Finally! You’ve made the choice to put your wholesale clothing company’s name on physical items. Great idea, but how will you get it done when you’re unsure how to even begin? You could ask your cool entrepreneur friend who’s done it. Her T-shirts rock and her startup is new. But having gotten no email reply in weeks, you guess she was just too polite to tell you to Google it. There are Several Routes You can Take, but are They Right for You? You’ve probably also failed to consider some of the other factors involved in handling creation of promotional items — stuff like minimums, hidden fees, physical space for store inventory and, oh yes, the big one — shipping. If shipping turns into a frequent task, nobody at your small business is going to volunteer to do it, especially in a startup culture. Small Business Trends emailed Davis Siksnans of Printful to find out how his company uses technology to help you design and sell various items with a one stop experience. This includes not needing to do any boxing or shipping with your own hands, or burdening an employee to do it. The company says it will print and ship everything under your brand with custom labels, pack-ins, and other branding options. Siksnans’s obsession with tech began when he saved enough money to buy his first Macbook at age 13. A few years later he began his career working in IT and project management at Draugiem Group, one of Latvia’s pioneering tech companies. As the CEO of Printful, he’s passionate about ecommerce and being part of the industry’s growth. Small Business Trends: How does Printful help companies? What category are you in? Davis Siksnans: Printful is a dropshipping, fulfillment and printing company founded by myself and my colleague Lauris Liberts. In the beginning we offered just three types of products: t-shirts, posters and canvas. Today we do sublimation, embroidery, screen printing and more on thousands of items for over 900,000 business customers. We’re happy to say we’re on pace for over one million registered users by the end of 2018. We feel we offer the most reliable, seamless service for small e-commerce businesses who need to make and ship custom merchandise without ordering mass quantities at a time. Our customers include niche entrepreneurs and solopreneurs too. Small Business Trends: Let’s talk more about that, because I know you regard solopreneurs as a trend. Davis Siksnans: Millennials in particular are seeking more custom apparel now, and the market share of name brand companies — such as Abercrombie & Fitch — is decreasing. Solo entrepreneurship is a growing trend. Individuals who are small niche businesses on platforms like Etsy are all over Instagram and other social media. We love catering to these individuals. Small Business Trends: Why did you choose to get into this space? Davis Siksnans: The idea for Printful actually came out of another business Lauris started called StartupVitamins, which sells motivational posters, clothing, and other items for the entrepreneurial community. The fulfillment partners we were using back then weren’t very reliable; for example, they’d drop orders or take weeks to fulfill them, or run out of materials and not tell us. That all left a negative relationship with our buyers. They also lacked an API, which meant we couldn’t submit orders automated from our system.
