What the Top 1% of Print-On-Demand Sellers Do Right | The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]You don't need a garage to put stuff in.

[00:00:02]You don't need a loan. You don't need an MBA. All you need is an idea and an internet connection. What separates the top 1% of your merchants selling print on demand from everybody else? Another great way around um having high acquisition costs is Today on the unofficial Shopify podcast, we are discussing print on demand. Yeah, print on demand. I feel that practically synonymous with e-commerce. I have done you know I've been a Shopify partner for jeez, since the 2011 now, long time. And you know early on especially like just uh these print on demand services like Printify or Printful synonymous with with e-commerce with direct to consumer because they were early. They had plugins for Shopify. It was an easy way you know where a graphic designer could spin up a Shopify store and start selling a physical good and get it fulfilled. And you know often times we see you know print on demand added as like all right, we can add additional branded merch to our store with relatively little effort. And so when uh David Hooker from these services from Fuel, we're going to find out you know where where Fuel got that name applied to be a guest on the show. I'm like, man, I got to talk to this guy, right? Cuz fashion and apparel possibly you know one time it was, I don't know if it still is, I believe it is, the biggest vertical on the platform. And so you just you can't talk about Shopify and not run into these print on demand services. So David Hooker from Fuel how are you doing? Thanks for coming. Hi Kurt, thank you so much for having me on. And I believe that fashion and apparel still is the biggest sector on Shopify e-commerce and uh I don't know if it's off the top of my head, but I think if we look to retail in general, fashion and apparel is going to be right up there in the in the top verticals. It's got to be. Uh but all right, you Fuel. What's What is Fuel? F Y U L. Yes. So, uh if I could have uh your audience remember anything, it's not that I work uh for Fuel, but that it's that Fuel is uh what was born out of the combination of two leading pioneering uh print-on-demand platforms, Printful and Printify. And when the companies merged, uh we merged uh in 2024, November of 2024.

[00:02:27]It really was a merger, right? Like we got a lot of people asking at the time, you come on, who acquired who? But really it was genuinely a merger of equals.

[00:02:35]As we were looking uh at, you know, what do we call the entity that that sits uh above them, we looked at the difference, right? Cuz we both were print something, Printify, Printful. We looked at that difference, and we had the ful and the fy.

[00:02:49]We combined them for F Y U L. It was obvious to us that that new word should be pronounced Fuel because the And it's a really great analogy for us because the uh thing that happens uh with us and your e-commerce store, your Shopify store, is that we are there in the background silently fulfilling your products, adding your designs, getting them out to your customers' doors, right? Your e-commerce, your Shopify store, is running thanks to us. But nobody who's buying from you knows that we're involved, right? And that's the way we like to do it, that's the way you like to do it. So, it's like when you put fuel in your car. If there's no fuel in the car, it's not going to go anywhere. But if you just look at the car, you don't know whether or not it has fuel in it. So, we found that that analogy worked really well for us. So, Fuel is Printify and Printful. I want to know, you truly, for the selfish benefit of me and our listeners, from your seat, because you have rare access to, you know, a lot of data and experience here, what separates the top 1% of the merchants selling print-on-demand from everybody else. I think it's a great question. And as well as having a lot of lines of data that I can look at, I also have exposure to a lot of those top 1% merchants. Right? I wouldn't be doing my job well if I didn't speak to them as often as I possibly can, right? I'm the brand director uh at Printify I am console and you can't create a good brand unless you know how people feel about your brand. So, I need to go talk to people as well as look at the lines of data. The thing that I would say really sticks out for me for that 1% is their resilience. Right? You know, these are talented people who have skills and ability across a bunch of different things, but if I look at the kind of commonality they have, it's their determination and their resilience. The And then if you look at the data, right? Not just my anecdotal feedback from all the interviews that I've done, but if you look at the data as well, we see it's the the the merchants and sellers who are the most consistent, who, you know, keep pushing out new designs, whatever their tactics may be, whether you're going for a more brand-based approach where you have a niche of people that you really identify with and you're creating designs for those people. So, moms who scuba dive, like I met a great merchant who sells Lebanese food designs. She started in Canada.

