#+title: S03|L12 - how to create and add a tshirt with printify #+HTML_HEAD: #+OPTIONS: H:6 * Links #+attr_html: :class links - [[../../toc.org][TOC - ecomm clubhouse]] - [[https://jellyfin.ronnyabraham.com/web/index.html#/details?id=a52e21f566130cc124dc56d9d24cf028&serverId=99488804638e465693eed17924c57b60][video]] * Notes * Description * Review ** Summary This lesson shows how to create your first product in Printify (a t-shirt), choose a supplier, upload a design, configure variants, and publish it to Shopify. ** Core Idea Creating a product is straightforward: - Choose a blank product - Select a supplier (or use Printify Choice) - Upload and position your design - Select colors and variants - Publish to Shopify ** Practical Value - Navigate Printify catalog - Choose between popular shirts (Comfort Colors vs Bella Canvas) - Understand supplier selection vs Printify Choice - Upload high-resolution design - Adjust placement and sizing - Select color variants (focus on best-performing ones) - Preview product before publishing - Publish product to Shopify ** Product Selection Insight - Comfort Colors 1717 → thicker, vintage look - Bella Canvas 3001 → softer, thinner, more modern - Preference depends on niche and customer taste ** Supplier Model (Important) Printify is NOT the manufacturer. - Printify = platform - Print providers = actual printers This affects: - quality - shipping time - consistency ** Warnings - Low-resolution designs will print poorly - Too many color options can overwhelm customers - White shirts often expose design weaknesses - Express shipping may override your chosen supplier - Different suppliers = different quality levels ** Key Insight You are not just uploading a product. You are making decisions about: - product quality - customer experience - brand consistency ** My Recommendation Start simple: - Use one shirt type (e.g., Bella Canvas 3001) - Use 3–5 color variants max - Prioritize black if it fits the design - Place design in upper center - Always preview before publishing Choose ONE supplier and stay consistent unless you have a reason to change. ** Additional Insight This is your first real product creation step. From here on: - quality matters - consistency matters - decisions compound This is where your store begins to take shape. * Transcript 00:00 Now let's add in our very first product to the 00:02 store, a t shirt. And this is actually quite nice 00:05 and simple to do. First, make sure you've got your 00:08 design file ready, which is the image that you want 00:10 to upload and sell onto your products. Then we'll come 00:13 back to Printify. Click on the catalog button in the 00:15 menu. A list of product categories will appear. We're gonna 00:18 start with t shirts, so click on t shirts under 00:21 either men's or women's clothing since we're gonna be selling 00:24 a unisex t shirt. Either is fine. When you do, 00:27 you'll see a big list of t shirts to choose 00:29 from. If you already know which blank t shirt you 00:31 want to use, that's great. But for most beginners, 00:35 this can be a little bit overwhelming. So to help 00:38 you make your choice, here are 2 of the most 00:40 popular t shirt options right now. The first is the 00:43 Comfort Colors 1 7 1 7 by Gildan. Its big 00:46 selling point is that it's soft and has a vintage 00:49 look and feel with vintage inspired colors that are super 00:52 trendy. 00:53 This vintage style, though, does mean it's a thicker style 00:56 shirt. The second is the Bella Canvas 2001. 00:59 Its claim to fame is that it's not just soft. 01:02 It's extremely 01:03 soft. Bella Canvas is also a sweatshop free brand, which 01:06 Gildan is not. 01:08 Because of the fabric, this t shirt is thinner though 01:10 than Comfort Colors. Whether people prefer thicker or thinner t 01:14 shirts comes down really to personal preference. 01:17 So which should you choose? Well, it's entirely up to 01:20 you. Personally, 01:22 I love the Bella Canvas 3001 01:24 and the Bella Canvas brand overall, so that's what I'm 01:27 going to use for this video. Once you've chosen your 01:29 shirt, click to open it up in the product page. 01:32 Now, here's something most people don't realize. Many people think 01:36 Printify is the 1 actually printing and shipping these shirts, 01:39 but it's not. If you scroll down and look at 01:42 the list of print providers for this shirt, you'll see 01:45 that the products are printed and shipped by external print 01:49 shops. Printify itself is not a print shop and they 01:52 don't have any of their own printing facilities. If you 01:55 visited Printify's headquarters, 01:57 you'd find offices, not printers. Printify is a tech company. 02:01 Their job is to build the platform that these external 02:04 print shops can then use to sell their products to 02:07 the public. Think of Printify like Uber Eats, but for 02:10 print on demand. Uber Eats doesn't cook the food. Right? 02:13 It just connects customers with restaurants through its app. In 02:17 the same way, when you order a burger through Uber 02:19 Eats, Uber Eats doesn't make your burger. The restaurant does. 02:23 Printify works exactly like that. All of these print shops 02:26 that you see listed under the print provider section are 02:29 separate suppliers 02:30 listing their products through Printify 02:32 and this is important because when you pick a product 02:34 like the Bella Canvas 3001 02:36 and you see that multiple suppliers are offering it, well, 02:40 you've got 2 choices. 