a dropshipping model and save yourself the hassle of managing logistics yourself.
Printful also offers handy resources and lessons to help you get your print on demand business off the ground, covering everything from understanding the dropshipping model to guides on how to market your products.
If you’re new to print on demand dropshipping, you may be wondering how companies like Printful work. The good news is that Printful is one of the easiest dropshippers on the market and it offers a set of tools to help you get started in no time.
You can create your products within Printful by choosing from its catalogue, adding your design, and choosing what colours and sizes you want. You can then push these products out to your ecommerce store ready for your customers to buy.
Once you get sales, your customers’s orders will be processed by Printful and shipped directly to them.
This way, you don’t have the risk of buying stock up front as all of your orders are printed on demand. It’s also better for the environment as there’s no waste.
The first thing you will need to do is create a Printful account. This is a pretty simple process and can be done with your Facebook, Google, or Apple account or you can just enter your email address.
Once you’ve done this, Printful will ask you about what you plan on using it for. Some of the options include:
Once you’ve chosen, Printful gives you a handy checklist of the steps you need to take to get started.
To start selling with Printful, you just need to pick a product from its large range of options.
You can then add your design to the front, back, outside label, inside label, and both sleeves using Printful’s own design tool.
Once you’re happy with what it looks like, you can review and confirm the product template.
Once you’ve done this, you can order a sample, add the product to your store, and download the mockups for use in your own marketing material.
The versatility of Printful means it’s great for most people. If you’re just starting your first online business, the easy-to-use interface will make it effortless to get off the ground. Similarly, if you’ve been in business for a while and are looking to build an additional revenue stream or start something else, you’ll find plenty of advanced features to make use of.
Printful also offers a warehousing and fulfilment service that is great for when your business grows and you want to take advantage of economies of scale or to add extra products to your range that Printful doesn’t offer itself.
Of course, Printful, not perfect, but it covers enough bases to make it suitable for the majority of people. The people that are probably best suited to Printful are:
One of the things that make Printful a great print on demand company is that they don’t charge any upfront fees. Most others in the industry charge a setup fee of some sorts, which may not be suitable for those that are starting a side hustle with no money.
You can create your account, design your products, and list them all on your website without having to spend a single penny.
Printful only makes its money when you sell a product. It gives you a starting selling price for each product, but you can choose to set it higher than this. As you change the price, Printful will tell you the profit you will make from this. So if you choose to sell it for £14.99 and the starting price is £9.42, you’ll make £5.57 per sale.
Printful’s prices aren’t the cheapest on the market, but they are reasonable for on-demand T-shirt printing. They’re also reflective of the quality that the company offers, so you definitely get what you pay for.
If price is your biggest concern, then take a look at Printify, though there are trade offs to be made here.
It is certainly possible to make a profit selling dropshipped clothing products from Printful. There is enough room to add a reasonable markup for your profit without having the products ending up over-priced.
The question here should probably be “what eccomerce integrations doesn’t Printful have?” as that would be a shorter answer!
All of the most common ecommerce platforms are covered, including Shopify, eBay, Amazon, WooCommerce, and Wix, as well as some lesser known options. The list is always growing, but the current list of Printful integrations includes:
Using ShipStation, it’s also possible to connect your Printful account to other platforms like Walmart and OpenCart.
If that’s not enough, you can also use Printful’s API to connect to another platform or place orders manually through its platform.
If you’re thinking of starting a clothing business with Printful, you’ll likely be wondering what print method (or methods) are used for making your print on demand T-shirts.
The majority of Printful’s products are created with DTG printing and it claims to have invested over $50 million in its printing equipment to ensure it offers the best quality.
It also offers these print and decoration methods:
Generally, Printful doesn’t use screen printing as this print method is mainly used for bulk orders. If you are looking for a company that does offer screen printing, try A.M. Custom Clothing.
When you’re using a print on demand printing company, you want things to run smoothly. For the most part, you can be pretty confident that Printful can offer a good level of service, so you may never need to contact its customer service team.
However, you also want to rest safe in the knowledge that if something does go wrong, your clothing dropshipper has got your back.
It is hard to fully assess these, from a single person’s perspective as different situations may be handled differently and there may be inconsistencies across employees. The reviews are somewhat mixed online.
Currently, Printful can ship products to just about every country in the world. There are a few obvious exceptions, namely, Cuba, Iran, Crimea, North Korea, and Syria, though its website says this list may change from time to time.
While Printful can ship to all other countries and regions, it doesn’t have print facilities in all of them. It does, however, have plenty of locations around the world, so your products shouldn’t have to travel too far to reach your customers. It has facilities in:
Printful ships to every country on the planet apart from a small number of exceptions that are:
If you’re running a print-on-demand clothing business as a side hustle or your main income source, you want to make sure the products you’re selling are good quality. Of all the T-shirt dropshipping companies, Printful offers some of the best quality available, so you can be proud of the garments you sell to your customers.