[00:05:09]Uh she had a community there, right? And she she creates for for that group. Or if you're a more what I call a trend-based merchant where you're looking for like the next hot thing that people are selling, finding perhaps moments of popular culture. We had a a great story with one of our merchants who uh during the Johnny Depp trial, now whatever side of that trial you come down on, no no judgment for me there, but one of the stars of that whole thing was Johnny Depp's lawyer, right?

[00:05:38]Camille, I think her second name is Lopez. I remember her first name is Camille because uh the t-shirt that exploded was Camille is my lawyer. Just like a really simple black t-shirt, white writing, Kamala is my lawyer. Went huge, particularly on TikTok. So, that would be a more trends-based approach.

[00:05:54]Right? But, the merchant who sold that was constantly trying things, putting out new listings, trying new designs.

[00:05:59]When they found a design, replicating it onto not just a t-shirt, but a mug and other things.

[00:06:04]And so, whatever kind of approach you're taking, you have to be determined and resilient. You are going to have designs that don't sell.

[00:06:12]When we look at the Look at the data, typically, most uh sales from merchants are coming from about 30% of the items they have listed, which tells you 70% of stuff never got sold. So, you have to be prepared to uh interact with that level of rejection.

[00:06:30]Right? You know, think of other things in life. If If I were to tell you, "70% of the times you try, you're not going to get through." You I don't know. I'm not doing that, right? Like I'm too old uh to have ever used a dating app, but I would imagine if you know, 70% of the times you swipe right, like it's not going to you might give up. And like I said, I'm too old. So, let's not Let's not take that as a good good good good good good good example.

[00:06:49]I'm I'm proudly in my 40s, and I got married you know, right before those dating apps took off. And man, it felt like it in the last chopper out of 'Nam that I did not I dodged having to deal with that. But, okay.

[00:07:01]With, you know, what I think is so great about print on demand, and part of what has fueled its um you know, its popularity, is the low entry, the low barrier to entry. I don't actually have to buy or pay for anything beyond, you know, my initial Shopify store to design, list products, and have them available for sale, where people could just say, "Hey, I'm going to buy." And then it gets fulfilled. So, it's really low risk to try things. And to your point, it sounds like what that enables is these like hyper niche very uh often temporal, where it's like we're just going to have a pop culture thing that lives for a short instance, and people buy the shirt. And like if you have access to the right audience, you could sell that. But you it's a bit of a conveyor belt where like you've got to come up with the next and the next and the next. But you know, if you're in that position like you're plugged into it, you could do it. But it sounds like it's you know, a lot of make hay while the sun shines. See what sticks. Just like churning out designs. Yeah, I for me in the job that I do in my everyday, and one of the reasons I get out of bed in the morning and and go into work really happy is is that lower lower barrier barrier to entry. The fact that you can start a store, start selling real products, and you don't need to buy anything up front. What that has done, and I love to say this phrase, is we have democratized entrepreneurship. You don't need a garage to put stuff in like that your mom's going to get annoyed cuz you've got boxes of stuff. You don't need that. You don't need a loan from dad's, right, to just have enough capital to start a business. You don't need an MBA. You don't need a fancy degree. All you need is an idea and an internet connection. Right?

[00:08:43]Laptop, too. Okay, so you need three things, right? So that means that anyone anywhere can go go start their own store.

[00:08:50]We, again, you you mentioned data before, Craig. When I look at the data of like who uses Printful, who uses Printful, what we see is we have people from all around the world.

[00:08:59]Old people, young people. We have people with all different kinds of niches, right? Whether that, you know, any kind of political niche you can think of, any kind of gender or sexuality niche or personal niche, anything you can think of, we have merchants who are selling in those niches to those people.

[00:09:17]But one of the things that we do see that is consistent in the data is our audience does tend to be people from a lower socioeconomic background. So that means it's people who otherwise wouldn't be able to start their own businesses are able to start their own businesses.

[00:09:30]Which for me is thrilling. Like it's great. Like to be able to give somebody opportunity that they otherwise wouldn't have. Like what better place to work than that? So, >> that low barrier to entry is fantastic.

