we were some of the first to discuss the power of print-on-demand before it got
saturated with all these get-rich-quick schemes so I felt like I really needed
to shed the light in regards to what it actually takes to successfully scale
your brand with this method so if you're a new entrepreneur or perhaps you
already have a product line established I want to discuss ways that you can
successfully start with print-on-demand and in this video we're gonna dive into
growth hacks as well as increasing your profit margins and some marketing
techniques that will help you continue to build it for the long term and I felt
like I needed to start this video by picking the brains of Parker who is a
founder of FEAT socks they over the years they sold millions of dollars worth
of socks and they recently transitioned into a full ecommerce brand model after
being featured on the Profit TV and they did so with print-on-demand
so in this video you guys are gonna get all the insight that you're gonna need
to get started successfully so if you're a new visitor to this channel I highly
encourage that you hit that subscribe button to be notified of the latest
videos to help you build your branded business from the ground up in the
beginning like like I said we had no idea where how we're gonna sell we had
never built a business like this before when we started we thought we're gonna
sell into stores because that's what the other leading competitor does so
sell the stores like to sell the stores it takes a whole infrastructure you know
like seasonal catalog rotation sales teams so that's what we did and we're in
stores and then came out here to LA because Taylor got hooked on influencer
before influence was really a thing this was early 2016 we moved in
this building in Hollywood and in this building in Hollywood it was it was done
with intention in this building with Hollywood was every major like buying
YouTube star in one building so we're like this is the mecca of influencers or
what would soon become influencers right it didn't exist yet and the last thing
we did before we left Boston was work with Aly Raisman she was in the Olympics
and during the Olympics women's gymnastics is the most viewed in all the
Olympics her line of socks crushed it did hundreds of thousands of dollars of
socks with Ali and that's coming from zero right we sold
nothing in college couple grand whatever did got to deal with Aly Raisman and
then Taylor said dude we gotta move to LA there's more people like Aly we can
repeat this so we moved in that building and that's where we met Logan Paul and
Logan Paul was right on the way up we move with the day we moved in was the
first day he launched his first vlog like that was the timing you know pretty
crazy finding to look back now and think like if you kind of set the stage of
where we were before that we're selling nothing in college a couple thousand
dollars here and there then we Aly that was a massive campaign then Logan
so we're like oh we know how to do this now we don't saw the stores we just do
influencer but what we didn't realize was we had the two best influencers in
the world there were arguably not many better
influencers in the world you know Aly Raisman during the Olympics Logan Paul
as he starts vlogging for the first time and is just exploding so we realized we
couldn't just replicate what we did at the influencer so we had to look at her
business and say what the heck are we doing right and we were selling a ton of
socks at the time but we weren't making any money and if you have a business not
making any money it's like what are you doing here just spinning your wheels you
know so we were paying everyone and not making any money as a business so we had
a revaluation and somewhere around that time we stumbled into e-commerce we met
some guys that were crushing it in e-commerce like Jake Kass and a movement
watches and he kind of opened her eyes to that world and said like look at it
through this lens like check out ecommerce look how crazy it can be how
powerful it can be so that was great so we started getting socks and selling
them online and understanding commerce the ins and outs of it and what that
even meant to sell online and then months later we met Ian and developed a
relationship with Ian from Apliiq and Ethan also both of the guys we started
talking about other apparel because we're like okay we're selling ton of
socks it's kind of working kind of now it's a little murky and he's like Oh
what about t-shirts hoodies beanies like these different things and we started
looking at it and we developed this kind of e-commerce thesis things that we
think will work in e-commerce based on kind of a checklist that we've come up
with you know it's like our internal way of saying do we think this type of
product will work online and we brought that checklist to Ethan and Ian and kind
of came into the hoodie category and we liked it for a lot of reasons and it was
great how does print-on-demand fit in
of what you guys are doing for e-commerce as an overall strategy so we
like to think about print-on-demand and how we go from zero to one right we have
an idea we think beanies will do really great I call it being you know we start
designing some beanies we come out with them we get it all set up
it requires no cash to set up and then if they start selling then we even make
