A MOD's major brands are your anchor stores

Each of the major MODs have some popular brands in their marketplace. CafePress has American Idol and Twilight Eclipse. Zazzle has Disney and Barbie. Spreadshirt has CNN and Nissan. Just from these examples, what might you surmise about the typical customer in each POD? One reasonable conclusion would be that CafePress attracts teenagers and young adults, Zazzle attracts children and “tweens”, and Spreadshirt attracts older adults.
The major brands serve the same purpose as the “anchor” stores in a traditional shopping mall. An anchor store is usually the largest store in a mall, and is usually located at one of the ends of a mall. Shoppers are more likely to visit a mall that has anchor stores that appeal to them. They begin by entering the anchor store at the end of the mall, but then they often walk further into the mall and visit other stores.

Decision Factors for Choosing a POD

When considering which POD will get your business, what do you think is the most important factor to compare? You may think that it is the cost of running a shop – some PODs charge a fee while others are free. Or you may think that the most important factor is ease-of-use. How easy are the POD’s set-up templates and product creation tools? Cost and ease-of-use are certainly worth considering, but in fact they are not distinguishing characteristics of the PODs. Fees are usually quite small and not a “deal breaker”. And once you get comfortable with a POD, its templates and tools will become second nature to you.


The most important factor to consider when choosing a POD for your business is the volume of shoppers in its marketplace that match your target market.

Sure, you want to have your products in a POD marketplace that gets tons of shoppers every day. So the POD has to be pretty popular with the general public. But all these shoppers won’t be of much value to you if they don’t look like your ideal customer. If a POD’s marketplace is frequented primarily by baby boomers, and you are selling skateboard designs that appeal to teenage boys, a POD with fewer total shoppers but more teenage boy shoppers may be the best choice for you.

It also helps to choose a POD that does not already have a lot of shopkeepers who will be your competitors. In the skateboard design example, you would choose a POD that does not already have many shopkeepers selling products with skateboard designs. When a shopper arrives at your POD’s marketplace and types “skateboard” into the search field, you want your shop to come up as one of the first results in that POD marketplace. Even if the POD gets a million shoppers a day, it doesn’t help you much if it already has a thousand shopkeepers who will be competing directly with your shop’s theme.

Finally - more affordable water bottles on CafePress

Got an e-mail from CP today saying that they have added new water bottles ("stainless" bottles with base prices about 40% less than their original Sigg bottles) and new thermos products (like the type you used to carry to school for soup.) This alone is good news, but I was even more excited when CP's e-mail told me that they were going to automatically add these products with my images to the marketplace. The deal is that CP will take the images that I've already put on similar CP products, and put those images on the new products for me. Then I'll have the option to import the new products into my shop, or delete them.  Hey, I'm all for someone else doing the heavy lifting for me!  It's just that CP gave no indication of exactly when this will occur.  I'll be watching my CP account to see when they do this, and how well they do it. Watch this blog for my update.

Time To Prep Your Holiday Products

The holiday season is the perfect fit for merchandise-on-demand. No need to build up inventories and then risk having to get rid of unsold products with an After-Christmas sale. Just bulk up your virtual shelves with products that are especially appealing at this time of year. Good choices are the 2011 calendars from CafePress, the scarves from Spreadshirt, and the mugs from Zazzle.

Finding the Sweet Spot in MODs

As an online retailer who uses Merchandise-On-Demand suppliers to create my inventory, I'm always looking for the best quality, selection and price that I can pass on to my customers.  One thing is clear - no single MOD supplier is best for everything.  Have you found this, too?  You may have found that one MOD is best for T-shirts, while another is better at stationery products, and yet another for household items. It's really not that hard to use a bunch of MODs, grabbing a product here and a product there to put together the best product mix for your target market.

The key is to find the "sweet spot" for each type of product you plan to offer. For example, I sell a lot of note cards and greeting cards. If my customer just wants one card, GCU is my best choice. But if they want a set of 10 cards, well then it depends on whether I'm making the cards glossy or matte. But in any case, there's a sweet spot for everything, and you just need to look at my comparison charts, apply them to your own situation, and suddenly you have instant inventory.

Sample POD Comparison chart

Some readers have already sent an e-mail requesting a copy of my POD Comparison spreadsheets, and I've been happy to oblige.  I'm looking forward to all your feedback, comments, and suggestions.  See a screen shot of one of my spreadsheets below.  If you'd like a copy, just send me an e-mail!

Comparing products across the PODs

If, like me, you use a variety of print-on-demand services to create merchandise for sale, you've found there are so many details to compare when choosing one POD or another for each product type. Which one has the best price, for a certain quantity, shipped within a specified timeframe?  Not to mention comparing quality and features. 

To keep all the details straight, I've created spreadsheets that compare products on each of the major PODs.  In these spreadsheets I capture product details (such as sizes and colors), my cost for the product, and my cost to have the product shipped directly to my customer (drop-shipped) for various shipping times (economy, standard, express, etc.).  I've pulled all this together, added and divided, and voila - I've found the "sweet spot" for each product/shipping scenario.  If I decide to design a mousepad, a quick glance at my POD Comparison spreadsheets tells me which POD provider to use! 

Here's where you come in.  I am happy to share my spreadsheets with fellow MODsters, because I'd like your input and feedback.  If you use CafePress, Zazzle, Printfection, Spreadshirt, VistaPrint, Greeting Card Universe, or other print-on-demand suppliers to create merchandise for your online retail site, send me an e-mail (jand@theMODlady.com) and I will reply with a POD Comparison spreadsheet for your perusal.  Review it, keep it, use it, or share it!