[00:09:43]And if you know, determination is the thing that kind of separates the wheat from the chaff, then you know, I'm all for that. That's a meritocracy, as well, right? That's incredible. Yeah, we we do often say, you know, democratizing the tools, because as the technology advances, the barrier to entry gets lower and lower.

[00:09:59]But, you have the data to back it up to say like, okay, yeah, that seems to be really what is happening here.

[00:10:04]Interesting. For me, anyway, I suspect the biggest mistake is using a mock-up for your product photo. You know, designing the product and then never ordering one yourself to take the photos.

[00:10:14]Uh thoughts there? Uh I think that that's definitely an important consideration. The first thing to be said is that we see that the more thought and the more unique a mock-up is, the higher your your chances of selling. There are a lot of tools out there to help you, um and a lot of them are really good mock-up generators and stuff, but in my personal opinion as a brand director, there's no substitute for ordering a sample, putting that sample on somebody who speaks to that audience, and then photographing them to the best of your ability.

[00:10:46]But, also, previously I spoke about how we're lowering the bar to entry, democratizing entrepreneurship, right?

[00:10:52]And now I'm saying, okay, I have to spend money on the sample, I have to find a model, and I have to know how to point a camera at something in such a way and do lighting and stuff, right?

[00:10:59]That's not democratizing, you know, on the level that you kind of had me thinking when you answered the previous question, David. So, what we're seeing and doing now, it's really exciting, it's we're rolling this out to people. Like, it's not all the way out to everybody on the Printify platform yet, but we're seeing some really great success with it. We've been able to make it so that your AI-generated mock-up is of a really, really high quality. I'm skeptical myself, right? Like, when the team came to us and said, we're going to do AI-generated mock-ups, and I was like, you see all of the headlines out there about AI slop and all of these things.

[00:11:35]But we tested it and I had my team test it there and I lead the the design team.

[00:11:39]And the realism that those engines are now capable of and we tested across a bunch of different ones so we found the the best result is amazing. And again, what that's allowing people to do we see on the platform is people who don't have enough money for a photo studio. Haven't got time to find a model, are able to create lifestyle unique unique is I think the word I would love people listening to really latch onto. You need a unique blueprint, right? This unique to you because you're building a brand, you're differentiating yourself with something else. If people see the same model with the same thing time and time again, they're going to think, "Oh, okay." They're like, you know, you haven't put thought into it so you're not going to get my money. AI is now at the point where you can create a beautiful mock-up that's unique, you can tailor it as well, right? So, you can find person with just the right skin complexion, just the right height, like in just the right setting for the brand product that you've always imagined. So, your point about a great mock-up, you couldn't be more dead on. I still think that there's nothing better than a mock-up that's made in real life, but the AI tools is democratizing that and I think that's great, too. I'm happy to hear it. I like it I like this answer for several reasons. One, it has been my suspicion that lifestyle photos are going to outperform the the late the flat lay life flat uh the product on white, right? I want to see, at least for my first photo, I want to see that product in use with a person in like an actual background. And if uh a good AI-generated version of that is what it takes, great. Let's go for it. You know, realistically, I want a real person, but you know, the sky's the limit on what you could spend on that. Like, "Oh, I'm going to rent a studio and I need to get a fancy camera and I'm going to hire a model." And then, yeah, I got to edit it. Oh, no, now we're going to do a new line. We got to do this again. Yeah, I get why it AI is so attractive there. And generative AI now is really good. It you said you tried several models. Google Nano Banana. Man, the stuff they could do is really impressive. Even, you know, the the models that aren't as good are much better than they were 6 months ago. They could do some some really impressive things. I think it's important to say that those tools are only as good as the people using them, right? Like if you if you're not tweaking, adjusting, making those things perfect, you're going to end up with a sloppy result, right? If you just type in, you know, male with a t-shirt in a park, you're just going to get something generic, right? Like you need to have a real strong awareness of what you want that brand to be. Like what kind of male is it? What age male is it? What kind of park is he in? How is he standing? All of that stuff. The The reason why an in-person photo always wins it is because of the uniqueness of it and because it captures a moment, right? And that's why top top fashion brands for years and years have spent huge money on photo shoots, right? There's a reason why Louis Vuitton, Coach, who you know, Marc Jacobs, whoever you want to think of, they're putting a lot of money and on the model and the situation and all of that stuff. There's a reason the reason for that. But we've also seen those top companies are making use of AI because it's allowing them to sometimes get into situations that are out of reach even for them.

