Working with the big POD t-shirt printing companies like ScalablePress, Merchpond, Printful, etc has become a 2+ week turnaround time to get t-shirts printed and shipped. How is this acceptable in 2020 when Amazon Merch prints and ships t-shirts in less than 2 days?
I desperately need a POD t-shirt printer that can offer 48 hour turnaround on orders for t-shirts. So far I've only found one company that advertises this: SPOD which uses Spreadshirt for their printing. I'm not sure what their relationship is to Spreadshirt (same company or strategic partnership), but SPOD does white label POD printing while Spreadshirt is a non-white label t-shirt marketplace.
Unfortunately SPOD only accepts orders through a Shopify App integration — which is convenient for Shopify users but not for anyone else. I'm currently selling through my WooCommerce store on my website, Etsy, Amazon, Bonanza, and a few other marketplaces. So I need to be able to fulfill orders through multiple channels, not just through Shopify. I could create a development store on Shopify and install SPOD's app, and then process orders that way, which I might do, but it'd certainly be easier to have a way to just manually input the orders to SPOD. Having to double-input the orders manually through Shopify takes time which costs money and adds to the per-order fulfillment cost.
The other con I found with SPOD is their pricing. Their price for a Gildan G2000 shirt is about a dollar higher than I'd like it to be and I'm not sure at the moment if there's any additional handling fees on top of that.
Their pricing is certainly doable though, and I'd pay the higher premium if i could guaranteed get orders fulfilled in 48 hours as opposed to the 2+ weeks I'm currently dealing with, but I'd love it if there was a POD printer that offered the best of all three worlds: 48 hour turnaround. $7.00-$8.00 price range on shirts. Easy way to upload orders.
I just joined a couple FB groups to ask around and see what POD printers other people are using. If you know if any that offer competitive pricing and 48 hour turnaround, please drop me a comment below. Thanks for your help.
Have you found a good one yet?
Unfortunately not. I’ve had to stick with what I’ve got. Sometimes I just fulfill the orders through Amazon Merch, which costs more and comes in Amazon packaging — but at least it’s quick.
One update though is that I’m completely finished with Merchpond/Sunfrog. They are a joke. For the most part, ScalablePress has been fulfillment partner since publishing this post.
If you come across any that fit my criteria, please let me know.