Jim James 0:00

Hello, and welcome to this episode of The UnNoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James. And in Riga, Latvia, I'm going to try and pronounce his name properly—Raitis Purins. Raitis, how have I done?

Riatis Purins 0:12

Hello, Jim. Awesome. Glad to be on your show, Jim.

Jim James 0:15

Look, it's fantastic. And I don't speak Latvian, but we are going to talk today about how merchandise can extend the value of a brand and create brand ambassadors. So you are the Marketing Director at Printful, and I'm even wearing a full complement of Printful merchandise today. Tell us, how does Printful and merchandise help an entrepreneur to get noticed?

Riatis Purins 0:38

So, if you have an idea—we can put that on a shirt, hat, mug, Jim—like, whatever you can imagine. So when we have eased the barrier for anyone who wants to start doing that. So previously, you had had to order a hundred mugs, 50 mugs. In our case, just one mug, one shirt, it's up to you. And basically, that's what we have done, making that much, much easier.

Jim James 1:02

How have you done that? Because you're absolutely right. In the past, promotional items, you had to have a minimum order, and it made the cost so high. How are you managing to make merchandise affordable and accessible to entrepreneurs?

Riatis Purins 1:16

So, we actually solved our own problem couple of years ago. We'll celebrate our 10th birthday next year. So we just celebrate nine. So, before Printful, we had an e-commerce store start with vitamins.com. Again, Google it's still, still live. And anyone we're able to actually order their own motivational quotes, get shirt done, learn, fail, experiments, stuff like that so you can put on the wall. And with posters, it's easy. You can now cut any size of the poster. If you have a printer we can print any colors, so it's easier to do that on the mat. But when it comes to the mugs, to t-shirts, different colors, different sizes, hoodies, and we wanted to also offer that to our customers. It was 10 years ago. So we're starting looking around, 'Is there anyone who can do that high quality, quickly, fast through API and not just submitting some emails, stuff like that?' So there was no one around, we were able to actually do that. And so 10 years ago, almost 10 years ago, there was idea of Printful, that we can offer anything on demand. We purchased the right equipment. We started figuring out the process how to actually do that. And as I'm saying in some way, Printful was made by developers who didn't want to leave their computers to actually print something in a t-shirt. So, and they wanted to do as lean as possible that no one has to move, so we can also offer the lower price.

Jim James 2:40

So that's fantastic solving your own problem. And now Printful is a quite a large company. And one of the issues that I was looking to solve when I was looking for a print on demand was local fulfillment to save costs of shipping and also time to delivery. Do you want to explain about Printful's worldwide footprint now for implementation?

Riatis Purins 3:00

Yes. So we started in the USA. I'm from Riga, Latvia, but as we know, the biggest market is there. So we actually opened our first facility in the USA. Now we have there three locations, California, Dallas, Texas, and, Charlotte, North Carolina. So we have three facilities areas. That's our biggest market. But as for us to actually provide a good service, shipping is really important and logistics' important. That's why I know everyone buys on Amazon because they can do their job quickly and faster. For us to provide a good service, so we needed a new facility. So we opened a facility in Europe. Have one in Riga, Latvia, because we are from here. We have in Spain, in Europe also, in the UK, Birmingham. So as it's much harder to ship there from Europe, so we can be fast and quick. Have also location in Mexico to serve the US market expanding there. Have Canada, and we also now have partners in Japan, Brazil, and Australia. So, basically, we are all over the world. So more than ten locations.

Jim James 3:59

Yeah, which is fantastic. So it means that one can design a product like my hat, for example, and have it made anywhere around the world, wherever the customer's closest. Now let's just talk a little bit about how an entrepreneur, any business owner, can go online and design their own product. Do they need to go to Canva or Photoshop, and upload an, a design that's already made? Or can they use the platform itself?

Riatis Purins 4:25

So you can use our platform, just our platform. So printful.com. We have a design maker. So probably if you are a company owner, you really have your own logo or some brand asset, you can just come to our website, upload it, pick the right product, pick the right color. We have all the features. Okay, not all the features, which Canva has or Photoshop, but we have the most popular ones like fonts, some, some, basic designs. I know you can switch them to right to left, stuff like that. So just come to our website, upload your own logo, pick the product, and just hit couple of times next, and you can order your own merch.

