New design price structure for sales with your designs on the marketplace

Starting from September 15, we will categorise our product catalog into 3 different quality levels. The product category and the respective level of the product on which your design is sold will determine your compensation. This is our response to current economic challenges and makes the marketplace fit for the future.

How does the new design pricing work?

For sales on the marketplace and external marketplaces, there is currently a fixed design price for each product category that can be printed with your design. However, this overlooks the fact that we offer affordable but fairly simple products as well as more expensive products, e.g. organic products. These products naturally cost us differently in purchasing, but also for the customers. The new design prices reflect this range.

We have also made adjustments for the ‘Create’ area. You can find the overview of all categories and the new prices here.

Why are we changing the Design Price?

We are convinced – print-on-demand is a very strong, sustainable and resource-saving business model, Nevertheless, the marketplace is also hard hit by the economic situation and growing competition. Unfortunately, passing on the increased costs for energy, logistics, and printing one-to-one to the customers of the marketplace is not an option. Therefore, we have divided the design price by product category into 3 levels and thus also adjusted the basis for your compensation.

We also want to guarantee a sustainable and fair relationship with our designer community – in other words, with you. We are aware that you also face the same economic challenges as we do as a company. With the new model, we are therefore trying to provide a balanced solution. While the design prices for some product categories decrease, they remain the same or even increase for others. So it may well be that you don’t notice the new design award structure that much.

Why don’t we just increase the Marketplace product prices across the board?

The Spreadshirt Marketplace has now been around for over 17 years. Of course, online retail has changed enormously in the meantime. The Marketplace now competes with platforms such as Amazon, Etsy and other print-on-demand providers. Simply raising retail prices in the Marketplace would result in us losing customers – and therefore selling fewer of your designs. This would be neither in your nor in our interest.

How are designs compensated that have been adjusted with the new AI function?

In the coming months, we will expand our product designer with an AI functionality. This allows our customers to customise marketplace designs, including yours, individually via prompt. We expect this to improve the user experience in our shop, increase order rates, and lead to more satisfied customers.

If customers use your design and adapt it with the AI function, you will still receive compensation based on the design price for the chosen product category – regardless of how much the original design has been changed. This function therefore offers you another way to earn money with your designs at Spreadshirt.

Conclusion

Given the current economic situation, with rising costs in all areas and increasing competition in the market, it is probably not surprising for you that Spreadshirt also has to respond to these challenges. But instead of raising retail prices that could put off customers, we want to provide a long-term, sustainable perspective for the Marketplace. We are convinced that the Marketplace can only develop sustainably with a transparent compensation model for designers, as well as attractive products and prices for customers. We will start this from September 15th.

FYI: If you only operate a Spreadshop, neither the new design price nor the upcoming AI function applies to you.