some in chips and that's great and then if it really works then we scale it find
another way to manufacture either working with Ian or someone else but we
really think about print-on-demand is the zero to one not the long term
solution but the necessary and like least risky way to start a new idea so
what are some of the tasks that you would recommend brands outsource where
they don't have to keep an employee on full-time and maybe they can outsource
to somebody in a different part of the country like what are some things you
can outsource and what are some things you should keep in house I think this is
this is an easy one for me actually because it I thought about it for so
long but probably last 3-4 years I thought about it and I didn't know what
the answer was at first I tried to do everything in the house tiny outsource
everything and then kind of a mix and what I realized was you have to figure
out what your core competence is these competencies are and your key advantages
are right what are you again going back to like your individual kind of skill
sets or assets what are those things those you don't outsource because those
are you everything else I'm not good at sewing right I have to outsource that
I'm not good at building warehouses I'm gonna outsource that right what are your
skill sets that are unique to you that can help you go to the next level and
then what are you not good at well you're not good at you gotta get a
pro floor right so those are the things you have sorry so when it comes for you
guys designing because you guys did like you you design some hoodies and you did
some like internal prints on them tell us about the experience the success of
how that did on your guys's overall business like how did how did you guys
end up transitioning into apparel by doing that her name's Amanda Nabal us to
take no cash and try new categories and as I started to work we look at them and
think about how do we build a long term plan around this product and how we
manufacture at scale and take it to the next level so it's again it's just about
that zero to one in terms of design it was cool because we had existing design
from our socks we were able to pull the hoodies and you can kind of see the
evolution of the brand going it wasn't just like a complete flip of a switch
you know it's kind of like an evolution and you know now you see the stuff we're
making it's very different than fee in 2015 what would you say are some
challenges that you encountered with print-on-demand you know I think there's
a lot of cheap ways to do it and there's different partners out there that can
print logos and stuff on t-shirts but like that's not very unique it's not
very special it's not your brand so the difference with these guys in applique
is they're making stuff from essentially scratch and when they do that you know
that's coming out fully branded fully custom unique to us it's like an amazing
experience and you have this amazing product that goes you know what I mean
it's just different than just throwing a logo on a t-shirt it's much more than
that you're building a brand with them so then like what are some of the
challenges that you have as a business though and maybe scaling the
print-on-demand side and having to go back to the mass production when you
know something works scaling the print on demand was almost the easy part
because these guys are so good at it you know like I never had to worry about
shipping stuff there was always shipped and they took care of it and customers
got their stuff and they loved it I think it was a little bit of a jump
going from the print on demand to full production cut and so there's a little
bit of a learning curve there like there is of anything but there's no real
secret there it's just you got to figure it out
now let's jump it to the four key
takeaways from this interview the first one being that feat was able to
transition into apparel by using applique and adding the sock designs
into the hoodie liners what products can you cross over they use print-on-demand
to go from zero to one first proving that their concept will actually work
before investing thousands of dollars strongly consider partnering with people
and suppliers will help build a brand that just make you promotional products
consider creating an influencer campaign to help spread your message in a
low-cost way the goal is to gain awareness and convert traffic into
customers so now that you understand the dynamics of operating an e-commerce
business I want to bring you in behind the scenes to meet with Ian who is a
founder of applique we're gonna be going over growth strategies as well as ways
to increase your profit margins to make your print on demand successful so let's
dive into those details
so this is actually one of the hoodies that was
developed by Feat by Apliiq so tell us about how they developed his product at
a time that they needed the cash you know Parker mentioned there were
cash-strapped and print-on-demand allowed them to scale into apparel in a
way that you know didn't cost them thousands of dollars so tell us a little
bit about the development of this product and how brands watching can also
use some of the things that we're going to talk about right now yeah so one of
