Making Art Work: Mastering Merch (Part Two)
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- August 16, 2019
- Brett Kelley
“Welcome to the Making Art Work Series! Through this accumulating and growing collection of resource articles, we hope to give insight and suggestions to artists in their journey to becoming their most successful creative selves!”
Continuing our conversation about Mastering Merch in Part One of this topic, there is no shortage of ways to produce merchandise using your artwork and brand. In our second installment, we will be focusing on the types of ways an artist can make those products available for sale! We will be focusing on sites and companies that offer services of merchandising that artists might otherwise have trouble producing on their own. As the list below will illustrate, making the materials and selling them can be a one-stop shop, if it works to your advantage:
Society6 - Society6 is a website where users can upload and sell merchandise using their artwork, with over 30 different products available for patrons ranging from Art Prints to Throw Blankets. Acquired by its current parent company Leaf Group in 2013, the site is home to “hundreds of thousands” of artists selling on their platform.
Pricing System: Society6 has a pre-determined price list where you make 10% of each sale (except for Art Prints, which artists can price accordingly to their wishes)
Check out their site here:
Redbubble- Created in 2006 in Melbourne, Australia, Redbubble exists to fill a simple task: Give independent artists a meaningful way to sell their work. With a publicly listed community of over 700,000 artists and designers across the world, this site offers a number of products ranging from basic art prints and clothing to stationary and phone cases.
Pricing System:Through Redbubble, an artist can set their own prices above a “base” rate for the product cost, giving the artist the potential to make more money per sale.
Check out their site here:
Shopify - Based out of Ottawa, Ontario Canada, this ecommerce company is an online store and retail point-of-sale system. Founded in 2004, Shopify offers online retailers services ranging from “payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools” to simplify the online merchant experience for creatives.With reportedly over 800,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries, Shopify exceeded $41.1 Billion in transactions in 2018 alone.
Pricing System:Shopify offers a free 14 day trial, but there is a monthly fee (ranging from $29.99-$299/month) for site operation, and offers annual purchase discounts.
Check out their site here:
Displate - Displate is a merchandising site dedicated to producing artwork on metal posters. Founded in 2013 with over 25,000 artists in 86 countries, this site offers a unique product as well as provides an alternative option to traditional materials that can be more susceptible to damage. An ecologically minded business, Displate staff have also planted nearly 10 million trees since its inception by pairing with non-profit company Trees for the Future to bolster efforts in combating deforestation across the world.
Pricing System:Artists can price their work to receive anywhere from $1-$53 (Which makes products range from $21 to $121 and up) per sale depending on size and pricing of their wares. Displate artists have over $4 Million dollars in commissions paid to artists in six years, with 65% of artists successfully selling their artwork.
Check out their site here:
BigCartel - With nearly $2.5 Billion in sales to artists since 2005, this independent online store service offers a wide range of plans for creatives to use and sell their work. BigCartel was founded by artists for artists, which is why it boasts one of the more supportive services for merchants and creatives.
Pricing System: There are four priced plans, ranging from Gold (Free) to Titanium ($29.99/month) These plans affect how many products you can list (with no fees). BigCartel can be a great option for artists who are only making and moving a small number of products at a time.
Check out their site here:
Printful - Established in 2010, Printful is a US-based outsourcing printing company that works with a production house in Latvia that has grown to four different production factories worldwide. With a team of 600+ from USA, Mexico and Europe, Printful uses over $17 million invested in printing to provide over 7 million orders across the world. In less than ten years, Printful has generated over $300 million in sales. Printful focuses on art prints and embroidery, but has products that range from clothing to home furnishings. Printful also integrates well with other websites, such as Weebly, Shopify and Squarespace.
Pricing System: Printful’s system is similar to other product-centric platforms. You charge and keep anything over the base rate of production cost for a product, which dictates your income from a sale. If you put a shirt up for sale that costs $12 to make, if you charge $22, you make $10 off that sale.
Check out their site here:
We hope this breakdown of merchandising sites is helpful to you! Let us know in the comments if you have a website you use that we didn’t mention. Stay tuned to thalo.com for more resources and tips for artists!
