How AI is Revolutionizing Print-on-Demand - David Hooker | How AI Changes Print-On-Demand, How AI Creates Photorealistic Mockups, What Traits Make Sellers Successful, How Printify’s Global Fulfillment Cuts Risk, Why Gen Z Demands Personalization (#484)

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;18;18 Unknown There's a lot of chatter in and around the world of AI about it coming for our jobs and removing all human jobs. And maybe one day that's true, cause neither you or I know the answer to that question. But I think the potential is there right now for AI to take away a lot of the jobs we don't like doing, right? 00;00;18;18 - 00;00;52;11 Unknown The repetitive stuff.

What do you see successful brands do differently from the ones that fail or have no sales? So. Hello, welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Imagine growing your eCommerce brand faster without tying up thousands of dollars in inventory and guessing which products will actually sell.

Today we're talking about how smart eCommerce brands are using print, OnDemand and AI powered personalization to grow with less risk and more flexibility with rising costs, tighter margins and consumer spending more carefully. 00;00;52;11 - 00;01;13;16 Unknown This approach is quickly becoming a powerful growth strategy for modern e-commerce brands. Joining me today is David Hooker, head of brand at Printify. the leading platform behind thousands of print on demand businesses worldwide.

David works at the intersection of eCommerce branding I gross marketing and helps brands while staying in a fast changing market. So let's get started. 00;01;13;19 - 00;01;32;23 Unknown David, welcome to the show. High Fives.

Thank you so much for having me. I thank you so much for an intro that makes me sound so much cleverer than I feel. I'm sure we will dive deep into it and you will show the expertise that you have. So some of our listeners might have never heard of on print demand, which I think is very unlikely, but I think they already understand all of it.

00;01;32;23 - 00;01;54;00 Unknown But it is changing to space very quickly right now. So you want to dive into this. Give me an overview of how print on demand looks today and how it is changing the business model. Sure.

So for those who don't know, I tried to briefly explain why print on demand is a system whereby instead of buying large amounts of a product in bulk. 00;01;54;00 - 00;02;13;14 Unknown So let's take a T-shirt as an example and let's say you have got a great design idea for a T-shirt. You want to put your company logo or whatever it may be on a t shirt. You traditionally have to buy 200, 350 minimum t shirts, various different sizes and colors.

You need to store them somewhere before you ship them out to your customer. 00;02;13;16 - 00;02;32;11 Unknown The print on demand. Every t shirt is made on demand so there is a facility with black t shirts in different sizes sitting around. The design comes through, say the facility.

They pick the t shirt, they take it over to the printer, it gets printed, packaged up and then sent out to your customer wherever they are in the in the real world. 00;02;32;14 - 00;03;10;02 Unknown In the case of print, if I were a technology platform more than anything else. So you then plug your printer fi account into wherever your settings Shopify, Etsy, Amazon, TikTok, wherever it may be. So that you can advertise or open your eCommerce store, customer places and order the process that I just described.

Then the facility happens and your customer gets a t shirt without you having to commit to upfront inventory and without you having to negotiate with delivery fulfillment at any of any of that stuff we do for you. 00;03;10;04 - 00;03;41;12 Unknown Print on demand is is not new. It's been around since 2013, you know, and it's it's a similar model to Dropshipping which is been around even even longer. So and your question asked me how I is changing it.

The short answer to how is changing print on demand is the fact that it's taken the parts of the process that were either repetitive or tricky and it's made and it's taking those parts of the process away from you so you don't have to handle them anymore. 00;03;41;14 - 00;04;06;18 Unknown So let me give you a good example. In a super exciting example that we're seeing, our sellers already really enjoy, which would be the generation of mockups. So you've got your t shirt, you've got your great idea for a t shirt and you've got your design.

You then using the print device software, create that design. But people like to buy an item that they've seen how it looks on someone right? 00;04;06;21 - 00;04;27;23 Unknown If you just present a schematic picture of a t shirt, someone might buy it, if it's particularly hilarious, let's say. But generally speaking, people want to say, okay, how does that look?

Right? And how does the back of it look, which is why you go on any e-commerce website, you'll see lots of thumbnails of how the product looks on a person or in the situation that that it's intended to be. 00;04;27;28 - 00;04;46;07 Unknown It creating such mock ups is not an easy thing to do by yourself. You would have to order the sample sample arrives at your house.