[00:14:47]So, why wouldn't you do that for the same as your brand as long as you're doing it in a way where you're thinking about what goes into it? The other way to do it, you know, is you know, try and use um influencers, content creators. You're like, "Hey, you know, we especially for like, you know, the the top of mind real like meme stuff. We're like, "Hey, we saw you mention this. You know, could we send you a t-shirt?" Okay, so then my cost is potentially, you know, just fulfillment on the the shirt. And then, you know, if I'm lucky, they're going to wear it, share it, show it. Product seeding is what we used to call that.

[00:15:17]It's like, "All right, we're going to find 10 people and send them the product." And with print on demand, you know, it's like, you know if I'm selling electronics, I talked to a guy recently who was selling uh turntables for 600 bucks. Okay, he that strategy is not going to work for someone like him. But if I'm selling a t-shirt, much more reasonable where like, "Okay, you know, I could send that to a few people and maybe you one of them goes viral on TikTok." Ah, you know, now I got lucky.

[00:15:41]So, like a little bit of a a lotto play there, I think. But um you know, much more accessible. I think the principles that we talked about earlier still apply, right? Craftsmanship, pick your influencer. There's a lot of influencers out there. Pick one that works for you, that's right for you, that's right for your brand, right for your niche, right for your trend, whatever it may be.

[00:15:58]Right? Don't just send out uh emails to the most popular ones that you found on the list. Like go look for the ones that you think really works for you and your store. And then resilience. Some of them are going to not reply to you. Like influencers can be some of the most difficult people to work with, right?

[00:16:13]They're busy people on a constant hamster wheel of content in order to keep their businesses alive. So, some of them just don't have the time to reply to your emails or your requests or whatever it came in. So, your resilience is going to have to come through there as well. I want to hear your thoughts on you know, and I don't know if you have an answer for me, but the single biggest problem that merchants are facing in 2026 is customer acquisition cost. These ads, platforms like Meta, are getting more competitive over time and more expensive over time. And so, that it's really really getting to be a recurring issue that you'll see like, you know, in in forums and subreddits. And so, you know, do you have thoughts on you know, brand strategy on like cuz I I could pay to rent traffic, right? Or I could try and build it organically. I could do both. It thoughts? So, I I it's a recurring cycle, right? You the once a a method for advertising comes out into the world, the early adopters really enjoy it, make huge benefit over it cuz it's cheaper than it was. Like they're the only ones doing it, right? Like, Meta Ads is the example, but if if we go back previously, like, the first users of TV ads would have would have, you know, really enjoyed much more favorable conditions than than the later people.

[00:17:29]Radio ads, as the technology comes out, early adopters get a much better acquisition cost, and then you have to get creative.

[00:17:37]And I think we're really at a point where where we're looking for the new dawn where we go. There there are a couple of, you know, kind of cool principles to that as well. I think creativity is one of them, right? So, either your your ad is like so good and so creative and stands out from everyone else so well that that you're you're really you're penetrating and cutting through. That's hard because you've got up against a lot of other people who are really really creative, so it's difficult. The other thing that we see people doing is community, right? So, like, showing that resilience and perseverance in community. You know, if you're building in a niche, so this is to your point of brand, right? Like, if you're building in an in a niche and you're creating your Canadian Lebanese food t-shirts, right? Just to take the previous example, you will find subreddits, communities, niches, like, maybe even like physical places you can go where those people are hanging out, right? Where your cost acquis- your cost of acquisition is going to be lower, you can speak to people more directly, you're not swimming with all of the other fish.

[00:18:39]You're like in the pool that that you need to be.

