Service Review: TeeSpring
Amanda looking fabulous in her Pure Geekery Shirt.
Claire and I have been working on finding ways to start getting Pure Geekery to at least pay for itself. We’re running ads, have opened an Amazon store, and a Spreadshirt shop. But our first try was to use a service called TeeSpring to fundraise for our upcoming Fandom Fest trip.
Why Not Order In Bulk?
This was the first question I was asked by a handful of people. It’d be “you know company XYZ has really cheap shirts you can order.” Which is true. And if Pure Geekery was bigger we’d totally do that. But we’re tiny. It’d be hard to order enough shirts to get a bulk discount. Plus we’d have to guess what sizes you guys wanted. And I’d have to store them. And mail them. In other words, too much work for little reward.
Why TeeSpring Then?
The reason we went with TeeSpring was twofold. One, we were able to keep the cost down for all of you. Two, even with the lower price we were able to make more money per shirt. It was a win-win. The reason we could do this is the business model of TeeSpring. They work similar to Kickstarter. You have to meet a minimum before the shirts will print. You can choose anywhere between 5 and 21 days to sell your shirt (we went with 21) and you set your own minimum. When you hit the minimum your shirts are guaranteed to print. If you don’t hit the minimum your shirts don’t print.
What Went Wrong?
This Kickstarter-eque model posed a few problems for us. Some were problems we brought on ourselves, and some were places the service could improve.
Our Issues
The biggest problem we brought on ourselves. Although we set our minimums low, we didn’t set the women’s minimum low enough. We set the men’s minimum to ten, which is the absolute minimum. We had no problems selling those. We set the women’s minimum a little higher at fifteen, figuring our teammates would buy them no sweat. Setting the minimum higher meant we could make a little more money without changing the price. But we misjudged our market. We struggled to meet the minimum for the women’s shirts, and without family jumping in would have never made it.
TeeSpring’s Issues
There are a few things though that tee-spring could do to make this whole process easier however. One is to allow men’s and women’s shirts for the same campaign. You can have one style per campaign. Period. This also meant if you wanted a men’s and a women’s you had to pay shipping twice. I understand with their model you have to sell X shirts of a same style. But maybe “linked” campaigns would help.
The sizes at TeeSpring also left something to be desired. They didn’t go into plus sizes (although that may be the style of shirt I choose as well).
You can’t add to your order at TeeSpring. I went to add orders for my friends (to offset shipping costs) and I couldn’t. I had to contact TeeSpring to get shipping refunded. Not fun.
Lastly, there’s no marketplace like feature. People can’t go to TeeSpring and search “Geek” and find our shirts like they can with our SpreadShirt shop. I’d like to see more of a self-promotion tool.
What Went Well?
The shirts themselves are fantastic. The printing is high quality, and the fit is amazing. We got them pretty soon after the campaign ended. Setup of shirts was also easy. And Like I said, we made way more money per shirt than we would through another service.
Would I Do It Again?
No. It’s too much stress. I was always monitoring the status of the shirts. Hoping they’d hit the tipping point that day. Granted, the stress was brought on myself by setting my minimum too high, but I just don’t want to deal with it again.
If you choose to go this route, my advice would be to show a sample to your fans and take a poll. Would you buy this? And would you want a men’s or women’s cut. I’d take your responses , cut the number in half, and set your minimum to that.
Overall TeeSpring is a good service, but wasn’t a good service for us. It’s probably more suited for bigger clients.
Written by
Nicole is a Software Quality Engineer, music collector, and chronic project starter. In her free time she enjoys reading trashy romance novels, catching up on her game backlog, and bourbon.
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Is it quite all right if I borrow some of these fundraising ideas? Especially the Amazon store idea? I’ve been doing the affiliate links for a while, normally inside my Movie Monday posts, but I never thought that I could set up an actual Amazon Store with all of that in it.
We are by far not the first to have these ideas, so I don’t even think it can count as borrowing ideas, lol.
However, it’s not something I personally thought of, so…
Haven’t you figured out that’s how I’m wired by now?