You then have to find someone to model it, or you can try and model it yourself. But that means a difficult camera setup. So you've found someone, a model. Then you need to know the basics of lighting.

00;04;46;07 - 00;05;12;00 Unknown You need to have a decent camera in order to get a good shot. So that's time consuming and expensive. Your alternative is to generate a mock up. So if I and all the other tools out there, we've always included a template that you can generate a mock up on too.

But the number of templates that we could make is limited, which means that other people are using the print on demand services. 00;05;12;03 - 00;05;39;01 Unknown You're seeing the same models kind of again and again, like the same faces staring, staring back at you with they I what we've been able to do is allow people to generate a photorealistic mock up. So we use nano banana. I think if you've tried the Gemini model tool, you'll know that the level of photographs that it is able to create is is stunning and ultra realistic.

00;05;39;04 - 00;05;58;21 Unknown Gone are the days of seven fingers and web toes and all of all of these things. If you're still thinking I does not your your you know a year or so out of date really on that. So what we are now allowing ourselves to do is create an image that looks like it's come out of a photo shoot. 00;05;58;21 - 00;06;26;04 Unknown It looks like it's come out of the professional photo shoot by using a guided prompt.

So we don't actually ask you to enter the prompt yourself. We give you the skeleton of a prompt and allow you to change different elements of it and then regenerate from there. What that means is, is that everyone gets a unique image that is specific to their customer and shows the product in situ in seconds, which means that your listing stands out. 00;06;26;04 - 00;06;46;15 Unknown But also means everyone else is listing stand out so you're not kind of harming each other.

So that's just one way that that is disrupting and improving print on demand. And there's a various other things that we have, including store setup, right, which is traditionally can be a long part of the process, getting everything connected opened and all of that stuff. 00;06;46;15 - 00;07;19;16 Unknown And we now have AI in the background helping you make decisions quicker. I'm a big personal believer in the fact that AI is there to take away from us the work that we never wanted to do, right?

There's a there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of chat in and around the world of AI about it coming from our jobs and removing all human jobs and maybe one day that's true, cos neither you or I know the answer to that question, but I think the potential is there right now for AI to take away a lot of the jobs we don't like doing. 00;07;19;21 - 00;07;47;03 Unknown Right. The repetitive stuff, the, the choosing of categories, the adding of tags, the changing of descriptions we found in the data with our sellers, that it's the sellers who are willing to experiment and upload the most new ideas and designs.

Not every idea and not every design is going to sell. We live in a world of AI, but air is not is not buying anything, right? 00;07;47;03 - 00;08;14;06 Unknown Like air is certainly not by tissue. Air has no need for a tissue.

I haven't seen an AI wearing a T-shirt at the moment. Right. It's still humans who are making that purchase. So and humans are wonderfully unpredictable.

Right. Like, you know, is banana cream going to be this year's huge color? Is Charlie exact skin to decide the green is this summer's color this year out of nowhere and everybody's going to want it like she did a couple of years ago. 00;08;14;08 - 00;08;41;24 Unknown Who knows?

We don't know. So, you know, you're still selling to humans. You still have that unpredictability. The way to counter that unpredictability is to give people choice.

Right? Keep rolling the dice. One of our merchants is a brand called Poppy Rose that sells on top shop. It's incredibly successful.

And I interviewed April, who runs that store once and was talking to her about her success. 00;08;41;24 - 00;09;01;03 Unknown And the way she equates it is to phishing. She says, you know, if you out there phishing and you put one line in the water, you might catch a fish, you probably won't, but you might catch a fish if you stick two more lines in the water, your chances of catching a fish went from 1 to 3, right? 00;09;01;03 - 00;09;28;25 Unknown So she equates creating new products, new designs, uploading them to putting lines in the water, attempting to catch fish with print on demand.

It's previously been tricky to do that because you have to put the work in and now we're taking the that work away, meaning that that route to success whereby those who are willing to experiment, those who are willing to get to the work, get their designs out and see if they sell or not, that's now becoming easier and easier. 00;09;28;27 - 00;09;50;02 Unknown Let me cut in there because I think it's very interesting. I was a seller myself. I'm 35 years ago.

