New Year, New Merch
Crissi Cochrane
There are few graphics-printed items that I personally will go for. I’m the kind of girl who wears blouses, dresses, floral prints - me in a band tee is a rare thing, mostly reserved for when I’m overheating in the kitchen or when I run out of pyjamas.
But two small obsessions of mine are printed mugs, and printed tote bags. And now, I finally have versions of these things in my own shop!
Between Christmas and New Years, I decided to finally re-evaluate the merch in my shop (something I definitely should have done *before* the holiday shopping season, but oh well), and whilst browsing through the products offered by the dropshipping company that fulfills my merch orders, these two items caught my eye.
For those who aren’t familiar with dropshipping, it’s a streamlined process of selling items, where the seller doesn’t carry the product, and the manufacturer ships it directly to the customer. So, instead of me shelling out hard cash to order a hundred mugs from a mug-printing company, and then having to find a place for them in my house where they won’t get smashed by rambunctious children or animals, and shipping them out one-by-one to customers, my dropshipping company prints the mugs on-demand anytime I get an order, and they ship the mug directly to you.
In exchange for that convenience, I don’t make very much money on my apparel and accessories, since printing items one-at-a-time is way more costly. Basically, the prices you see on these items in my shop are the actual prices that I pay to print them. The only profit I make comes from the tiny shipping fee that is automatically applied in my shop.
But I don’t mind, because frankly, I just think it’s cool if anybody wants to own a thing that has my logo on it, and anyway, I’m not in the business of selling apparel and accessories, I’m in the business of making music. So I don’t mind if this isn’t a lucrative thing. I just like sticking my artwork on stuff. And if you like it too, then, viola - it can be done!