02:41 First, you can choose to use the Printify choice option. 02:44 This means that you are going to let Printify's algorithm 02:47 decide which supplier to use for each order. If you 02:51 want to go down this route, click start designing 02:53 under Printify choice. But secondly, you can instead choose to 02:57 pick a specific supplier yourself 02:59 by clicking choose manually 03:01 and selecting from the list. Now, there's no right or 03:04 wrong choice here. If you're not sure which to choose 03:08 or if you expect to have customers from different countries 03:10 and want Printify to route borders to local print shops 03:13 for faster shipping, Printify Choice can be a fantastic option. 03:17 But if you've already watched reviews or you have your 03:19 own preferences, for example, if you've watched my Printify review 03:23 where I reviewed different print suppliers, you might want to 03:26 select a particular supplier. Because as a lot of my 03:29 longtime viewers will know, for apparel, I've actually had really 03:33 good experiences with Monster Digital, who are also known as 03:36 TSC Miami. 03:37 My customers have really liked the shirts that they've produced. 03:41 So for me, I usually choose them manually. 03:44 But again, that's my personal preference. 03:46 So once you've made your choice on who is going 03:49 to make your t shirt, you will then come to 03:52 the product design editor. From here, you can just find 03:55 your design file on your computer and upload it. Once 03:57 it finishes uploading, make sure it's in high resolution. 04:00 I only recommend using high resolution designs for printing and 04:04 then you can choose your color variants. You'll see the 04:06 design previewed on different shirt colors. Some designs look terrible 04:10 on white but fantastic on black or vice versa. For 04:13 this particular design, it looks great on dark colors, 04:17 especially black. In my experience, black t shirts tend to 04:20 be the best sellers overall. If there's a color that 04:23 you don't like, just untick it. For example, I didn't 04:26 like how mine looked on white, so I turned that 04:29 color off. You can also adjust the size and placement 04:32 of your design by dragging the corners to make it 04:35 larger or smaller and dragging it around to reposition it. 04:38 You can also use the alignment tools to center it 04:41 horizontally 04:42 and choose whether to place it higher or lower or 04:44 in the middle. Most t shirt designs though look best 04:48 printed in the upper center. At any point too, you 04:51 can click preview to see how it will look. You'll 04:53 see mock ups on a flat shirt, on a hanging 04:56 shirt, and even on a shirt being worn. When I 05:00 previewed my initial version, I decided that the design was 05:03 a bit too wide. So I went back and scaled 05:06 it down slightly and I placed it again at the 05:09 upper center and previewed it again. And this time, I 05:12 was happy with it. So once you like how it's 05:15 placed, click save. Your product should now be saved as 05:18 a draft in your Printify account. So you can just 05:21 click start publishing 05:22 to send it to your Shopify store. And on the 05:24 publishing screen, you'll see that there are lots of options 05:27 for customizing your listing. Later on in this course, we'll 05:30 be editing things like titles and descriptions 05:33 directly inside of Shopify because Shopify gives you more control. 05:37 But while we're here, there is 1 thing you might 05:39 want to double check and that is the shipping options. 05:42 You can choose whether to offer express shipping for the 05:44 product if it's available. 05:46 If you enable express shipping and a customer chooses it 05:49 though, there is 1 important thing that you need to 05:51 know. When express shipping is used, Printify decides which print 05:55 provider will handle the order even if you chose 1 05:58 manually earlier. So in my case, even though I selected 06:01 Monster Digital as my supplier, if I turn on express 06:05 shipping and a customer chooses that option, Printify may send 06:08 that order to a different print shop. And as I've 06:11 mentioned before in previous videos that I have made, I 06:15 prefer to know exactly which company is printing my products. 06:20 Now, some people don't mind. It's a personal preference. 06:23 But since I like having that control, I untick express 06:26 shipping. But again, that is completely up to you. Since 06:29 we'll be doing a more detailed edit of this product 06:33 listing inside of Shopify later, you can just leave everything 06:36 else as is or make any tweaks that you want 06:39 to now. But, yes, when you're ready, click publish. Printify 06:42 will now publish the t shirt to your store. It 06:44 can take a few minutes for all of the files 06:46 and images to load into Shopify. 06:49 You don't have to sit and stare at the screen. 06:51 You can close it if you want to while it 06:54 finishes on in the background. 06:56 But yes, we are done with this. We can now 06:59 move on to the next video.