In the world of apparel, speed is everything.
If you jump onto the newest trend at the right moment, your sales will skyrocket
but if you’re too slow, your customers will buy their trendy apparel elsewhere and you’ll lose out on money.
It all comes down to how quickly you can drop new products—with print-on-demand, you can do it in a matter of minutes.
Hey, I’m Elizabete from Printful. In this video we’ll talk about speed-to-market
what it is, why it’s important to you and how print-on-demand can help you improve it.
Let’s start with the basics. What actually is speed-to-market?
Time-to-market is a term that refers to the time it takes for a business to make their product available to the customer,
starting from the initial concept to design, to development, to the product launch.
If your time-to-market is short, that means you can easily offer new merchandise without waiting weeks for production to finish.
But if your time-to-market is long, that means your business isn’t very flexible, and it’s hard for you to introduce new designs or product categories to your store.
When trends move at the speed of light, it’s more important than ever to release your products quickly.
Imagine a new meme takes social media by storm. With a short time-to-market,
you could immediately monetize the hype and release products that incorporate the meme. For example
do you remember the Ever Given? The Ever Given was the ship that launched a thousand memes after getting stuck in the Suez Canal in 2021.
Social media users were gripped by the story, and funny t-shirts, birthday cards, and stickers related to the ship popped up on ecommerce sites immediately.
Trends like this are a good way to earn additional revenue—you can gain new customers and generate extra sales by jumping on TikTok trends or capitalizing on pop culture or sports events.
And there’s a higher chance your product might go viral. But that’s only possible if your speed-to-market can keep up.
If it can’t, your designs would come out too late, when the hype is over.
When you start your apparel business, you can choose to either produce all your items in bulk or outsource production and logistics to a company like Printful.
There are pros and cons to both—but when it comes to time-to-market, print-on-demand has the upper hand.
If you’re producing in bulk in the current economic climate, a short time-to-market becomes an unrealistic goal.
Constraints and disruptions in global supply chains are the new norm, so it can take weeks, even months before you can sell your products.
But with print-on-demand, you’re always one step ahead of the hype.
With a company like Printful, you get to release new collections in minutes without having to worry about issues caused by your supply chain.
Just create your design, add it to a product using our Design Maker, and there you have it—your product is available for purchase, and Printful takes care of the rest.
We have facilities all around the world to ensure that we produce your products as close to your customer as possible, thus, avoiding long production times and shipping delays.
So—a shorter time-to-market means your business is flexible and able to react to trends quickly.
If you use trends wisely, you can reach a new audience and earn extra revenue from your designs.
Whereas, if you choose to produce your merchandise in bulk, keep in mind that world events like Brexit, Covid-19, and soaring gas prices are all making mass manufacturing more expensive and complicated.
There’s a good chance your merchandise would be stuck in production, much like the Ever Given was stuck in the canal.
So—if you’re looking to shorten your time-to-market, print-on-demand is your best bet.
If you want to learn more about how print-on-demand can help your business, check out the description—I’ve added some useful links below.
You can also take a look at our Printful Academy course on starting your own print-on-demand business—it’s a great guide for ecommerce beginners.
Thank you for watching this video. See you next time!