What's going on with Print on Demand (AKA Teespring)? | My Experience

First Things first: I’m too lazy to restart my shop but Spring is forcing my hand…( You can watch the video below or read the blog, both are fundamental).

In case you want to watch I have this video right here:

Not sure how caught up to recent events you are but paying attention to things going on in the 2,023rd year of our Lord looks real scary.

So to briefly get you up to speed (loosely):

Print on Demand is an amazing service where you upload a design, choose some products, create a store front and bam! Thousands of dollars come through!

Nah really it's like $300.

After 2 years of all of this I've made $300.

Not complaining actually, instead thankful for those who thought my designs are worth buying, it’s really how I have items priced. I want my stuff affordable so I don’t care about the profit at the moment.

But let's talk about the specific site I'm using …at the moment…. Spring.

In the beginning in 2011 it started as a idea from a few friends who originally wanted to have the ability to create shirts for a specific event that was coming up which filled the gap that existed in the event planning and marketplace Industry.

They became profitable, scaled the business and things looked great.

But over the years there were logistic issues, then profit issues, and then competition grew just as much.

Even better here is a link to “Tia TX” video from a few months ago who covered their history pretty well and I learned a lot of their in place systems before I joined the platform.

The Decline of Teespring (Documentary)

Except last half of 2022 got pretty weird for creators.

Around July & August, creators started noticing that their payouts were taking longer than normal to process. Some waiting a month before seeing any transaction history.

I didn't see it that personally but I also don't activate payouts more than twice a year.

Yet the Teespring Subreddit got some traction from users I've never seen active there and people flood subreddits and communities way more when something is going wrong.

But it came to light that there was a financial issue, namely on the processing side, and creators in turn got the late corporate response.

So many social media posts and 2 community blog promises later, money started showing up in people's accounts, returning the subreddit to the dead 6 daily user community I'm used to.

But it left a bad taste in many peoples mouths and options for other shops definitely began peaking as an alternative.

So I've been sourcing additional reliable options for more store fronts while we see how this economic environment pans out and hopefully we create more avenues to make us money, because we deserve functional and honest service….

Also another company named Amaze bought Spring, Teespring, whatever you wanna call it and may have closed a whole distribution warehouse just before the new year so I clicked Payout real quick and let's see where I end up next…