Jim James 5:03

So just tell us, then, Raitis. What kind of merch do you have available? Because that's another issue, isn't it? Sometimes the range of merch is very limited with some POD suppliers.

Riatis Purins 5:14

So we have more than 400 unique products. And we have included their colors. So, for example, we have a t-shirt which is available in 30 colors, different sizes. So that's basically the most popular product t-shirt. When it comes to merch, you think about t-shirt immediately. So that's the most popular product. But besides that, we offer, like, just look at Jim hat, mug, phone cases. We have also other non-apparel products, like bottle, phone cases posters, and framed posters. So we have apparel products like shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, different kinds of... we have all lower print products, like, when you think about t-shirt, it's something printed or embroidered on you. So we also offer printed and embroidered items. That's also could be leggings, bikinis, shorts, swimwear. Even bags, backpacks, like everything you can imagine. Like just come to our website and see... Even beanbags, by the way. So, pillows, it's like even hard to remember all the products offers. So basically, what you want is there.

Jim James 6:15

Well, Raitis, so having, you know, made a number of items myself, I really like how you can deploy the same brand assets across different products. Just tell us then about the sort of minimum orders, because that's often a stumbling block for people that want to start merch ranges, which, as you say, now almost become an e-commerce store. Tell us about some of the practical issues facing, for example, the minimum orders or minimum stock values.

Riatis Purins 6:42

So, our minimum order volume is zero. So if you can come to our website, printful.com, and just see, you can register, play around, and no one will ask you to pay for it. You can play around with design maker, different products, we offer that and it's easy to do. But when you want to purchase something, our pricing is made that it's for one item with at least one design. So, for example, a cheapest t-shirt costs less than 10 pounds. So, it's there, it's available for anyone. And yeah, if you want to order 25, we also order on a bulk discount if you need that kind of amount. But the idea that it's one. And the magic part, like, if you want to offer that to your customers—you can publish five different colors: mugs, hats, phone cases, and it'll just stay on your website. And as soon as someone will buy only then Printful receive the order, will ready the item, only then start printing it and send to end customer in your brand. So basically, there's no Printful mention. Probably your listeners have received something from Printful, but they have no idea that it came from Printful. It came that from the small e-commerce store.

Jim James 7:53

And I think that's a really great point that you're only making it when it's sold. So you're holding no inventory, no stock. That has a sustainability impact as well, doesn't it, Raitis?

Riatis Purins 8:04

So, yeah, it's one of the factors, it's much more important than when we started nine years ago, that everything what we are printing, or making, creating in our facilities already sold so there will almost no waste goes. If it's bulk printing, you could order 25 t-shirts, but maybe they'll never be worn, because, like no one will buy that.

Jim James 8:26

Just explain, then, from a, if you like, a marketing strategy perspective, how can merchandise play a role for a company? Because in the past, we've always thought of it as kind of a giveaway, maybe at a trade show in exchange for a business card.

Riatis Purins 8:41

There are different ways. So it depends from your business. As I'm saying, anyone can use Printful. Of course, you can always use a mug or t-shirt as a giveaway on social media, but it's also the way how you can, basically, finally, put your brand outside your website. Because pretty often it's something you see on a website, but you never basically feel it or touch it. And that's a way I can give it to your super fans. Not probably every of your customer, but super fans, they will be happy to wear your product and be the ones who will walk around the city and basically show that, "Okay, this is, I know this is my billboard in some way." And, as one of the probably most common audience, I want like, I know that musicians are not maybe entrepreneurs, but in some way they are, because they want to be, they want to earn money with their music. And one of the ways they are, I know, playing concerts and people are buying tickets. And merch it's basically comes naturally in their mind. It's one of the first things they want to do. And they don't know how many people actually buy their merch, and through on demand, that it's one or a couple of items, it's just the way how we can prolong the brand. People want to support you, they will actually just be happy to wear a product, making it live. So that's the best part.

Jim James 9:55

I love that. And I think you've mentioned something there about having a store. Do you want just to explain how an entrepreneur, a business, can monetise their merch? What are the integrations with some of the e-commerce websites? Because that's another outlet, isn't it, to generate revenue?

