appreciate you bro i'll see you on the next one guys welcome to beautiful downtown la
home of the fashion district where you can source for almost anything you need at a price you're
willing to pay now as entrepreneurs it's clear and obvious that in order to grow a clothing
line you're going to need to have a budget now whether you source from suppliers in sketchy areas
or a reputable supplier you're going to need to make a decision on where you're going to invest
your money so in this video we take it behind the scenes into a print on demand supplier that will
handle everything that you need so you can focus as an entrepreneur on the marketing and sales
from the sourcing to the printing to the labeling and all the logistical needs
so if you're looking to elevate your brand make sure you guys hit that subscribe
button and turn on those post notification bells to be alerted to future video drops
on this channel our mission is to build brands that impact the world from the ground up
today we're inside of a pleak's new headquarters in la this business started by designing and
making products that would sell on popular ecommerce channels it then transitioned to
servicing brands on those platforms and over the years they have grown to become a key
player in the print-on-demand industry owned by friends and family this business truly is
a ground-up story and they not only print on demand but they create your brand on demand
these dtg printers made it possible to create a print-on-demand business model
that means for brands that are starting e-commerce they can print one at a time
but oftentimes a lot of those companies that are providing a print-on-demand service
have diluted the quality and the consistency for brands and clothing and entrepreneurs that are
creating brands the reality is most print on demand companies give clothing printing a bad
rep their goal is to essentially cut costs in order to increase their profit margins and for
entrepreneurs who are starting clothing brands it's not about cutting costs but it's about
building quality products such as the labeling the printing the neck tagging which is what happens
here inside this facility as you guys can see they have all kinds of boxes and things laying around
because logistically they help you create a brand on demand with little to no money so in order to
help you guys really understand how you can leverage this technology and this operation
for little to no money i want to start at the beginning of the process and really take you
through the end where your products are being shipped out so emily thank you thank you for
being in this video today thanks for having me in the video so tell us what happens after a customer
places an order from their e-commerce store and it gets to a pleat so the first step is that we
review the customer artwork make sure it's all set for production simultaneously at the same
time we're going to be ordering whatever garment your customer ordered from your store so say for
example you sold like a red shirt in size medium and then a white shirt and size large we're going
to order all of those items and they're going to show up here so this t-shirt somebody for
a brand it came in you guys ordered the blank that they needed we ordered the blank garment
and this is exactly the right size color style everything that was placed for that order right
here somebody ordered a bunch of products either a bunch of products or we may have combined a
few orders together that's key for entrepreneurs and brands if you're building a brand you don't
want to mess with having an order from a certain supplier here another supplier there and trying to
consolidate all of your options so you can start printing and start labeling apliiq is doing it all
and they figured out how to make it all very efficient so what's the next step after this
so once we take the items off the conveyor belt we're going to go into receiving that's
where we get the barcodes put on and then the items get released into different carts so some
garments get direct to garment printing others get embroidery some just get labeling or maybe
embroidered patches uh hoodie liners pockets we do all sorts of stuff any kind of customization
option this garment can have like five or six or all kinds of customization options ton of
different things and we're gonna make sure that all of them get done and in the right order and
then shipped out so emily once once it's here and it's printed and it goes to the drying belt
where does it go after that so it's going to go to this routing station and routing will collect
all the items from the dryers and again we use the barcode scan system so it will kind of walk
us through the process of what that particular garment gets next and we also will print private
labels here on demand so the private label has all the legally required information that you
need to have in the neck or in the waistband of your garments so that includes the wash care
instructions material content country of origin size and your brand name so all that's going to be
pre-populated we handle all of it again even if you're sourcing from different garments if
you're mass producing like through a manufacturer overseas then they usually handle all of that for
you but if you're starting on demand if you're a brand that's starting with little to no money
there's no option out there for you to do that aside from what they're doing right now
yes this is this is proprietary things that they've created and developed
so one tick is routed to the appropriate order what happens after this so you can
also get additional woven labels so woven label is something that you might want to consider putting
on the outside of your shirt so say for example on the hem or again on the sleeve so once your
orders are coming in as you're customizing them on the website you tell them hey i want this label
right here and then they'll come over here pull it just one label one label at a time one label
at a time not in bulk one at a time all major orders and then it's getting sewn over here yep
here you can see that we do a lot of different additions as we already talked about a little
bit you can do a hem label you can do a private label you could combine the labeling options so
everything will get sewn on here you can see every station has computers where we're all paperless
here so we just scan it we see exactly the location as you know you as a customer have picked
and we go from there we just sew it on and then over here is the embroidery offerings as a brand
you could print but you could also do embroidery on hats you can even do it on some garments
we always recommend thicker garments like hoodies or hats structured hats are great for embroidery
but yeah we can do teas as well recommend thinner smaller artwork files for thinner garments and
it's more of a vector design for embroidery so if they send you an image and say i want to embroider
this image not so good for photographs definitely you want your color separated
it's going to change needles based on the thread color that you select that's that's what it is
right here guys these are 15 needles and we set them up with different threads so that's kind of
some of the limitations you do need to separate your artwork for embroidery you want to avoid
small font it's you know again there's thickness to it we're creating the art with the needle and
the thread so as it's sewing it needs to have enough thickness to create that letter or that
font like this is a beautiful embroidery right here you can see that the letters are about an
inch tall embroidery has some limitations only because the reality is it's real thread so
you actually have to have the thread going on the design and you have to vector that design
and then you have to also digitize that file all right so all of that stuff is what a pleak
handles behind the scenes you guys don't have to worry about much of any of that
you can request your samples right they can request samples of what they're creating
and they can make adjustments to things after they see their sample right yeah for sure i think it's
i always recommend sampling it's the best way to really get your hands on the garment before your