the most awesome parts of FEAT socks was they had a bunch of these patterns that
they were using for their their main product which is socks at the time the
hood liner is just a great opportunity to throw a pattern something that's eye
catching something that's amazing up in the hood and just make like a super fun
and playful product and it was just a great fit for the feet talks brand so
they just started with a couple samples took some photos they ended up on their
Instagram and then it kind of just took off from there all their customers right
where do we got one and so that's how we kind of fell into drop shipping the
hoodies for them one of the challenges in scaling a print-on-demand type of
brand is the margins right so the printing cost of fulfillment you could
be in a couple you know like the margins are tight right so what are some ways
that brands watching can think about creatively reducing their costs in order
to increase that project that the product margin yes I mean you're totally
right like as you get deeper and deeper into doing drop shipping you'll find
that there can be tightness with margins right even if you take your product cost
and you double them and you're getting a 50% margin you know you saw have a lot
of costs to run the business maybe you have some customer service expenses or
maybe you have some marketing expenses that type of stuff influencer marketing
however you're bringing the eyeballs can bring some expense to the business so
that's what is really kind of special about the Apliiq platform since we really
use fashion as our reference point we try to take a lot of lessons that the
fashion industry at large has learned and apply them to the drop shipping
business you have this hat here right so this this automatically caught my
attention just because of how clean this looks and if you were to try to do an
embroidery like this anywhere even if it wasn't print on demand you're gonna it's
gonna cost you a couple bucks but tell us about how this was developed and how
the cost was cut on this yeah so this is like a five panel camper hat it's like a
great like outdoors hat it's kind of on the premium side of a blank hat I think
these dropship blank for six bucks and if you want to add an embroider it's
like 10 bucks so it's a 16 dollar product this actually is not an
embroidery it's an patch and embroidered patches are run in
mass up front so you can run 50 of them or a hundred of them but if you know
you're gonna sell a lot of hats the patches could cost anywhere from two to
four bucks depending on the size of the patch overall so this could be like an
eight or a $10 hat dropship instead of sixteen dollar hat and so every sale
that's just an extra six box that you're putting into your pocket and I think
just like one little side note about margins in general it's not like every
single product that you're releasing in your collection has to be a super high
margin product but you definitely have to think about your overall collections
and make sure you have a few or a handful of products in there that can be
really margin killers for you I just crush on margin so doing embroidered
patches is great it's a super popular thing for hats obviously everyone
understands I can embroidered hat there's also they're also really good
for outerwear right so like this track jacket this is an independent
Trading Company track jacket this is an awesome embroidered patch that you can
sew on to it and we can also really help save margins on this product as well
yeah because then if they weren't doing this patch they'd be doing the
embroidery and embroidery if you guys don't do or don't know it takes takes
time stitch by stitch and in the detail whereas this patch is simply created
outsourced right it's created somewhere else and then add applique they actually
stitch it on to any product so that saves you a lot of time and saves them
time makes you more money just by way of example on this track jacket so with an
embroidered patch it's 28 bucks out the door and if you want to do it as an
embroidery it's more like in the thirty-six dollar range so right there
you're saving like about twenty percent on your cost of goods sold and it's just
a relatively higher margin product and you could get if you're doing single
one-off embroideries yeah exactly on the quality point it's like a very similar
aesthetic to embroidery like it is an embroidered patch so you have that
texture you have like that sewing detail that's awesome so super high quality
product and it's just a little bit more of a cost effective way to go about and
do things so when it comes to like cutting so brands maybe somebody out
there is developing a product or they're mass-producing some things and now
they're looking to make some decent margins or increase their brand's
collection what are some other ways that they
could apply their branding to products here as we touched on with FEAT
socks woven labels are just such a fundamental part of branding apparel and
even like footwear and other apparel like segments right
so I heres a beanie you can do fun things like you know the reverse side of
the label but again like on the Apliiq platform a woven labels at all were
created and sewn into a product so I mean this beanie is a super super
cost-effective product it's like a five-dollar cost of goods sold you can
