hey what's up guys in today's video i
just want to talk about the rise in the
base price of some various print on
demand products specifically with a
focus on gear bubble for those of us
that are using gear bubble and those of
us that aren't actually you might as
well be aware that um in the industry i
guess prices are increasing i mean
that's
understandable we've seen a price
increase across the board on a lot of
different asset classes recently
but gearbubble just seems to have taken
it
a cut above pretty much everybody else
and it's gotten kind of laughable um for
instance in the thumbnail behind me you
can see the
black coffee mug with a base cost of
twelve dollars that's absolutely absurd
twelve dollars for a coffee mug is that
with nothing on it just a
normal coffee mug
and um yeah you could probably guess
that they tried to justify it by using
the q word
and by q word i meant quality um you
know it's just kind of a
at this point i mean a meaningless
euphemism because i mean really we're
talking about black coffee mugs here i'm
sure we'd much rather have a lower
quality black coffee mug than a 12
almost unsellable at that point black
coffee mug
especially when there's literally
competitors to gearbubble offering them
for less than half
that price anyways we'll get to it in
this video so why don't we get started
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there if you're not already a member all
right let's talk gearbubble all right
behind me we are looking at the price of
the gear bubble uh they call it the drop
ship
integrations so in order to actually
even integrate gearbubble with the major
e-commerce marketplaces where more of
your sales are most likely going to take
place
at least in my experience unless you're
like a master of advertising or driving
organic traffic to a website which i
mean i'm pretty good at myself and i'm
telling you it's not easy
uh you're probably gonna have to pay
already
for
for the integrations right so you're
already out of pocket monthly
uh up to ninety seven dollars a month i
mean for me if i didn't um pay you know
a couple thousand bucks years ago for
lifetime integrations i'd be paying 97 a
month
for my current usage and
i'd be paying that much monthly
for the honor the privilege
of then having to pay you know if you
don't believe me guys this is uh by the
way if you've never seen gear bubble
this is what the ui looks like
but i would be paying that much for the
privilege of paying
for an 11 ounce white mug
6.95 let's just round up we'll say seven
bucks all right if i want a 15 ounce
white mug i'd be paying
nine bucks
if i want a 11 ounce black mug i'd have
to pay
seven dollars and if or sorry that's
white uh i have to pay ten dollars for
an 11 ounce black mug which is
absolutely absurd
and for a 15 ounce black mug i would
have to pay oops it keeps resetting it's
kind of annoying uh 12 dollars i mean
it's absolutely
absurd guys um if we went to alibaba
and just looked for a um black coffee
mug
let's see like if we can get a general
idea of what we'd be paying per piece i
know that alibaba is not always the
exact you know it's typically not
the price you see in search results not
always the most accurate right a lot of
times they'll offer a little bit of a
lower price to get you
to reach out to them uh unless you have
like a massive order quantity to
purchase right away but i mean just take
a look guys like a dollar 26.35
sorry about that had to mute the browser
it is so annoying when videos autoplay
with audio um
anyways so here we go back to what we
were looking at um let's see if we can
find a comparable coffee mug like this
right here this looks
very much like the gear bubble black
coffee mug i know from firsthand
experience and they're charging 50 cents
a piece of course that's probably
misleading i would anticipate it's going
to be more around um you know if i had
to guess
well actually you know what though if
you're doing the uh the volume
and order sizing that they're doing it's
probably
you know you're probably getting the max
discount you know what i mean like they
probably are getting them wholesale i
know they've got like the ability to
store them in their own warehousing so
even if they're like if they need to
place a massive order that's going to
last them more than a year like they can
do that to get the best possible price
so my guess is that they're probably
paying no more than two dollars a mug
and most likely in the range of less
than a dollar per mug if i had to guess
of course you also have to factor in
shipping so let's just go ahead and say
two dollars a mug
so am i the only one that thinks
twelve dollars for an 11 ounce or sorry
15 ounce black coffee mug is a little
bit excessive guys um and while i'm
doing this video you know why not in
real time right let's just do this video
a little bit less polished than uh than
normal and let's pull up like custom cat
and let's see
what um
custom cats pricing is looking like i'm
just going to log in first before i pull
this over here from my side monitor
actually i don't think i need to all
right let's check out
custom cat and let's see what their
coffee mugs are going for right now i
guess we have to go to
see custom cats website not the best but
um they got really good pricing on
things like coffee mugs
all right so
all right they're coffee mugs so for an
11 ounce black mug
6.70 and that's with them adjusting
pricing for inflation and whatever you
want to blame it on right uh 6.17 for an
11 ounce i know that used to be cheaper
so 617 hey we can work with 617 right
because we can definitely charge
19 you know 1899
1999 for these coffee mugs um 15 ounce
black mug here
6.59 so when they go from 11 ounce to 15
ounce they are charging an additional
what 42 cents
so that's definitely a little bit more
justifiable and understandable
than um
gear bubble here with these massive
price increases um gear bubble also has
like a two-tone mug
and you know what really stings most is
that these used to be like a really good
price like the the 11 ounce white mug
was 4.95
and uh gear bubbles also making money