[00:18:42]So, that means that you need to really know your brand and know your niche and know your audience. If you don't already know those things, you've gotten lucky and you're making sales, right? You you have you have you have gotten lucky. You you've struck on something. And I've seen that with merchants, right? We we have a lot of merchants who the first t-shirt they put out sells, and they're like, "Oh my god, it sold." And a lot of them don't really know why, right? They're just like, "People like the design, I guess."

[00:19:08]But there's more to it than that.

[00:19:09]There's a reason why people like the design, right? And there's a specific kind of person who likes the design. So, the more you know about that person and why they bought it and why they like that design, the higher your chances of repeating that formula, right? You got lucky once, lightning don't strike twice. You won't get lucky twice. But, if you're smart, you got to listen, find out what the brand I love nothing more than than talking to customers, right?

[00:19:33]Like, I think e-commerce is a great game for the extrovert where you can go talk to people, learn why they like some Oh, you like it because of the Okay, cool, cool. Then I'm just going to repeat that and do that on a slightly different formula somewhere else. So, I think whatever business you're in, knowing your audience, having empathy, sympathy, and compassion for that audience, knowing what makes them tick is going to help you sell more and that's going to lower your acquisition cost, right? Another great way around um having high acquisition costs is having returning customers, right? Like, if you've got someone they come and they buy from you once, if they come and buy from you a second time, you're not going to have to pay anything for them to come back as a other than maybe the cost of your email marketing platform, right? But, if they love the stuff so much that they come back and buy another, or if they buy more than one t-shirt because they love everything that's in there, because they saw it one ad for one t-shirt that was like, "Oh my god, I love that sandwich."

[00:20:28]And then you tell Oh my god, he's got all sandwiches. I love all of these sandwiches. I'm going to buy a t-shirt for all of them. Then your ALV has gone up and your acquisition cost has gone down. So, I think that's you know, the way around it and that's what we see a lot of merchants, the smart ones do.

[00:20:42]Yeah. You You kind of figure like, all right, if on the first order, if I could just break even, then I have done my job. And then all right, on really on email and organic social, but really email and maybe some retargeting ads, you know, can we get them to come back and make a second, third, you know, or or more purchases. Email for me is the the great uh ignored, derided marketing tool, right? Like, I used to have a CEO that CMO, sorry, that I used to work for and he used to just say to me, "David, email is a print money button. A print money button, right? Like get your list and email them." And email them and email them email. And like who cares if your open rate is 11% and your click-through rate is 2%? Right? It's it's free money, right? Like just just go and and and do it. So I would hate for anybody running an e-commerce store to think themselves above email marketing. You're not. Do it. Man, David Hooker, I am so glad I had you on the show. I learned I I'm familiar with with the services, with print on demand, I've used them, um you've managed them, enjoy them, but hearing it from your perspective and getting some of that inside baseball on the thinking behind the product and in the experience. Very cool. Ah, thanks for having me on, Yianni. I'm sure I'm sure you you've forgotten more about e-commerce than than than I know, but like uh it is great to have you on and and you know, I think everyone can tell I can talk about this stuff and the amazing things that our merchants do forever and ever. It's it's uh it's a really fun place to work and and the reason for that is because of the amazing things that we empower our merchants to do. So if I want to learn more about you and about print on demand, where am I going? Ah, so first let's start with print on demand.

[00:22:27]So we mentioned you have both Printify and Printful. We are, you know, one company now, but like the two platforms are very separate and we're going to keep them very separate cuz they work in a very different way. Printify works with a third-party network, so what you get there is a few more products in a in a more places as a bigger catalog.

[00:22:45]Printful, as I mentioned, we own all of our own facilities and every product you're getting is coming out of a facility that we run or highly vet with one of our partners. So depending on whether you're what exactly kind of store you're looking for, you'll find that either Printify or Printful might work better for you. We've got on the website printify.com or printful.com we've got lots of comparison pages to to help you choose. If someone really wants to learn more about me, you can find me on LinkedIn.

[00:23:13]I'm not a stranger. Now you can look me After you've been to Printify and Printful go click on the show notes and look at my TED Talk. [music] I'll take the extra views. And I will I will include links to everything in the show notes. David Hooker, fuel.

[00:23:28]Thank you so much. Thank you, Kurt.