I've sold tons of shirts back in the time, and what you just explained is like the nitty gritty of creating artwork, of creating think at a time. It was very, very basic, having a just a a draft basically, and putting it on. 00;09;50;04 - 00;10;16;26 Unknown This was very time consuming. And you're quite right and ideas has changed.

But we were talking about T-shirts. Now you do far more things than only T-shirts. Print on demand goes for many, many products. And I want to just dive a little bit in there so that our listeners understand is whatever their idea is, there might be the right product already there on print defy that They can basically take up and start their brand was given overview what kind of product range do you have at this point?

00;10;16;28 - 00;10;39;03 Unknown So we have over 1300 different products in the Prince of I catalog in the moment. So is this apparel is that is the biggest one. So that's t shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, onesies, you know, baby stuff. We have a lot of home decor.

So like posters, mugs, things that you would have around the home. We have Pets is a big growing one. 00;10;39;03 - 00;11;01;18 Unknown We have car covers, pretty much anything that you can imagine that you'd want to print on. We have it and something like a t shirt.

We have a lot of different varieties, right? Like this round neck t shirts, V-neck t shirt, short sleeve, long sleeve, all of those different things, all of the different materials that go into it. 00;11;01;20 - 00;11;26;06 Unknown So yeah, if there's a product out there, the people will buy. There's a fair chance that we have in the console and we're adding to that catalog all of the time.

So it's worth always coming back and having a look. What's important though, is when you select a product, you're selecting it for an audience, right? Like people, will people buy products? 00;11;26;14 - 00;11;52;12 Unknown As I was just saying, it's a very personal thing and people buy products in with meaning, attach them and the upcoming generation, even more so than the previous generation.

The the Gen Z really, really want to have bespoke personal, unique experiences in life. And that means bespoke, personal, unique products that no one else has. You know, they want to walk into their social groups and have some Oh my God, where did you get Oh, that's perfect. 00;11;52;12 - 00;12;15;29 Unknown That's so neat.

Like is to you, right? Which is where personalization, for example, comes in, being able to tweak things, make them feel really real and personal because we're in a world where people are seeing an incredible amount of content that's generated very, very quickly, which means that the personal content needs to stand out. So by having 1300 different products in their catalog, we give you a higher chance of doing that. 00;12;16;02 - 00;12;40;03 Unknown Hmm.

Was to stand out. I want to touch on this. Obviously you're doing this for a long time. You have a lot of brands all on the platform.

What do you see successful brands do differently from the ones that fail or have no sales? So we touched on it a little bit already, but the most significant thing that we see is resilience and determination, right? 00;12;40;06 - 00;13;04;28 Unknown Especially when people start on their journey early on, they think that they have a great idea. And then unfortunately, you're the only one who thinks it's a great idea.

Right? It happens. It happens to all of us a lot. And I say to you, there are lots of sellers.

We have one seller. His name is Tim, and he actually uploaded a bunch of designs he thought were great. 00;13;04;29 - 00;13;23;04 Unknown No one bought them, and then he uploaded a design, which he was like, I guess it's cute. It exploded like one method to going to a Shopify store.

He woke up the next day and he had over a thousand orders for this one designer on a T-shirt and it wasn't the design that he was particularly in love with. 00;13;23;06 - 00;13;55;21 Unknown So we see that it's the people who have that determination to keep trying that are the most successful. The second biggest indicator is it's those who know that audience, who know who they're selling to. JM would be another great example of that.

He knows the niche of people that he's he's selling t he knows what they like, he knows what they don't like, and then kind of link to that is what I would call like reason 2.5, which is listening to that audience, right? 00;13;55;22 - 00;14;21;13 Unknown Like you may know that audience and that niche that you're selling to really well. Now you could even go out and do research, right?

We have some people who are selling to people like themselves, so it's easier for them. But we have people who are selling. For example, I know one son on the platform who's a moroccan guy who lives in Spain, and one of his stores is selling to Ohio based nurses who love cats. 00;14;21;16 - 00;14;42;28 Unknown Right.

So if those Ohio based nurses had a, you know, in-person meet and he walked in, they would be like, excuse me, who are you like, what are you doing here? Right? So but he's researched the niche so you can live in the niche, you can research the niche, but whether you live in it now or you research it, you're not going to know it forever. 00;14;42;28 - 00;15;23;26 Unknown It will change by trends change.

