Introduction
If you’re looking to start a print-on-demand business, then one of the first things you might want to think about is how much it costs to make products.
POD suppliers will likely increase prices in the future, so it’s best to get started now while costs are still low. Many of the print-on-demand sites have also let you know when it’s time to change your product in the new year or sometime in 2023 due to force majeure. With inflation rising, people aren’t buying as much as they used to, and it’s important that you don’t let these rising wholesale prices cost you profits.
In this blog, Printdoors will share some complete print-on-demand pricing strategies for how to deal with rising costs and inflation so you can continue to sell and compete in your print-on-demand business on Amazon, Shopify, and so on. These are the best tips for new print-on-demand sellers opening an online shop.
Don’t eat the cost yourself.
Rising prices don’t mean your business needs to suffer. You should take steps to ensure that you are not affected by this change.
Imagine you make $500 on your print-on-demand merch, but if your cost of merch suddenly goes up by $2, the print-on-demand business is now making an average of $5 per shirt sold. If you don’t make any changes, that $500 will turn into a profit of only $300. If you sell more than this amount, your loss will be bigger. While it’s not fun, customers are used to seeing the higher cost of items reflected in the prices they pay in online stores when they are shopping. So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t pass on the cost entirely. Most print-on-demand sellers have had to adjust to higher prices for some products that are already on sale.
On most platforms like Printdoors, even if you raise your price it won’t make you the highest-priced item in the market, you’re just adjusting to compete with everyone else. There may be some laggards holding on to old pricing just for a little profit, but at the end of the year you’re going to see a huge shift in the print-on-demand market and new benchmark numbers will be set.
Set an exact price strategy.
Previously $19.99 would have been the suggested price for all standard T-shirts, and possibly a little higher for real bestsellers. That’s certainly fine for you, and while others suggest selling at a low price, especially if you’re just starting to build some traction, if you can price for a profit, you’ll see more profit in the long run.
But there’s no suggestion here that you’ll actually start buying those standard T-shirts at $19.99 and price the hoodie around $35.99.
Because as prices go up, you should take into account the new profits you want to see. These numbers are changing, especially in Amazon or Shopify, it is an exact integer to change. It’s still important to give your customers a number that sounds like a real price. When you’re pricing, if the price sounds a little rough like 1307 or 1423 with numbers like that on items people aren’t usually used to seeing. People love numbers ending in 99, 0, or 95.
So as the price of a standard T-shirt goes up, you, as a print-on-demand seller should add about two dollars to what you charge for a standard shirt. For example, pricing a standard shirt at $21.99 and actually pricing a hoodie at $39.99 will become a new price trend that will become commonplace for the t-shirt market in the future, even in brick-and-mortar stores.
You can set a higher price before the price change starts, and you will find that they still sell well, and then get a lot more profit than before. Shoppers are willing to pay close to $40 for a hoodie, especially on Etsy and Shopify. People are also looking for more print-on-demand merch, and they’re willing to pay top dollar for it. If you need to work with a POD supplier with more affordable prices but decent merch, Printdoors will meet your needs.
Inquire customers to pay for shipping.
There’s been a big discussion lately: Are you afraid to change your T-shirt price to over $20 if those increased prices are really offering free shipping or having your customer pay for shipping?
The suggestion here is to experiment at least for a while—if you’ve been offering free shipping to your customers, try making them pay for shipping now, then keep your prices as you did before.
Honestly, when you offer free shipping or paid shipping, you probably don’t see if you increase sales, you don’t see a difference. Even if e-commerce platforms claim they’ll boost your selling listings when you offer it for free, the profit you’ll make selling fewer listings will be well worth charging your customers for shipping. It’s only a few bucks, and especially if you’re working with a really good supplier like Printdoors, you don’t have to worry too much about it.
Customers are becoming more accustomed to paying for shipping on their items, especially as small print-on-demand businesses experience rising item costs, and many stores that used to offer free shipping are switching to having their customers pay for shipping.
Don’t let January sales influence the pricing strategy.
As a print-on-demand seller, there’s one more thing you need to be aware of, especially if this is your first year of doing print-on-demand sales: When you wrap up Q4 and end your holiday sales, January is a tough month for many sellers. Hopefully, you’ve used a lot of tactics to help you, and even though people aren’t shopping as much, your profits are still good.
But if you’ve started raising your prices, and then you find that your sales suddenly drop in January, it may not be directly related to you changing those prices. Profits tend to be much lower the following year. So even if you don’t think this will work in January, you can try it out for a few months to see if it goes on to further sales.
Don’t be discouraged by a sudden drop in sales. This is common in the print-on-demand business. Sellers usually make a lot of profit at the end of the year and then just a little at the beginning of the year.
Inform customers of price changes or not?
Another step you need to consider when changing prices in the new year is deciding whether you need to notify your customers:
- You don’t have to do this if you’re just selling something like small items on Shopify.
- If you are a seller with an established customer base, or you have a social media following of your print-on-demand store, and your followers are already very familiar with the prices you might set for your items, you might consider informing them.
- If you only have a few sales, you don’t have a lot of repeat customers, or you don’t have customers who are really familiar with your prices, then you can skip this decision if the prices will go up slightly. Because then you’re just creating problems that you wouldn’t have had in the first place. You may receive several questions, you just need to briefly explain to customers: When paying for the product, you are seeing a higher product cost.
Print-on-demand suppliers will likely increase prices in 2023, so start now while it’s cheap.
One of the great things about print-on-demand suppliers is that they tend to be cheaper than traditional wholesale suppliers. So, if you’re looking at starting a Shopify store and want to sell your own merch, this can be a great way to save money from the start. But in 2023? You might have to pay more for your POD supplier than you do now.
- So what can you do about it? One thing is for sure: don’t wait until 2023 before getting started with your print-on-demand business! The sooner you start selling high-quality clothing, merchandise, art prints, and other printing items, there will still be plenty of time to make money while prices are still low enough that customers are willing to pay them off their credit cards or checkbooks rather than having them shipped directly from Amazon Prime (which typically costs $5-$8 each).
Conclusion
You can continue to make a profit just by raising the price of the product a little bit, and people really get used to that explanation and understand that everyone is facing a higher cost of goods. And changing prices to reflect rising commodity costs is a terrific step and you can future-proof your business heading into the new year. There are a lot of things you should be doing to grow your business a lot in 2023!
