In this in depth Shirtly Review I’ll take a look at one of the new kids on the block in the print on demand world and review their products and services. I’ll also give you a walkthrough of the Shirtly interface and take a look at the good and bad points to this Print on Demand newbie!
What is Shirtly?
Lets say you own a brand, or you’ve got a large following in a niche somewhere or you’ve got an interest in eCommerce and selling apparel on the internet then it would be a good idea for you to open a shop and try to sell some products to your captive audience.
In order to do this, you’re going to need to find some products that you’d like to sell and find someone who can create these products…. Which is where Print on Demand providers like Shirtly come in handy.
This is how it works…
Ok, so that looks pretty cool right, so lets take a quick look at how you go about creating and selling products in Shirtly, so you can judge if this is something for you.
Shirtly Walkthrough
Step 1 – Retrieve your Orders
Shirtly works slightly differently to the other Print on Demand providers, because you don’t create any of your product listings within Shirtly itself.
Instead Shirtly uses a ‘pull’ approach where it pulls down the orders from your shop, which you can then fulfil.
We’ll talk about integrations later, but lets assume you’ve set up an Etsy shop, then all you need to do on the first step is click on ‘Retrieve Orders’ and it will pull down all of your latest orders into the Shirtly interface.
Step 2 – Configure Your Order
In this step you need to choose your product, the size and it’s color:
Step 3 – Upload your Image
Here you just need to upload an image and place it on the canvas either by dragging it or using the preset positions that Shirtly has chosen:
The other thing that Shirtly does is if you have already processed the same product before they will prepopulate the image for you.
Step 4 – Choose your Shipping
Shirtly either uses the flat rate $4 per item fee, or an express option which is around $20.
Of course the more products you add to the order the lower the per price item will be.
Step 5 – Review your Order
Before submitting the order you get a chance to review the product details and make sure you’ve added the correct shipping address:
Step 6 – Pay for your Order
This is something slightly different with Shirtly, because you need to add you orders into a cart to start with and then pay for them. It’s pretty easy to do and as soon as you’ve paid for the order it will get sent to their production team.
What happens next?
On the order info page, you can see the state that the order is in and as soon as the order is sent out, Shirtly will automatically send out the shipping tracking number to your customer and update the status of the order in the shop you took the order from originally.
Shirtly Integrations
At the moment Shirtly only has direct integrations with Etsy and Shopify, but an integration with Amazon Seller Central is coming soon.
Ok, so if you’re still not convinced that this looks like something for you, lets take a look at some of the good and bad points…
Shirtly’s Bad Points
Range of Products
At the moment Shirtly covers all of the basic products such as shirts, hoodies, tank tops and sweatshirts, but they don’t have a lot of different options within these categories.
I think their approach is to focus on quality rather than quantity which is why the product range that they have chosen is so small.
Price
The cheapest shirt that Shirtly offers is a $10 Gildan shirt and the cheapest premium shirt is the Bella and Canvas 3001 comes in at $13, both of which have a $4 shipping fee on top of this. Both Printful and Printify have the same shirts but priced more competitively.
No Automation
The way that Shirtly is set up at the moment is that you have to manually process all of your orders. This only takes a few minutes per shirt to do, however, if you were looking for larger scale automation this isn’t something that Shirtly currently offers.
Border Issues
Whilst I personally haven’t experienced it I have heard instances where shirts are getting held at the US Border Customs for a few days to be processed. Shirtly is based in Canada so this could occasionally impact deliveries, but only a very small percentage.
Shirtly’s Good Points
Speed
For me the biggest advantage to using Shirtly is their turnaround times. Most shirts will be turned around in 1 – 2 days, but on a lot of occasions I’ve had shirts printed and sent to shipping within hours.
Compared to some of the other Print on Demand providers who can take over a week to process your products this is a massive advantage with Shirtly and means that you can confidently lower your handling times without the risk of having late deliveries for your customers.
Customer Service
The guys at Shirtly have a great approach to customer service and really try and put the customer first. If there are any issues with your order then they will refund you with no questions asked.
As they are a relatively small business, they are still open to listening to feedback with regards to product ideas and how to improve the platform which is also great to hear. It feels with Shirtly that you are a lot closer to the people who actually create the shirts for you rather than a big faceless company.
Print Quality
Whilst I don’t have any direct data to compare with, the reviews that I have heard from within the Print on Demand community are that Shirtly have one of the best print qualities for their products. Again, maybe this is due to the fact that they have a smaller team and are more focused on the details such as the end quality of the product.
Sample Orders
This is a nice little bonus that you get with Shirtly. When you create an order you can choose whether you create this as a normal order or whether this will be a sample. If it’s a sample they will give this to you at cost price and you get to see what the product actually looks and feels like!
Product Bundling
Because of the way that Shirtly is set up it makes it a lot easier to fulfil product bundles. Lets say you want to create a listing on Etsy that has as dog shirt and a shirt for a dog mom, well you can easily combine this into one order within Shirtly and cut back the postage costs, which a lot of the other providers don’t offer.
Dog Shirts
Even though Shirtly have a small range of products they are selling Dog Shirts!!! This is quite a unique product in the market and will help you tap into a massive audience.
Gift Message
I haven’t tried this feature yet but there is the option to add a gift message with your product. This is an awesome feature to have as I’ve had loads of orders from Etsy where they have asked for a custom gift message to be added and I haven’t been able to do this!
Shirtly Review Summary
Generally if you are looking for a Print on Demand provider who has more of a personal touch and is concerned more with quality than quantity then I think Shirtly is a fantastic option. I’d say they are more suitable for smaller sellers on Etsy than bulk sellers.
The price is a bit of a problem because it will affect your bottom line profit, however, on the flip side you’ll be able to reduce your handling time to 1 – 3 days without a problem, which is another massive boost to your listing.
Shirtly Review Video
Ok, so if you’d like to see a few more details about Shirtly then you’ve got 2 choices:
1 – You watch my walkthrough video on Youtube:
2 – You bite the bullet and register for Shirtly anyway:
It’s free to use and join so you’re not going to lose anything from looking at it!
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