Places for selling merchandise

[Thrik]

For one of my projects there's a little demand for me to provide official merchandise, which will be fairly typical fare (t-shirts, mugs, etc). Not looking to sell anything and everything, just some choice pieces. Also the actual demand will be pretty low so no bulk stuff needed here.

 

I'm trying to find something that is high quality, delivers worldwide without epic shipping costs (or at least EU and North America), and has a nice site. I'm aware of CafePress and Zazzle, but I'm not sure about their quality after hearing stories over the years which may or may not still be relevant. Also they are literally the only ones I know of that have proper broad reach, but surely there are more worthwhile competitors by now.

 

Basically, any personal recommendations guys?

[tabacco]

I don't have any really good suggestions, but Cafepress is indeed pretty bad quality. You could do preorders and then have a real screen printer (or whatever) make a small run to fill the preorders. If volume is low, you can always just do your own fulfillment.

[elmuerte]

Spreadshirt is ok'ish. It's better than CafePress. I once ordered some shirts from the (now defunct) idlethumbs spreadshirt shop and the print lasted for a couple of years (this includes going through a dryer). The shirts are still in good condition, the print is just wearing out. I've been wearing those shirts quite regularly. The quality really depends on the material and printing style you pick. The "cheap" solution results in cheap results. Photo printing on shirts is pretty much always shit (no matter where you do it).

[tegan]

I use Society6, though I've never actually seen what the finished results look like.

[Jake]

Teespring is somewhere between a preorder and a kickstarter and fulfillment and manufacturer for t-shirts. eg: http://teespring.com/grickle . It seems the idea is that you can set a minimum size for your run, take pre-orders, and when that number is hit, they will make screen printed (as in: not shitty cafepress style) shirts for you and ship them to your buyers. That's obviously only good for tshirts, though it is cool that the infrastructure for such a thing exists.

[Ben X]

Dan uses Zazzle, you could tweet him (@danthat) to ask how they are these days.

[Apelsin]

http://www.redbubble.com/ is another possibility that was brought up by my sister. Never tried it though so I can't vouch for the quality.

[Thrik]

Thanks guys, great suggestions I'd never heard of here. It's looking like RedBubble and Zazzle are the most promising options, having done some cursory investigation into shipping/customs costs, quality, etc.

 

I'm leaning towards Zazzle by virtue of the sheer variety of products you can sell. Not that I want to sell everything, but simply being able to offer a fridge magnet as easily as a mouse pad or a t-shirt is is undeniably rad. If I were more focused on apparel I think I'd go with RedBubble.