Riatis Purins 10:13

Yeah. We would say that Printful is, we are not the t-shirt printing company. So there's a lot out there. So that's the easiest part, to actually print something in their product and then send to someone. So we are, first of all, we are IT company because we have created integrations of different platforms. Like everyone knows—Shopify, Etsy, and then WooCommerce, Magenta, or other e-commerce platforms. So Shopify is the most popular one, but we have 20+ integrations ready. So we have created that, it's easy. You can actually set up your Shopify store with Printful in couple of minutes, if you want. Just go to the Shopify and then Printful, find each other's app, connect together, then upload design, push couple of buttons, pick the right product. And as we call it, we push the product in Shopify store, then it appears on your Shopify store, like no one sees that it's from Printful, and it's connected automatically. So, and then someone sees on your Shopify store your product, buys it, we immediately receive the information, and only then we are charging you for the order. So we received it, we start a fulfillment, and at the time already some of these have paid you as well. So basically, you are earning from every order. It's almost that you can't lose if someone buys your item.

Jim James 11:30

That's fantastic, isn't it? Because from a, as you say, from a cash flow point of view, you are selling it before you've bought it. Almost like a stock option trade, isn't it? It's fantastic.

Riatis Purins 11:40

Yeah, almost like that. So there's some delay because this payment processing happens, but it's almost like that.

Jim James 11:46

Wow. That's fantastic. And what about the sort of trends that you're seeing for companies, for example, for localisation of merchandise, are you seeing any ways that companies, maybe, that are multinational, taking the same merchandise but making it, you know, more appropriate to their local customers?

Riatis Purins 12:06

Actually, not so much out of that. Our goal is that, for example, if you offer a t-shirt with your design and someone buys that in the USA or Australia, you will receive it from the nearest location. So basically, that's our goal—to actually offer a quick as best of fulfillment. I think a while ago, I asked like, is there any likely product preferences? Like, of course, there's some seasonality that hoodies start trending faster in some place where it's gets colder quicker and faster. There's, you know, marks, which is always popular when it's colder, stuff like that. With our clients in Spain, they want t-shirts with pockets because that's how they put the cigarettes because it's not easy to carry cigarettes in your swim shorts, something like that. But there's not so many things. So it's more about design, which you can adjust. It's about the language about the trends. Of course, for example, the time we enjoy as a merch company is when the US election happens. So that's basically every day before US election someone says something, and you can easily put that in a product. And then, it's a pretty big deal in US election. So people want to basically show who they will support during the election. So that's every day you'll see designs. It'll never be trendy in Europe because we don't care about that. And we're often, basically, social-cause, also, is a big thing. Like in Europe and in the world, globally. The war in Ukraine, as it all was a pretty popular thing that.. Okay, not a proper thing, not the correct word. So that's, what's pretty trendy that people created stores, you ordered something and some of money there goes a donation to Ukraine as well. So social cause is also a big thing.

Jim James 13:44

Yeah, you've hit on a really good point there about sort of the topicality of merch and then what POD allows. Can you give us an idea of the timeframes, because some of those things are very time sensitive, aren't they? How long does it normally take then, Raitis, to design and then actually have a product ready to be delivered?

Riatis Purins 14:02

So for me, it will take longer to design because I'm not a designer, but I try to do something with our design maker. But a magic part of print on demand that you can easily test your ideas. Maybe someone will go viral on a TikTok, as it's now a big thing. And then we'll bill the company, fulfilled, doesn't matter if one order or a thousand orders, it'll be still the same time, as quickly as possible. So in our case, so what we promised that we will fulfill any item two to five business days. In most of the cases, is around two, three business days, it's basically fulfilled. It's ready to ship out. And it depends on from the location, so probably if I order something to Riga, Latvia, usually I'll receive in less than a week. So it's much challenging maybe to compete with Amazon, but remember, you are not competing with price or competing with the design because that item will never be available on Amazon or someone else. So you are selling uniqueness. So basically, additional value. So in our case, I would say in most of the cases, up to the week. Your order today, you'll receive in a week.

Jim James 15:03

Yeah, that's fantastic. That means that you can really do some last minute work. I just want to touch briefly then on people making designs, and perhaps maybe not having them for e-commerce, but maybe for their own promotional stores and internal. How do people get the images that they've created in order to share them with, for example, their teams, or their sales teams, or their marketing teams? How do people liberate the images of the designs from Printful into their social media?