Paid for two shirts for Christmas gifts, received neither, they refunded just the shipping charges portion of my purchase & now will not respond to multiple emails to resolve. Now I have to go to PayPal’s resolution center to put a claim in to get my money back & will be going to BBB site (or calling if I have to) so hopefully there won’t be too many more victims of these fraudsters. I guess it’s back to the days of buyer beware……buy from teespring if you don’t mind a good chance of never getting what you pay for.
I’m sorry to hear that Jeff! I didn’t hear of any Pure Geekery fans having any issues, but I’m sorry that happened for whatever campaign you funded.
Felt the need to update…teespring finally did respond & actually went above and beyond in resolving my problem. Apparently, the holidays swamped their customer service and that is what led to the non-response & delay in shipping. They actually refunded the entire purchase price (shipping included) AND sent the shirts. I didn’t think that necessary but good to know they value their customers & take responsibility when things fall between the cracks. Long story short, I would do business with them again if (WHEN) the need arises.
I’m glad to hear it worked out for the best!
Teespring’s design program offers extremely limited options. Although the design program claims to allow for ten color designs, it seems to be set up to only allow one to two colors on Only White Shirts. Having some knowledge of screen printing, they are producing only the lowest cost designs possible therefore giving themselves a high margin of profit. It is a great idea for the Teespring company because they get people to do all the work for free; design and then promote and market their design in return for a small profit. Although the prospect of launching a T shirt campaign through Teespring without any up front cost sounds appealing, I would bet the top selling designs are in-house creations and the good reviews that you find on their site and the internet are part of a self marketing ploy. In addition, Teespring may be fishing for good designs for cheap. The way their software program is set up, mostly, designs are declared to have too many colors. In fact even designs with one to maybe two colors do not work, nor do they give the option to print on anything but white shirts. Suspiciously, there are very similar designs to the ones that are not allowed that appear on their site claiming to have thousands of dollars in sales. Perhaps if you work with one of their in-house designers which they suggest ‘if you need help’ you could get more detailed in your design, but then it will cost you and you no longer own the rights to Your design. If it sound to good to be true, it usually is. A waste of time. You would be better off to save up a couple hundred dollars and get your T shirt design screen printed locally you would get more for your money (more colors and t shirt color options) and then market your own T-shirs; after all, you are doing all the work and would make more of a profit. In addition, you would be supporting your own community and not internet profiteers.
Well, aren’t you a breath of fresh air? What if you don’t have a couple of hundred dollars?
find a way to save it up, be patient, don’t expect things overnight – its worth helping the local economy.
Alright. Someone help me… I’m trying to figure out if I can make money on teespring. I have a decent fb page already and I’d like to make some extra cash… but I’m not grasping the profit…
Charge 15 dollars a shirt? Sell at 22… that’s a profit of $7.00!! So let’s take a closer look. I pay $15×50 shirts = $750. I sell for $22×50= $1100!! But wait… my profit is 350? Now I need to make more shirts and my profit doesn’t even cover the cost of new shirts… in fact… I’m starting in the hole… again.
Am I missing something here?
You aren’t paying anything from shirts from TeeSpring, because you aren’t buying anything from them directly. They are your middle man so you don’t have to keep stock on hand.
The scenario you are describing is if you were ordering from a printer directly and were going to keep stock on hand. You are still making money. Like you said, you made a profit of $350. Following your logic you can apply that towards your next batch, and making that batch cost $400. You still make $1100, but now your profit is $700. And so on.
Sancho, the biggest cost to doing teespring is advertisement. If you already have your own Facebook page then you are already ahead of the game. What Nicole said is also spot on. Teespring isn’t for you to buy and resell. They provide a page for you to send customers to. The only thing you have to do is promote that page and get people to buy. If you have a really good idea that you know people will buy I suggest you hire a designer and get them to make your design. Here is the one I use. They are probably the best I’ve encountered on Fiverr. https://www.fiverr.com/artparoxysms/make-beautiful-teespring-design-with-min-color
Here is another excellent designer who is faster and makes great revisions but also costs more depending on the work. https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/_~010079cafc9c2a9857/
Wow Alexi, you seem to feel quite passionate about Tee Springs’s service. We created one color graphic shirts, that worked well for us. Pure Geekery is a small site we run as a hobby, so pre ordering a bunch of shirts was too much risk for us. Plus, we didn’t want to deal with shipping.