sell these beanies you know easily 20 bucks so you're making 15 bucks on a
beanie and it's just a really easy way for somebody like a consumer to get into
your brand and feel like they have a piece of the brand is something that and
just really cost-effective for you to make and simple to make based on the
hundreds or thousands of brands that you guys work with Apliiq what would
you say has been some key things that the people watching out there can
perhaps implement and tell their business in order to increase their
sales or audience size and really leverage what you guys offer here yeah
on the awareness side I mean it's just ordering samples taking really good
photos using those photos and social channels
that's just like a free way to get the message out there versus posting like a
mock-up image or something like that the fact that you've invested in it you can
get a super detailed shot of the product you can show off your branding like in
woven labels and those types of things that just creates a very credible
foundation and a trust with consumers anytime you can build SEO like search
engine optimization that's just a way to get a ton of free traffic to your site
so that's really great and then getting email addresses is its fundamental so in
Shopify they have like the little spin wheel widget there's a bunch of email
capture tools that you can use if you can't make a sale hopefully you can at
least get a customer or potential customers email and then music email
marketing strategies to bring that person back to tell your brand story
with them to connect with people but certainly like if you're spending money
on marketing by far and away one of the highest ROI things you can do is email
marketing and on the Shopify platform there's a bunch of email marketing
plugins that you can use if you're just getting started and get you know 500 or
a thousand free contact and just start scaling it out that way
and then your only pain is you you know kind of start tapping into success
behind the scenes we're talking about some details with other brands and how
sometimes they launch a product and it's not something that makes them a lot of
money right like they may have just broken even on the cost or maybe even
lost a little bit on that launch but what they got was a lot of leads right
they got those email addresses talked to us about the importance of those leads
and how somebody could nurture them because I think people watch and think
that emails dead but in reality, it's probably one of the best converging
channels oh my god absolutely yeah so what I would say there is just it's
like a loss leader right you're having a product that you can get out there that
a lot of people will buy maybe you're just not necessarily making money on
that but it's just about instead of hey am i profiting there or am i profiting
on the lifetime value of that customer and so that's one of the beauties of
doing drop shipping and using Shopify you're building up your own marketing
assets and your marketing infrastructure which really just comes down like your
email list your customer list and being able to go back and re engage with that
audience continually and on an ongoing basis because once you can develop a
direct relationship with those customers and those consumers you can get them to
come back and buy more so just driving out that lifetime value
the four keys
that you need to take away from Ian's interview the first key being that not
every product you create will have high profit margins some will be for building
your brand's authority so as you design your collections think about the high
margins that you can create with some products and the loss leaders that
you'll have for others consider integrating woven labels into your
collections to increase the profit margins on staple products such as
beanies hats and hoodies woven labels are a great way to mark up staple items
so make sure you're including them to your collection think about the lifetime
value of your customer versus trying to profit on everything you make by owning
an e-commerce brand you have the ability to develop a long term relationship with
your customers so it's not always going to be an upfront profit re-engage your
audience on a monthly basis with new drops using print-on-demand
and the Apliiq platform now before we end this video I just want to go ahead
and thank everybody that's watched and as a subscriber to this channel I really
hope that this topic that we covered helped shed some light on the
print-on-demand and ways to have success with it I
understand that now more than ever you need to provide for your family you
need to provide for your business and I hope that these tips that we shared
really helped you do that now always remember that you need to find the right
product mix and the right target audience in order to have success with
it and it may take some trial and error so it's important that you start small
and scale it up now if you're a new visitor to this channel consider joining
the free online training that we have and if you'd like us to cover a future
topic in a video then just comment down below so we can get started and working
on that I hope you guys stay safe and everyone has an amazing twenty twenty
because the world and the future really is what we create of it so I'll see you
guys in the next video