New Design Price Structure for Your Marketplace Sales

As of the first of February, there will be only one design price for each product category. This is both a response to the current economic challenges and a measure to prepare the Marketplace for the future challenges.

How does the new design pricing work?

Currently, there is a design price for each product sold featuring your design. For example, the T-shirt design price varies between 3 and 5 euros. There are currently some 235 products on the Marketplace, resulting in 235 different design prices.

This will change at the beginning of February, as there will only be one design price per product category. All T-shirts, posters, hoodies, mugs, etc. will have a uniform design price. You can see the new design price structure here.

Why are we changing the Design Price?

We are convinced – print-on-demand is a very strong, sustainable and resource-saving business model, but the Marketplace is also being hit hard by the current economic situation. As well as higher prices at our suppliers, we are really feeling the pressure of inflation, with rising costs of energy, logistics and printing. Unfortunately, passing on the rising costs directly to Marketplace customers is not an option. This is why we have standardised the design price in relation to our individual product categories, 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. That’s why we won’t be lowering the design prices for the bestselling products, as these make up the main part of your income, but we will raise the Design Price in most domains. Bestselling products are the standard T-shirt and standard hoodie, making for almost half of all sales. In this way, you may well end up benefiting from the new design award structure.

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

The Spreadshirt Marketplace has now been around for over 15 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.

The Marketplace is becoming more diverse and attractive

Our long-term goal remains to make the Marketplace a more attractive sales platform. In the coming months, we will therefore introduce many new products in the create-your-own area across all product categories and make them customisable with our print-on-demand technology. This measure is designed to increase sales overall – and thus also your income.

But the introduction of additional products will also result in additional costs. These are due to new products and their colour and size combinations, increasing the costs for warehousing and logistics. These costs need to be financed. This is why the basic design price for products ordered in the create-your-own area will also be adjusted from February.

Bottom line: Given the current economic situation with inflation and cost increases across the board, it probably comes as no surprise to you that Spreadshirt is also forced 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. Let’s get started with it in February.