Why Redbubble Is Still The King of Print On Demand

DISCLOSURE: I was compensated for this post. This post also contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my link. I also genuinely mean everything I wrote in this article - if that wasn't true we would not exclusively run our store on Redbubble. Visit Retro Tee Studio.

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There's no doubt that Print On Demand has cemented its place in internet history

as something of a modern retail phenomenon. It's enabled buyers to find incredible niche designs that they could never hope to buy from a regular store, whilst allowing creatives and artists to make a business out of their hard work.

But with so many POD offerings out there, why is Redbubble still

the best all-round provider in 2022?

• Editorial By Kit Duvalle - Lead Designer for RTS

WHY REDBUBBLE?

When it comes to choosing a website to buy from consumers are pretty much spoilt for choice, but the same can't be said for designers, creatives and small businesses who want to sell on those platforms. There are a deceptively simple set of requirements that all wannabe-sellers (and designers of all skill levels) should look at carefully when selecting a Print On Demand provider. So, here's a rundown of the features to be found on Redbubble that have proven essential when building and launching our new store, Retro Tee Studio.

1. Complete Order Fulfilment

Total fulfilment - From the internet to your door

Now this is the number one feature that will instantly separate the herd into two groups - those who simply provide the merchandise, and those who will carry out total order processing and fulfilment. Not every t-shirt or apparel startup will necessarily have the funds or the time to create a logo and brand for their venture, let alone set up an e-commerce website and manually add all of their products to it. After all that hard work, they then have

to securely take orders and payments, process those orders and ship them out.

Not with Redbubble - they handle all of that, including worldwide shipping and 100% secure payment with SSL encryption. All you need to do is get creative, upload your designs and promote your store. Although they aren't the only kid on the block that provide a turnkey service, the bigger differences lie within...

2. Huge Range of Quality Products

Wow. This really was the clincher for us at Retro Tee Studio. Anyone who has spent more than half-an-hour browsing POD websites will soon discover that t-shirts, mugs and caps are just the tip of the merch iceberg. So why be limited to the same old products that clutter the internet already? Creative types want to adapt their design so that it works on stuff they'd never even thought of - and that also happens to be where the lion's share of the profit is to be made.

CLOCKS! Yes... CLOCKS!!

We love getting our work onto these timeless wonders, and amazingly the vast majority of our designs fit well within a circle. But, the best things about these eye-catching timepieces is that their cases and hands can be customised to best suit the design. Our customers love these clocks.

LEGGINGS

Another fantastic product that really opens up the market for your designs. Although more challenging to design for, once you nail a leggings design that works well on these things the artwork really does come to life in a new way. Pro Tip: The Redbubble stock photography which realistically maps your design onto their model is the only way to accurately visualise leggings designs, so test your work to make for the perfect fit.

MOUSE & DESK MATS

Yes, the good old mouse mat (AKA 'Mouse Pad' - which sounds like a hipster describing his pet's cage..) is back with a vengeance. After years of sticking with the fraying all-black freebie mats that get chucked into the box with a shiny new PC, we're now getting fantastic niche designs printed onto them to brighten up our desks. And on the subject of desks, desk mats (which double as a mouse mat) have gone way beyond the pro-gamer scene and now many prefer to add an even larger design statement to their desk! Redbubble's mats and pads are easily designed-for and the edge-to-edge printing really works best with bold bright designs, whilst also (perhaps more so than shirts) allowing for super-minimal small designs or logos off to one side, leaving the rest as the native black.

3. User-Friendly Product Design & Configuration Tools

There's no point in having all of these products to choose from if applying your designs to them is difficult and tedious. With Redbubble's intuitive website a lot of the hard work is done for you, with shortcuts to scaling and aligning your artwork, as well as being able to globally set the background colour (using HEX codes or a picker) to all of the products that support it with one click. Another Retro Tee Studio favourite feature is the ability to quickly create a new listing (or 'Work') based on a previous one - retaining all of the size, alignment and other customisations along the way. This makes creating a range of similar or related products a lot faster and is actually a pleasure to use, streamlining the whole listings process. You can also tag your work quickly without having to 'edit' the listings in full by choosing the 'Quick Edit' function in the Portfolio.

4. Full Pricing Control

Working on Redbubble's base prices (which are very competitive, especially for staples like tees and hoodies) means that you can not only set your margins, but you can do so in fine detail - so for instance, if you want to upsell your stickers but downsell the more extravagant items like Comforters, go for it!

5. Responsive Support

With a system as user-friendly as this you'd hope that the need for support will be minimal, and it is - but when one of my designs was deleted by mistake support were extremely quick to reinstate it for me. That's a massive plus when you're dealing with hundreds of designs, some with affiliate links that would of course go nowhere without the Redbubble listing itself. Top marks!

IN SUMMARY

If you're a designer but can't afford your own printing press, reserve stock of a wide range of merchandise, and an e-commerce website (and don't want to spend valuable hours printing, packing and going to the post office and back) Redbubble is for you. While its true that there's (potentially) more money to be made by simply doing all of that yourself, the truth is that the upfront cash outlay required is significantly more than the sales commission you'd earn with complete order fulfilment with Print On Demand. Sure, plenty of startups do have enough capital to afford to do it all themselves from day one, but for those of us who value our time (and don't mind a fair percentage based on not having to do all of that work) it's a huge win.

Visit Retro Tee Studio.