Nicole, I have no idea what Alexi is talking about if you go to: http://teeview.phatograph.com/
you will see the top sellers and much more. I have been marketing online since ’98 (started with Beenie Babies) and Teespring does work with the right know how. Most people are building a fan page to sell shirts through FB.
Anyone can make decent profit if they are willing to put in the effort in the beginning…no matter what the bare minimum should be 50 sold shirts per campaign. Experienced marketers minimum would be 100…I believe they still offer you the option to lower your minimum if needed.
Anyhow passing by and saw this and decided to give my 2 cents. Thanks.
We had a minimum of 15 (I think) for each men and women. We made enough to cover one night at a hotel for the convention we were going to. It was a success, but I think it’d be better for the numbers your talking about.
Not sure when they changed it, but we just launched a campaign yesterday, and we were given the choice to include men’s, women’s, long-sleeved, and hoodies in the same colour, and both the men’s and women’s were available in sizes S to 3XL. I completely agree on the marketplace front, but it seems like many of the other issues they originally had are being resolved.
That’s good to hear!
Hey Nicole i have a question on the website it says that if the campain doesnt reach its goal they will refund you so my question is if it doesnt reach its goal do i still recive my item
If the campaign doesn’t reach it’s goal, you do not get your item. This is why we haven’t ran another TeeSpring campaign. We just aren’t big enough to consistently reach a goal like this.
Hello. I have been reading about teeSpring. And I am getting mixed reviews. I am worried I might not receive my order and that its a scam?
I can tell you it’s not a scam. We (the campaign runners) received our money. And our supporters (those who ordered shirts) received their shirts (although some did take longer than others).
However, there is a chance you may not receive your order. If the campaign does not reach its “tipping point” (number of shirts to be sold before they’re printed) then you won’t get your order. However, your card isn’t charged until that tipping point is reached. So while you may not get your product, you won’t be out money.
It’s a little confusing, please let me know if I need to explain it better.
is there any number I can contact him on I’ve been emailing them because I put the wrong email address on my order and I just want to fix it so I can receive tracking
I honestly don’t know.
darn…i thought i was buying something direct!
Just out of curiosity, have all the tshirts you sold stood up throughout months of washing without any cracking or peeling in the screen printed items (letters in your case)?
Also, were the shirts pre-shrunk? If not, did they shrink up considerably? I read one review on another site that said it shrunk so much they could no longer wear.
Thx for your responses!
~Tra
I’ve had no problems with the letters.
The issue on shrinking is a little trickier to answer. You get to pick your brand for TeeSpring shirts when you create your campaign. We went with Canvas for men and Bella for women. Brands that we know and trust. We’ve had no issues. But I know American Apparel is an option, and every shirt I’ve had from them has shrunk. I’d say pay attention to the brand and research that specific brand.
One of the few real reviews on teespring service, Thanks!
I personally used this service recently as a test and wanted to chime in as I have sold shirts traditionally as well so I feel I can compare. Over all Id say teespring fills a very specific purpose. If you and a few friends want some silly shirts, wanting to make something for a fund raiser, or want to try your hand at clothing sales, or and you are not to worried about the profits, this is a AWESOME service. You don’t have to ship anything!
If you are wanting to make money, or want more control over design, you are better off buying shirts local to you. They keep a rather large chunk of profits that you should be making. They also make you claim a 1099 when your profits are over $600 so you have to pay taxes on it end of year ( legally you dont make a 1099 unless over $20,000 & 200 transactions) I get shirts made local to me all the time and sell them. Sure they can take a while to sell, but you’re not under the gun to pressure others to buy something in a time frame, you can go at your own pace. You make all the profits (on 100 shirts they keep about $1000-$1300 of your potential money….that’s a lot for a small business!!!). And you get to directly manage your customers, be it with issues or returns or missing shipments. This is a huge thing in my mind, you just don’t want to associate your name with bad service….the internet is to fast changing to have negative marks that will end up killing your brand/site.
Thanks for the conversation on this!
Thanks for the input Kenny! I didn’t even think of the 1099 aspect because we only raised (if I remember correctly) about $100-$150.
do not do business with these guys!! ordered 2 shirts and a hoodie almost a month ago and haven’t seen it yet! wrote a few emails and fb messages with no response and shortly after my fb message I sent they had posted to their wall! call and they say they are having technical difficulties. they wont refund me my $91.75 for everything I ordered. no customer service and they ripped me off!
