Hi Reader,
Would you want to launch your shop the week of Black Friday? It's not something I would recommend (or agree to do) for a client, but we tried it for our own shop. My expectations were low as far as sales, I only let you newsletter friends know about it, and I was fine with something going wrong.
I'm happy to say that our Simple Shopify Design process is foolproof, so nothing broke. We're working on a customer service mystery about being unable to ship to certain states (we think it's an issue with using the Shop app and Printful app shipping rates!). I admit we're taking the easy way out by doing print on demand, so we don't have to worry about carrying any inventory or shipping anything ourselves.
It looks super hard to make money with print on demand, though! Our margins are low because we're focused on getting things out there rather than making money. We did make a point to check pricing against some of our favorite shops to be sure we're not undercutting anyone who's trying to make a living from this.
It's been fun poking around in the Shopify admin, and finding places where we can clarify our own instructions when we're working on projects for shop owners.
Speaking of holiday shopping, did you get to take a look at our gift guide? This is just a wee slice of all the awesome independent shops I admire. We could easily list hundreds of amazing places to shop small from this holiday season. I'm sure you know a bunch, too.
If you sell anything that shop owners, product designers, or retail employees would specifically love, will you email me back to let me know? I'd love to feature those things here as well all get our shopping done for each other.
