[2sense]

ugg.. probably should have used the search button.. but hey, we're all lazy americans here right.. LOLZ..

anyways... Quick question:

does anyone know of a printer that will drop ship shirts to customers?

I.e - I setup my own website... design my own tee's.. then a customer comes to my site, and orders a t-shirt, and my 'pro printer' recieves the order and ship to said customer without them knowing it came from the printer and not me.

I am aware of cafe press and the likes... and am pretty sure what they are doing isn't exactly 'drop shipping'. I would like to setup my own store (NOT apparently affiliated w/ any specific printer), and have the items shipped per order

any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

-2

 

[Rodney]

Are you planning on processing the customer payments yourself with your own merchant account/paypal, or are you looking for the drop shipper to handle that part of it?

 

[2sense]

to be honest.. as long as their part in it is completely transparent.. I really don't care who handles the $$ (they would have to be reputable of course)

 

[Rodney]

Well, if they are handling the processing of payments, then it won't be 100% transparent, because the company on the customer's charge statement will say the name of whoever processes the payment.

So if you are looking to do it all yourself (getting the t-shirts printed somewhere, setting up your own online store/hosting/ecommerce), and you just need a company to warehouse your product and ship to customers as you send them the orders, then what you're looking for is a fulfillment company (you can find a few in google searches for t-shirt fulfillment or just fulfillment).

If you don't mind not having 100% transparency, then one of the established fulfillment companies that also do printing would probably work for you. As you outsource more of the services, there are some tradeoffs.

 

[yodude711]

This is what I was seeking for my own t-shirt business for several years. I started selling shirts online about 8 years ago, before cafepress.com became popular.

For a long time I did the whole thing myself - inventory management, fulfillment, website, order processing, payment processing, etc.

I much prefer doing my own website and my own payment processing. Nowadays it's easy to do this with Google Checkout or Paypal. I actually prefer Google Checkout, which I use in tandem with e-junkie, because Google Checkout does not hold your money in a "bank account" like paypal does, but rather they just process the payment, wait till it clears, then deposit it to your checking account.

Anyway, to stay on topic, I finally found a screen printer that agreed to SCREEN PRINT my shirts on demand and then drop ship them out to my customers. In my opinion, this is the ONLY way to run a t-shirt business.

Cafepress and other Digital printshops like that, I just don't like the digital printing. It seems less than professional to me. I always prefer screen printing.

I swore off managing an inventory TWICE in my 8 years. It's just the biggest pain in the butt. Not to mention you have to invest a bunch of money in the inventory in the first place - money you might not have paid for shirts that might not sell.

So to me, on-demand and drop-shipped is the only way to go.

 

[teejumbo]

This is what I was seeking for my own t-shirt business for several years. I started selling shirts online about 8 years ago, before cafepress.com became popular.

For a long time I did the whole thing myself - inventory management, fulfillment, website, order processing, payment processing, etc.

I much prefer doing my own website and my own payment processing. Nowadays it's easy to do this with Google Checkout or Paypal. I actually prefer Google Checkout, which I use in tandem with e-junkie, because Google Checkout does not hold your money in a "bank account" like paypal does, but rather they just process the payment, wait till it clears, then deposit it to your checking account.

Anyway, to stay on topic, I finally found a screen printer that agreed to SCREEN PRINT my shirts on demand and then drop ship them out to my customers. In my opinion, this is the ONLY way to run a t-shirt business.

Cafepress and other Digital printshops like that, I just don't like the digital printing. It seems less than professional to me. I always prefer screen printing.

I swore off managing an inventory TWICE in my 8 years. It's just the biggest pain in the butt. Not to mention you have to invest a bunch of money in the inventory in the first place - money you might not have paid for shirts that might not sell.

So to me, on-demand and drop-shipped is the only way to go.

awesome.. 8 years... you are very experienced
for this time i need help info about vendor dropship

 

[dlangpap]

This is what I was seeking for my own t-shirt business for several years. I started selling shirts online about 8 years ago, before cafepress.com became popular.

For a long time I did the whole thing myself - inventory management, fulfillment, website, order processing, payment processing, etc.

I much prefer doing my own website and my own payment processing. Nowadays it's easy to do this with Google Checkout or Paypal. I actually prefer Google Checkout, which I use in tandem with e-junkie, because Google Checkout does not hold your money in a "bank account" like paypal does, but rather they just process the payment, wait till it clears, then deposit it to your checking account.

Anyway, to stay on topic, I finally found a screen printer that agreed to SCREEN PRINT my shirts on demand and then drop ship them out to my customers. In my opinion, this is the ONLY way to run a t-shirt business.

Cafepress and other Digital printshops like that, I just don't like the digital printing. It seems less than professional to me. I always prefer screen printing.

I swore off managing an inventory TWICE in my 8 years. It's just the biggest pain in the butt. Not to mention you have to invest a bunch of money in the inventory in the first place - money you might not have paid for shirts that might not sell.

So to me, on-demand and drop-shipped is the only way to go.

Hi Blair,

I've posted this message in other drop shipping threads and it seems you might be able to help me.

I'm looking for the best model to enter the athletic t-shirt/rash guard business and, as you said, drop shipping is basically the only alternative for me since I don't want to print myself or have inventory (so I guess buying from wholesalers is also not an option).

The problem I foresee is that I want to differentiate my product by either having unique/different/more complex designs (more than one color, mix of materials, etc.) from the drop shipper itself or, eventually, send them my own designs for them to print and drop ship. I would like to ask you if you know someone that is willing to print and then drop ship on demand (meaning with no minimum orders). If you happen to know anyone who does it for the products described above, even better.

Any other help or advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Dirk L.

 

[BLUEFALCONDESIGN]

I am also looking for the same thing a company that will print the shirt then ship it straight to the buyer. I am set up on zazzle right now but they ask for almost all the money from the sale.

 

[anild]

I am looking for a drop ship company which will allow my customers to design their t-shirt online via an API or something. So they should be able add some predefined images, text, change font and move multiple images or text and create their graphic for the t-shirts.

User should also be able to upload their own images if they choose to do so.
The created graphic should be systematically transferred to the Drop shipper.
I want this to be blind ship and I would like to build and own the site completely except for using the drop shippers API to design the site and then upload the order to drop ship site and they fulfill it

Any pointers would be welcome
Thanks

 

[ryanmontgomery]

This is very interesting, how much (percentage) would you expect to earn per t-shirt from drop shipping?

I would find it very hard to justify setup costs for screen printing a single t-shirt, I suppose if it was just a bunch of set designs you could have a bunch of plastisol transfers sitting but I think it would be costly.

 

[tchandler52]

Do you mean something like this site Drop ship T Shirt Printing ? But with your logo etc Instead ?