People change their idea. But once you build that audience and you have some kind of connection with them, listen to them. The first step to listening to them is to gather their feedback, write via reviews. I still think email marketing is this.

You know, we have this stereotype of email of being old and outdated and whatever, but newsletters, surveys, feedback and stuff that goes via email is still really incredibly powerful once you have an audience and we're seeing from our more successful customers, it's those that are able to know their niche and then adapt with their niche as it moves. 00;15;23;26 - 00;15;42;21 Unknown So I think, yeah, really resilience, knowing your audience and adapting to your audience. But I would say the kind of big three that we see.

David this was so valuable and it was a masterclass in marketing, in online marketing. There are I couldn't agree more than what you said. And I think for our listeners who'd have to listen to this twice, because this is basically how you build a business. 00;15;42;24 - 00;16;06;27 Unknown If you have a great idea, as you said, you might think it's a great idea, but it might not work with the market out there.

So testing resilience, keep going and know your customer. I think this is this is a really important take away is like you have to learn your customer is and even if they're in Ohio far away from yourself, you still have to know where they are, what language they speak, what kind of words they use, and so on, so forth. 00;16;07;03 - 00;16;30;12 Unknown On that note, talking about Ohio, 25 is a global company. How does it look like if you're selling somewhere far away or you have a customers around the globe?

How is it Was shipping times delivery and so on? How does that work? So in the case of Prince of I, we have over 87 different print partners and more than 115 different printing locations spread out all around the world. 00;16;30;18 - 00;16;53;27 Unknown So essentially we offer you local fulfillment on a global scale.

So let's say you're you're in Morocco designing for people in Ohio. We have a facility. I'm trying to think off the top of my head where our closest facility to Ohio would be. I think it's probably somewhere like Dallas.

But we have a facility that's not all that far away and we can send it there. 00;16;54;05 - 00;17;18;21 Unknown At the same time, we have facilities on every continent in most countries, especially the major ones inside the European Union. We have delivered. We've delivered to 196 countries and territories.

I once looked at the spreadsheet because like the data came through from our team and I was like, There's not 196 countries in the world that can't be correct. 00;17;18;24 - 00;17;39;28 Unknown So I looked at the spreadsheet, know the Vatican City, where we kind of like break up, but we've delivered to the Vatican like you can pick a territory in the world. We've essentially delivered that if you're a little farther from one of our facilities. Yeah, it's going to take a little bit more time, but we don't really have anything that takes more than 20 days to get to someone.

00;17;39;28 - 00;18;03;11 Unknown And we, the vast majority, like 90% plus of stuff, is arriving within three working days. That gives you as a starter or as a brand that is established and one to go into print and a month a chance to start a global business with no upfront cost. So I think this is very unique in the business world that I think does no other business which can basically offer this business concept. 00;18;03;14 - 00;18;34;14 Unknown Now I want to talk a bit about your perfect customer.

Obviously, we have someone who's a side hustler. That's sort of the beginning of the journey, but there's a whole range and even big companies just print on demand. Give me an overview what your perfect customers. Well, I mean, because I never turn down anyone's as a customer, but for my own personal perfect customer in terms of the people who I enjoy seeing thrive the most is really people who who have have an idea or more importantly, have that ambition to own their own business.

00;18;34;14 - 00;18;50;14 Unknown I'm brand director, so my job is to really know our customers. I do a lot of interviews with our merchants all the time, so I get to know them, know who they are, I know how they think and the similarities that I found in them is that they're they're a group of people who don't like being told what to do. 00;18;50;14 - 00;19;23;09 Unknown And it's a catch a catch phrase, a line that we use a lot in our own marketing about be your own boss and take control variations on that.

Because the great thing about print on demand and I say this a lot is I think every MBA degree course should have a print on demand module because with us you learn advertising, you learn product creation, you learn customer feedback, you learn customer service like pretty much every element of a business. 00;19;23;10 - 00;19;41;16 Unknown You learn it, you learn it for real. Like the stakes are real. You make money or you don't make money, but you're not putting any money at risk.