off of shipping i'm pretty sure because
they charge that flat rate shipping and
it's kind of annoying but like let's say
that
a customer buys like two mugs from you
one with design a and one with design b
well gear bubble charges you flat rate
per product
so you're gonna have to pay the flat
rate like 495 shipping i mean i don't
actually know if shipping went up as
well i should probably check that
but you'd have to pay that
on each product you don't just do like
what printful does where printful says
for each additional product add this
extra amount but it's always less than
the initial like cost basis and you know
your bubble just seems like man they're
really slamming us like hard here with
these higher um fees you know higher
costs on these products two-tone mug is
eight dollars ninety cents color
changing mug
is now
890. i mean i remember you know the 11
ounce white mug used to be 4.95 now it's
6.95 uh 15 ounce used to be 6.95 now
it's 8.95 so they both went up two
dollars you know the black mug used to
be 795 for the 11 ounce
and now it's up 9.95 so it looks like
they might have just gone up two dollars
a piece except i think they're 15 ounce
black mug
no it did it was up it was 9.95 now it's
at 11.95 i mean it's just kind of brutal
guys because
i don't know in my mind i have trouble
imagining customers
seeing like
a shop with a mug for more than 20
dollars you know like i have trouble
in my mind breaking the
1999 barrier for a coffee mug
and
if we're not willing to go above that
then
after you factor in like let's say you
sold a 15 ounce black mug for 12 bucks
so you've got eight dollars to work with
and let's say you charge shipping so
that's just a break even well then
you're gonna have to pay
you know etsy referral fee or amazon
referral fee or ebay referral fee
and if you're on shopify you're paying
like payment processing you know you
can't avoid the fees guys
um it's just going to add up you know
and i've said this in the past that like
because of the scalable
automated nature of the business like we
can get away with
slimmer margins right like we can get
away with three four dollars
profit per sale as long as we're driving
a lot of sales but then also don't don't
forget like if you're advertising too
um that's going to cut into that like
those those slim margins as well so it
just makes it
tough it's definitely not like a
positive thing like i i just have i
think there's a psychological breaking
point at like 1999 for a lot of products
it doesn't mean that we can't get away
with charging more than that you know
just the nature of our monetary system
in general the way that inflation works
we're gonna have to break through that
psychological you know barrier of 1999
at some point as customers but you know
me as the seller you know i do spend a
lot of time putting myself in the the
shoes of my customer and trying to
envision being on their end seeing these
price points and it's got to be tough
you know and not everybody you know from
like an actual like money perspective
has twenty dollars to plus shipping
to spend on a novelty coffee mug
so i don't know things are gonna get
interesting uh as far as
you know the gear bubble other products
go like i love their shot glasses i
didn't know many production partners
that sold shot glasses and they went up
from 2.95
all the way up to
4.95 which
is a 60 percent price increase
60 percent guys um i got news like even
the cpi inflation which is a complete
lie
came to what seven percent and i mean by
most people's estimates you know
inflation inflation's probably what 20
percent
so we're tripling
the real inflation rate um
with the gear bubble price increases
it's kind of unheard of
and seems extremely ambitious
and i'm guessing maybe they did this so
they don't have to increase their prices
at any point in time in the near future
but um it's really just starting to
sting right because gear bubble and
printful are really the only two
production partners that have the
integrations with amazon seller central
that i'm aware of
and both of them
are you know really just kind of
milking that competitive advantage by
you know both printful and gearbubble uh
increasing their pricing their base cost
pricing a lot recently on a lot of their
best sellers
and you know we have to pass that price
increase along to our customers which
can have an immediate negative impact on
our sales and it's just it's a whole can
of worms right because what if we
increase our prices our competitors
don't and our competitors just sell a
bunch of products that break even and
they don't even realize it um i'm not
saying that that's happening but it
definitely does happen
on occasion so
guys let me know what your
thoughts are
in the comments below i'd love to hear
from you i'm experimenting with some
alternative options i know that you can
have like some
you know you can you can connect other
production partners to seller central by
introducing like a third-party app
called order desk i've been
experimenting with that lately so i'm
gonna see if we can you know make that
like a viable thing that we use in the
future and maybe get some better
fulfillment costs on these products to
leave us with better profit margins
since ultimately you know we're doing
this because we want to get paid we want
that money we need better base costs for
our shot glasses for our coffee mugs for
everything that we're selling gear
bubble really i feel like kind of got
crazy here with um what has been i mean
it's all relative right like it seemed
like it was kind of two dollars across
the board on a lot of products and two
dollars is going to be most magnified on
the shot glasses specifically when you
go from three dollars to five but
anyways guys like i said let me know
your thoughts in the comments below i'd
love to hear from you thank you for
watching this video please drop a like
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subscribe if you're not already i would
really appreciate that and i will see
you guys soon with a new video
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