The print on demand business (POD) model has opened new avenues for aspiring entrepreneurs to start a business with minimal investment to fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams. For established online businesses, including e-commerce companies, the POD business model provides ample opportunities for expanding and growing the business by ensuring more customer satisfaction while catering to their requirement of tailor-made products. The high popularity of personalized products like custom printed T-shirts, hoodies, caps, and other apparel, gift items for personal use, and business promotion has brought the POD business under focus for satisfying the customer needs to the fullest.
What is the POD business model?
The POD business model provides endless opportunities for starting a small business for customized products. Since there are the least barriers to entry, you can start the business in the least time but with some preparation. Neither you need to create infrastructure, nor do you need too many funds to start the business. After deciding on the products based on some market survey, you need to tie up with the resources that help start the business.
If you want to start a business of custom T-shirts and hoodies, you must first fix some suppliers of the items who can supply the products at the shortest notice so that you need not maintain any inventory of the items. Next, you must have ready access to a pool of designers who can help create customized designs for you and choose a printing company that can do the printing besides fulfilling the order by dispatching it to customers. Finally, create an online store on some platform like Shopify, Etsy, etc., for trading in the items in the way done by the e-commerce companies.
The benefits of the POD business highlighted in this article should give you more encouragement to try your hand at it.
Setting up the business is easy
From the business model description, you can well understand that you can start the POD business with minimal effort, provided you can create the proper connection and choose the right printing company that partners with you. The printing company must have an excellent printing reputation and the ability to fulfill the orders by dispatching them to customers as stipulated in the orders. The printing company must have access to your online store to track the orders and execute them soon.
Low barriers to entry
Arranging for funds is a must to start any business except the POD business. Funds are mainly necessary for creating the business infrastructure and maintaining inventory of the products, both of which are inconsequential for POD business. Having some small funds and few inventories is enough to set the ball rolling. Once you get going, you can gradually scale up the business later. Although the margins you get from the trading are not relatively high, you can still run the business because of the lower risks. You can start adding new products in a phased manner after steadying the business so that the risk of introducing new products is low too.
No worries about the print quality
Since you would be working with some of the best printers in the industry, you are confident about the superior print quality of the chosen products. Since the surface for printing the design impacts the print quality, you must ensure that the white label products you deal in, whether T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, backpacks, bottles, etc., are of the right quality. It is possible to get the best products only when the product quality and the print quality complement one another. Customers want the best value for money, and the better you can meet their expectations in terms of the products and print quality, the higher the returns from the business you can expect. The products must have standard longevity, and the printing must be superb so that the customized design looks extraordinary and keep customers happy.
No tension about order fulfillment
Although you are responsible for ensuring timely delivery of the products, you can remain free from worries about dispatching orders because, according to the arrangement, the printing company that remains behind the scenes plays a vital role in delivering the items soon after printing. The printing company does all the tasks related to order fulfillment and packs and ships the items to the customers’ addresses according to the terms of the order to ensure safe and timely delivery. However, only your business name appears in all documents, while the printer’s identity remains unknown.
Since the printing company does all the heavy lifting in executing the orders, right from booking orders to dispatching them, you can concentrate more on marketing to steady your business and think about ways of growing the business. Once you get a foothold and learn the trick of the trade, you must be on the lookout for the opportune moment to expand your business.