You don't need huge, great, big upfront capital. So I would say our perfect customer is anyone who's doesn't like being told what to do has the ambition to do something a little bit better. 00;19;41;16 - 00;20;02;25 Unknown You know, we have a lot of people who are looking for what I call financial freedom, but financial freedom is different things to different people in my experience. For some people, Megan, who's one of our merchants that equated to paying off her mortgage before any of her school friends for some people, is just wanting to make enough money to get the car fixed style and more.

00;20;02;25 - 00;20;29;12 Unknown Who's one of the biggest print on demand sellers? And she has great material out there teaching you how to do print on demand. I spoke to Starla once and she was like, I just wanted to get the tires on my car fixed. Right?

That was her initial motivation for wanting to get it done. So anyone who has that kind of ambition to have a little bit more or a lot more wants to take control and is interested in business, come check out print. 00;20;29;12 - 00;20;47;24 Unknown If I don't, I don't think I'm biased, but I don't think there's a more fun and rewarding side hustle out there. If I may add one more category, that's the one I fall under.

Somebody who wants to be location independent and run their business from anywhere in the world. That's possibly one of your perfect. I've met a lot of nomads worldwide. 00;20;47;25 - 00;21;18;00 Unknown We're doing print on demand.

Yes, that's a it's a really good point. Some of them don't start as nomads. Some of them realize they can become nomads. Once that print on demand store becomes successful and as well as like, people who want to be location independent, there's also people who want to be time independent.

We have a lot of, for example, mums who use print ify because it's really difficult for them to have a 9 to 5 because kids schedules don't fit into a 9 to 5, right? 00;21;18;00 - 00;21;34;14 Unknown Like they need to be picked up from school before five etc.. Print on demand. You set your hours, you work when you want.

I've had an interview with a merchant called Mark, who is, funnily enough, based in Ohio, and I remember getting on a call with him and I was like, Mark, it must be two in the morning. 00;21;34;14 - 00;21;52;09 Unknown He was like, Yeah, that's when I like to work, right? I have a wife personally who's a complete nine now, right? She can't do anything in the morning and then she works really hard into the night at times if you're that person as well, print on the man's.

GROSS You know, absolutely. I think it's a brilliant business concept, and I think it's around for a long time. 00;21;52;09 - 00;22;15;29 Unknown And it has shown that it is bringing results, building brands. So it's basically a no brainer.

Walk me through the typical onboarding process of a new user. What steps are involved? How long does it take to get up and running? It takes minutes to get up and running and open your own store.

It's free to free to join Printer five so you just go to print five dot com, you sign in, you create your store. 00;22;16;01 - 00;22;35;23 Unknown We now have a completely guided onboarding process where we are using a combination of our knowledge and I really guide you through the store sets up. So working out what your goals are, right? Are you just someone looking to make a little extra money or are you someone looking for world domination?

What niches you know? Do you have a design already? 00;22;35;23 - 00;22;55;20 Unknown Do you need help generating designs, helping you choose? Where's the right place for you to sell?

Are you looking at C Shopify? Amazon takes up like, you know where is going to suit you and your needs and all of that stuff. And then you need to connect to whichever one of those places you want. So you'll need to open an Etsy account.

00;22;55;20 - 00;23;20;14 Unknown Ticked off shop account Shopify, etc. Some of those will have a day or so like period where they kind of authenticate you to make sure that you're not a bot, that that is opening up a store as some don't require that at all. So setting up your store, getting your listings there, you can do that in a in a day, in an afternoon, really, if if you want to you can dedicate time to it. 00;23;20;16 - 00;23;49;02 Unknown The thing that will take you a little longer.

Because for me, onboarding also means getting to that first sale, right? Like you're really on board when you when you've made a mayday. So that's the thing. They'll take a little bit longer working out how to get your ad.

So whether that be like turning on Etsy ads or opening up a metro account, whatever it may be in order to get your traffic coming to your store, that's the that's the bit that you're you need to work out a little bit harder. 00;23;49;02 - 00;24;14;24 Unknown But it's it's very doable. There's we have a whole bunch of material that teaches you how to do that. And if you don't want our material, you can go get it get it from incredible people, I'm sure.

