T-Shirt Printing Platforms

Producing your designs is the biggest and most fun step that distinguishes a small hobby (you having fun at your computer designing t-shirts) from a small or large venture.

Since this step is so important, selecting the platform or workshop where you will produce your t-shirts will have an impact on almost all the final features of your product (price, printing quality, t-shirt quality, availability in different regions, shipping costs, shopping experience, etc...).

GENERAL CATEGORIZATION

Before we dive into looking at different printing platforms I would like to remind you of an initial general categorization.

Types of production

In stock production, we will generate a certain quantity of the product that will allow us to sell it limited to this quantity. Every time we want to sell more products, we will have to generate a new stock.

On the other hand, in the on-demand production, people can order the product from us and it will be produced individually for each order.
We can be the ones who produce this product, as well as we can outsource this service.

On-demand production platforms

TOP 3 PRODUCTION PLATFORMS

This time I am going to recommend you 3 on-demand production platforms that I have used in different regions of Europe, United States and Latin America.

I am going to analyze them with 4 of the main characteristics that you should evaluate when deciding your production platform: age in the market, printing performance, availability in different regions and the buying experience.

Spreadshirt

Market longevity: founded in 2002 in Leipzig, Germany, it is one of the most recognized companies in the industry.

Printing capabilities: it is one of the platforms in Europe that has the largest number of T-shirts of different styles to print. Allowing you to generate different prices for your product, both premium and more accessible quality. It also offers in some garments the printing of front, back and sleeves, which allows an additional space to design.

Availability in different regions: it has 3 main production centers in the Czech Republic, Poland and the United States. It has international and intercontinental shipments and thanks to its 3 production centers they were able to reduce some of the shipping costs to different countries.

Shopping experience: it is perhaps one of the platforms that offers one of the best "white label" experiences. It allows you to create different stores and optimize them as if they were almost websites, with a fairly high level of customization and even SEO optimization mechanisms. One of the best features is the ability to create multiple stores from one general account that centralizes your designs.

Threadless

Long-standing in the market: one of the longest-established companies in the industry, founded in the USA in 2000.

Printing capabilities: most of the printing they do is through DTG, sometimes they do screen printing for some models. They offer mostly the printing of the front and back of the T-shirts, but they have incorporated a technique that allows printing the shirt in its entirety (all over print). The latter has a different quality compared to screen printing and DTG.

Availability in different regions: T-shirts are produced in the United States, but they offer international shipments that allow them to cover any region of the world. It is important to keep in mind that shipping costs and taxes will be different depending on each country that issues an order.

Shopping experience: the platform allows the generation of a store with a fairly extensive customization, without taking the Threadless branding to the front. This allows our store to be perceived as our own. It offers several different payment methods such as PayPal, Google Pay and credit/debit cards.

Flashcookie

Seniority in the market: founded in Argentina in 2018, it already has 6 years of experience in the market.

Printing features: the printing of the t-shirts is only through DTG with printing areas on the front and back of the t-shirt only.

Availability in different regions: It is the largest print-on-demand service in Argentina, but unfortunately does not offer international shipping to other regions in Latin America or intercontinental shipping.

Shopping experience: It does not offer many customization options, it only allows to generate a store with a particular URL for the artist. It offers local (Argentinean) payment methods. The store has flashcookie's branding on the front, so our consumers must understand that it is the service of a third party.

The production and sales experience I have had with these 3 platforms has been very good so far. There are many other platforms in these and other regions that are growing day by day. I recommend you to get into the subject and investigate as much as possible before investing your time in developing your project with any of them.

TIPS TO UPLOAD YOUR DESIGNS

If you dare to start in the world of on demand sales through a production platform, here is a free document with recommendations to ensure that your design is printed in good quality.

I hope you found this content useful. If you want to get more practical tools for a T-shirt project, I invite you to explore my course "T-Shirt Typography Design", where you will learn the secrets of creating T-shirt designs and expressing your creative ideas.