I know that I’m late to this conversation, but here is some info on the Teespring company that I found while researching them. I’m considering submitting some designs and trying to make some money.
http://www.bbb.org/boston/business-reviews/t-shirts/teespring-in-providence-ri-133082/
Teespring
Phone: (855) 833-7774
3 Davol Sq Ste B200, Providence, RI 02903
support@teespring.com
http://www.teespring.com
You’re not late, the party is just getting started!
I order from teespring VERY often and have never had a problem with them. My husband,my kids ,and I love the quality of the shirts and all the cool designs people put out. I don’t know why it said in the article that you can’t get plus sizes because I order plus sizes all the time. Every time I get on Facebook I see a new campaign from Teespring on my time line so they are marketed online by the Teespring website. I’m actually considering making a campaign to help my disabled father repair his home that was damaged in a storm.
Hi Jennifer!
This post was written nearly two years ago, and I’m sure TeeSpring has grown by leaps and bounds in that time. But at the time of publication, TeeSpring didn’t offer plus sized t-shirts (although as I said, that could be because of the style we picked). There also weren’t the promotion tools that seem to be available today.
If you decide to start a campaign, I wish you the very best of luck! Here’s to speedy and quality repairs to your father’s home!
Total BS experience with Teespring (April 2016) … Printing to shipping took WEEKS after the “campaign ended”, that’s what was actually shipped… One order still has’t been shiped (a month later). DHL says they didn’t receive it and Teespring tried to blame DHL saying it was billion dollar company DHL’s sytems that hadn’t updated .. in 5 days…. Insult to injury they sent the wrong size tee in one order, so we had to wait ANOTHER several weeks for ONE tee. Do not bother with them unless you have plenty of time and understanding to spare. Find a kid in your town with a screen printer and support them instead.
i have found this page to be far more useful than teespring’s own site, which is a bit of a disjointed tangle, with important information scattered across too many pages. Their site could do with a complete redesign by a skilled web designer. I intend trialling one of my own shirt designs with Teespring later this month, but it has taken me nearly a week to find answers to all my questions first.
Glad we could be of help! Feel free to leave a link to you campaign when you kick it off. I’d be interested in seeing what your design is.
Biggest questions for me are (a) how best to determine sales goal, and why. I found this elsewhere which is useful; “The more you place as your goal, the more you will make for each shirt sold. The problem is that if you don’t reach the goal, then you get nothing. For example, if you set a goal of 50 shirts and sell only 49, the shirts are never produced and you get nothing. If, however, your set the goal at 10 T shirts and sell 49, you would get paid a commision for all the sales since you met the goal, but that commision would be less than if you had said you could sell 40 T shirts. Attempting to accurately estimate how many T shirts you can sell without overestimating is important to get the most money for your efforts.”
My other question (which i presume is answered by Teespring once I get into preparing my campaign with them?) is (b) how many variable factors help determine what the profit per shirt will be? Presumably the brand of shirt and the number of colours employed, and the sales goal estimate, but what else?
It’s been a while, but if I recall correctly it was: the brand of shirt, the number of colors in your design, if the design is text or graphical, sales goal. They will tell you the profit per shirt before you start your campaign.
From what I understand the goals you set don’t really matter any more. There is a tipping point for profits, and they will print at the end of the campaign even if you do not reach your goal. The goals just give you a better idea of what profit you will make at the price you set for your shirt.
I haven’t had the shirts printed yet, so I can’t speak to the quality of the printing, but my experiences with customer service as a seller have been extremely frustrating. I was told something that was completely false causing me to cancel the campaign and losing 7 sales.
But they do seem to offer the best value. Still seeking alternatives, but may use them again despite the customer service.
I am so underwhelmed by this company it’s not funny. First of all, they never disclose shipping rates nor times throughout the purchasing process, They do not show the price until AFTER you pay, then they charge you a per piece shipping charge, and they don’t tell you when you are going to receive your items. Now, I receive a message from them indicating that the shipments won’t arrive until after I needed them. DON’T USE THIS COMPANY!