Riatis Purins 15:29

So, we also have a promo maker. So we have the mock ups. So we actually offer you anything that we can offer that you can use that on social media to actually drive traffic to your website, that you can actually show how the design will look in real life. And as we called it, "Mock-up." So you don't have to actually do the photo shoot. So basically, I can go to the website, in couple of minutes I can start selling it. And I can send you a link to Jim and he'll able to actually buy in a minute. So we are continuing to work to basically lower the barrier on entering to actually start selling online, to actually access own merch.

Jim James 16:09

That's really amazing, how sort of low cost and how quick you are making this, Raitis. So can you give us an idea of the scale of the customers that you've got now? I mean, are all your customers big companies or are they small? And how many items are you making, for example, for a month?

Riatis Purins 16:29

So, most of our customers are small customers. Actually, those who get 10 orders a month. Because for those who are bigger ones, then, very often makes sense to actually do that on bulk more often. But we also work with bigger larger brands. For example, we have Coca-Cola working in us. We print merch for SpongeBob as well, because we can offer customization. Because every design or website can be unique. So if you want, you can even add, for one merch, your name; for another merch, my name to the product, because it's unique. It's made on demand. You don't have to order 50 shirts prior, and to actually offer those various design. So we offer something no one can offer. And under one roof, we can also offer t-shirts and mugs. Unique two different printers for that. And if you want to do that your own, you have to find different suppliers who can actually offer that. So, I think in last year or so, we had more than 300K customers made at least one order. So there are lot of customers. Last year we finished with revenue little bit less than 300 million dollars in a year. So a lot of many customers using us. And, as I have to remind my team that we have to build solutions that will impact 10 thousands of customers, because we need them, that they will grow. So that will impact the company. This doesn't matter for number one customer will grow by a hundred percent, it'll not make a big difference for us. So we have to build solutions for our small customers.

Jim James 17:55

I love that. And as you say, "The raise on demand of Printful is very much in the framework of serving entrepreneurs because of the scale advantage." Final question, as you know, I'd like to ask you, Raitis, how does Printful get itself noticed?

Riatis Purins 18:09

I think the first most important part is that they have to do your job really great. So, if you will do a great job everyone will refer to you. So if you will, I know, Jim, yourself, you will, as someone will ask you, "Hey, can you offer a company you can print your merch?" You'll suggest Printful, because, hopefully, we're doing a great job. So that's number one rule, which is helping to grow our business kind of because of huge base. That works as a word of mouth machine. But in the first stages, there are two things I want to mention. One is that we... at the beginning, we had our, or our first integration was with Shopify. So for you to be an e-commerce, basically seller, you need something to sell, and we offer that. Otherwise, if you don't have anything to sell, you can't be an e-commerce on your customer. So we had an app on Shopify and people noticed that. So there are people checking that, and that was one of the excited. So worked with the best, work with the partners that are helping you. And really at the beginning, we start investing also with SEO, so that people can easily find you on Google. So we are doing, basically, from the day one, we are setting that and now works as a machine. So it's really good to be an answer to people's question Google. So they have incentive they're naturally coming and want to see, what do you offer, what do you not offer. Of course, we have run that, but those are two basic things work with the best partners and be answer to people's questions on Google.

Jim James 19:41

Raitis, that's fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm going to let you explain give us your full name properly without my English pronunciation of a Latvian surname. And where can people find out more about you?

Riatis Purins 19:52

So, my name is Raitis Purins. You can find me, of course, on LinkedIn. Feel free to me add to my network. I post about how great Printful is there. So you can follow that. And of course, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram, but there's mostly Latvian stuff. And if you want to learn more about Printful, we are basically available everywhere. If you'll Google us, you will find us. So printful.com. And we actually... if you are not even speaking English, we are available in many languages. So just Google us.

Jim James 20:20

Raitis, thank you so much for joining us on The UnNoticed Entrepreneur show and explaining how merch can extend the value of a brand, but also how accessible Printful has made it. So I'm very grateful to you and the Printful team for doing them. And thank you very much for sharing with me today, my fellows entrepreneurs, how they can use merch to extend their business. Thank you.

Riatis Purins 20:41

Thanks Jim. It was awesome to be on your show.