customer does so you can see exactly what it's going to look like you know the quality that
you're going to be sending out and if you need to make adjustments that's the perfect time to
do it that's the most exciting part about making products is getting that that digital artwork that
you had into a real product and you're like i'm one step closer to fulfilling my prophecy right
especially if it has your label on it exactly wow this is really my brand this is my brand yeah it's
all about elevating what you do the final and most important step of drop shipping is shipping this
is a qa and shipping process combined we're going through the order we're checking to make sure that
every single service that you've selected for your order is complete you kind of work on the lean
manufacturing process which i don't know how much you've studied toyota's manufacturing line but
they always stop the manufacturing defect as quickly as possible in the production process
guys this factory has completely transformed since the last time we were here and i wanted
to go ahead and speak with ian the man that is uh continuing to see man dude like i was telling
everybody this thing has completely changed since the last time we did this video oh i know
i mean the pandemic was absolutely crazy it was just such a good opportunity for us to focus on
the operations of the business and scaling everything up and just redouble around our
commitment for creating fully branded uh apparel products for uh all the fashion entrepreneurs out
there you guys have been servicing thousands of brands right since the last time we did a video
together yeah we have brands in the community that are using actively using applique they're getting
really creative with the way that they make things what is the three things that you'd say
that successful brands are doing on your platform you're gonna limit me to only three only three
okay okay listen up guys three things first and foremost just like product branding overall like
most people who find their way to applique are just really interested in creating fully branded
apparel products you want to be creating those like higher quality really nice branded products
little details increases the price point exactly yeah yeah people are buying a shirt but they're
also really buying into the brand right and they want to own a part of that brand um they want to
be able to talk about the brand when they're wearing it and those attention to details as
it relates to branding just creates that solid foundation to have super happy customers print
onto mana oftentimes is associated with lower margins yeah so when does a brand go from print
on demand to scaling up to bulk yeah so i would say like really the second kind of key thing is
knowing when and how to use print on demand and when and how to use bolt manufacturing
if you're just getting started with stuff print on demand is really like a no-brainer
it allows you to experiment it allows you to test out products test out the market
make sure you have a good product market fit before you start making real investments in
buying inventory and running bulk conversely speaking like if you're jumping into your
repair line and doing runs of 500 items at a time that's definitely something a situation you want
to avoid you don't want to get into making huge capital investments in product before you know you
have like a really established sales channel so being able to know when to use which for various
collections or various products is definitely like a key strength to deploying your print-on-demand
brand of products appropriately and then what tips for marketing do you have so the third thing
is just if you want to be successful uh selling direct to consumer online for apparel products
you just need to have an established marketing approach so it could be like you have an awesome
tick tock channel uh an awesome instagram presence it could be like you have a rad youtube channel
and audience and community that you've built there but you are going to be like the head marketing
honcho for your clothing line and you need to be able to um like command and build an audience and
be able to get your products in front of them and have those products hit so now that you know how
to leverage print on demand and the three key successful brands do to leverage these services
let's dive into how easy it is to use apliiq as a resource to build your brand get started with
the please shopify integration by using the links right down below now you can start immediately by
ordering from their site but if you have a shopify or woocommerce you can download the app and start
creating your designs right away once the app is installed you're able to customize your designs
directly on their site and even order samples for the products that you create when you're ready to
start selling simply publish those items onto your ecommerce store and the best thing about a
please print on demand business model is that you don't have to pay a dime until after the
products are sold also be sure to level up your brand with the plex new satin neck tags which are
available for you to use these tags are great for hoodies hats and anywhere else that you'd
like to affix them to designing apparel is one aspect of starting a clothing brand but perhaps
the most important aspect is in the marketing of your products the images and the messages
that you put out for your brand and collection is what will sell your product to customers
with that being said before you organize a photo shoot you need to find the best locations that
coincide with your brand's message this is often overlooked when starting for the first time so
do your research and really take your time we have an amazing video collaboration we did with the man
mike leisure who worked with us on this collection which can definitely help you make sense of this
we're going to link that right up above and in the description down below so for our first
collection under ftgu we wanted to capture the city street and on the go aesthetics choosing
areas with buildings and construction allowed us to capture the true message behind this brand
this collection will be dropping by the holidays and if you're watching this video after the
holidays check out the new product offerings we have available to members of our community through
the links right down below once you've captured the photos you used to market your brand another
key essential to consider is video content you can use as promotion on instagram and other platforms
now for this consider taking photos of the process of creating your brand organizing your shoots
and telling the story of who this is for video is powerful and if used properly you can emotionally
tie people into what you do a big tip here is to plan on where this video will go live and how it
will be used there are different areas that it can be placed from in feed to in-story both of which
have a format you should consider so plan these shoots carefully and the content you produce will
go a long way so there you have it guys i hope you enjoyed this video where we just took you
from the print on demand model in terms of how you can start your clothing brand with close to zero
dollars designing wise creating the lifestyle imagery the marketing side of it now like we
mentioned print on demand is a great way to get started with little money and apliiq is an amazing
platform that you guys can plug into directly with your shopify because we included those links in
the description right down below plug it right into your shopify account and you're now able
to create products on demand fully branded in order to help scale your brand and if you guys
are a new visitor to this channel make sure you hit the subscribe button and turn on those post
notification bells and more importantly share this video with a friend that needs to hear it
in order to help them scale and grow their brand on this channel our mission is to build brands
that impact the world from the ground up and we'll be expanding on some of the marketing lifestyle
imagery and advertising things that we discussed in this one so we'll see you guys in those ones