Course, you've had lots of people on on your show who will will teach you the basic principles of ads. But once you get that going and you can see traffic going to your page and people clicking and buying things, you're on board and you'll be surprised at how quick that can be. 00;24;14;26 - 00;24;35;05 Unknown It can be really quick if you have the right topic, the right audience, it goes pretty much overnight. So that that's good.

And you're quite right. Listen to the podcast episodes. We have tons of episodes that fit into how to sell on print. If five.

Now obviously you're making money as well. How does your pricing structure work? So yeah, we we have a price for each product in the catalog. 00;24;35;05 - 00;24;58;26 Unknown So you go into Apprentice like dot com, you don't even need to sign up to see the catalog.

Anyone can see all 1300 products in the catalog and we have our prices front and center. So we have a price there for the fulfillment and then the price for the delivery. So you'll need to add the two together. We, of course, are making our money within those prices.

00;24;58;29 - 00;25;21;05 Unknown It's free to join prints if I. But if you sign up to print off a premium, we give you a discount of up to and usually around 20% for the vast majority of products in that catalog. So once you've got your store open and you've got a few sales, it's really worth upgrading to premium. It's only $39 a month and you'll get that discount.

00;25;21;05 - 00;25;44;04 Unknown It really pays for itself once you once you get a volume of people coming in. Okay, cool. Awesome. David, before our coffee break comes to an end today.

So anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't touched on? I think the only thing that I would really say is that the thing that I really love about working for print to find the business I'm in is the fact that anyone can do this right. 00;25;44;04 - 00;26;07;00 Unknown You don't need to be a designer, you don't need to have an MBA, you don't need to have some kind of knowledge to some of you, just a little bit. It's determination and and resilience is all you need.

And I mentioned that I interview a lot of merchants and I'm always super excited to get on the call. And they kind of see who this person is. 00;26;07;02 - 00;26;44;02 Unknown Right. And I've I've interviewed sellers who are in their sixties, I've interviewed sellers who are barely out of college.

I've spoken to people who sell in every kind of political, you know, political leaning store that you might think of. Right. Like whatever, whatever your kick is, whatever floats your boats. As long as it's legal, then, you know, there's probably a print of a store that sells that all different kinds of ethnicities of person life stages, backgrounds, stories all over the world.

00;26;44;04 - 00;27;07;16 Unknown It really, really can be done by anyone. And for me, that's super liberating and enjoyable to see that like there's a power that we put in in anyone's hands. So yeah, that's the thing that I that I'd add to that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

I had no talent at all and I sold tons of T-shirts. So give the example on how good and how easy is to get started. 00;27;07;16 - 00;27;24;11 Unknown And if you want to start a business and you have no clear idea, I think print on demand is a good entry point to where can people go and find out more about to find you print five dot com is for pretty fast is super easy just go to print five dot com If you really want to find out more about me, I'm on I'm on LinkedIn. 00;27;24;11 - 00;27;45;09 Unknown So if you if you type David Hook a print of I onto LinkedIn you will find me.

But can I ask you a question? Of course. Sure. You said that you sold tons of t shirts.

Do you mind revealing what what your favorite t shirt or what your best seller was like? It's been a while. Or do you want to keep the designs to yourself in case you decide to reload? 00;27;45;11 - 00;28;14;27 Unknown I probably not relaunching.

It's a while ago. It's a couple of years ago. I was selling into the U.S.

Army niche, niche, whatever you want to call it, and I had a very so my best seller, I sold about eight or 9000 of this logo. All of this design was just a very simple saying. So I won't tell you what it is, but it was nothing complicated, but it just connected with the audience and they loved it and they bought them just like hotcakes. 00;28;14;29 - 00;28;34;01 Unknown Yeah, yeah, we see that a lot.

Text based t shirts, if you get the right text the right saying they selling incredibly well. Yeah. If you have something, humor or some strongly opinionated or something like this does usually connect with people quite easily. And as I said before, you don't need to be a designer, which is great.

Awesome, cool. 00;28;34;02 - 00;28;47;05 Unknown David, thanks so much for your time today. I will put the links in the show notes as always, so I hope a lot of people will click through and get in touch with you and please keep you updated on what's going on in the world of print and demand and talks. So absolutely.

Thank you for having me on class. 00;28;47;05 - 00;28;57;15 Unknown Really enjoyed it.