Jeff here for POD insights, your source for print on demand seller tips, resources and industry news. In this episode, we’re going to talk about order submission on Printify for personalized and custom products and discuss a potential hack that a viewer shared on the YouTube channel that might save you some time, and we’ll consider possible reasons why you might want to stick with manual orders submission if you sell in several different countries so stick around and let’s talk about. 

Personalized Products, Custom Bundles & POD

Let’s start by level-setting on the process of selling personalized items and custom bundles through the print on demand business model. 

Personalized products are relatively easy to sell with a print on demand platform like Printful, and even with Printify. Printful currently has the most seller-friendly process, because they allow you to submit non-personalized orders to production automatically while holding your personalized orders so that you can apply the personalization to the print file before submitting them. This means you don’t have to worry about personalized orders getting submitted to production without the changes applied to the print file, which saves you a lot of time and hassle. Printify, on the other hand, does not currently have a way for you to hold personalized orders. This means that if you enable automatic order submission on Printify, all your orders, including ones that need personalization applied, will be submitted to production automatically in 1 hour or 24 hours, whichever you select. I don’t know about you, but I definitely don’t trust myself to catch personalized orders within 24 hours, let alone one hour. Now, if selling on Etsy is your full-time job I could see using the 24hr option and that could be plenty of time for you to catch personalized orders and edit them before they go to product, but if you go on vacation or something comes up and you can’t check your orders for a day, then you might miss applying personalization to some orders. 

Currently your only other option on Printify is to set your order fulfillment to manual for everything, and that’s what I do at the moment. That means that I have to manually submit all my orders, not just the personalized ones. However, this is not a dealbreaker for me currently. I average 100-200 orders per month in my Etsy shop and submitting 4-6 orders per day manually is not a big deal for me, especially because I never know when one or two of those orders will need to be personalized before submitting it. However, if you are doing higher volume like 500 orders per month, that would be a lot of orders to have to submit manually every day for sure, but at the moment I can only hope that I have that problem someday. 

When it comes to custom bundles or multi-packs, that’s another story. No platform has an automated or user-friendly method for selling this type of product variant. Basically, a custom bundle is like an Etsy hack for selling a pre-determined set of products, or even just a greater quantity for a better price, as a single variant within your listing. For example, when you create a listing for stickers on Etsy, you can create a combo listing where you offer 4 different sticker designs in the same listing using the combo listing method that I’ve made a couple videos about, which involves creating each product as a draft in your Printify account and copying the SKU numbers for each one into the variants of the Etsy listing. This way, each one will still sync to your Printify account when an order is placed, but you made it easier for the customer by showing them multiple designs in the same listing and let them choose the one they wanted. A combo pack would take it a step further, where you add an additional variant in the listing that just says something like “Pack of 4 – One of Each Design” and you set the price to be based on four stickers instead of an individual. This is a very handy way of making it easier for the customer to buy multiples at a better price, and it avoids having to use a quantity-based sale or coupon code. This is great, but unfortunately there’s no way for that product variant to sync to any print on demand platform currently. That’s because you have a single product variant in the order, but it represents multiple separate products. As far as Printify and everyone else is concerned, product variants and SKU numbers have a 1:1 relationship. One SKU can only be associated with one product variant, so there’s no way for Printify to tell that your customer’s order was really for 4 separate stickers if there is only one SKU on the order. This means in order to take advantage of this strategy, you have to manually edit the order before it goes to production so that you can add the correct sticker variants and quantities. So this is another reason why you would have to keep your fulfillment settings set to manual on Printify. 

But what if there was a way for you to keep your order fulfillment set to automatic and still be able to sell your personalized items and custom bundles? 

The Order Import Method

Enter Trent, who left a comment on a video recently and blew my mind. This is one of the many reasons I enjoy making content for the POD Insights YouTube channel, because the conversation in the comments can turn up some great suggestions that help solve issues for all of us. Or at the very least, make the best of an imperfect situation. There are certainly still a lot of things that platforms like Printify could improve for sellers, and order workflows is pretty high on that list. Especially with Printify’s recent enhancements to their design editor interface and support for SVG files on all products, order workflow is now one of the top remaining things that Printify can improve for us. But in the meantime, this idea that Trent shared is a great option if you want to take advantage of automatic order fulfillment for non-personalized and non-custom products. 

Basically the idea is this – instead of allowing your personalized or custom products to sync with your Printify account, which causes you to turn off automatic order fulfillment for all orders, you can force only your personalized and custom products onto the “other orders” tab in your Printify orders, meaning they do not sync to your account. Because Printify has a very simple workflow for importing an order that did not sync, you can still very easily pull in the orders for personalized or custom products, but they will not be impacted by your automatic order fulfillment settings since they don’t sync to your account like your other orders do. I love this kind of idea because it’s a simple solution and doesn’t require a lot of technical trickery. If you create combination listings in your Etsy shop or manually create listings that still sync with your Printify account, then you are familiar with copying and pasting Printify SKU numbers into your product variant details in the Etsy listing. Essentially this method is going to be doing the opposite. We need to remove or change the SKU field in the variant details so that the products do not sync to your Printify account. 

It’s pretty much as simple as it sounds. All you need to do is make sure your personalized products or any specific product variants that are custom bundles or multi-packs do not have a SKU that will match to a product on your Printify account. You can do this either by altering the SKU or deleting it altogether. Doing this will force an order to go to your “Other Orders” tab rather than automatically import, which gives you the opportunity to edit it before it goes to production. Meanwhile, any orders for products that do contain a matching SKU will sync and go to production automatically. To create your listings, you can continue to publish them from Printify and then alter or delete the SKU when you are finalizing it on Etsy, or you can simply copy an existing Etsy listing and replace the mockups, title, description, tags, etc. Since you don’t want the product to sync to your Printify account anyway, publishing it from Printify is not required. 

When you get an order for a custom product, the first step to complete the order is the same no matter which method of order fulfillment you use. I have a video on the YouTube channel showing an example of this process if you want to see it, just check out podinsights.net and I will embed the video right in the blogpost for this episode or head over to the YouTube channel.

You first need to go into your My Products page in Printify, create a copy of the product, and then apply the personalization to it. The requested personalization will be on the Etsy order record in your Etsy account as well as in the order email notification if you receive those. After updating the personalization, you can go to your Orders page and select the “Other Orders” tab. Locate the order on that tab and open it. Click on “select product” and follow the steps to select the personalized product that you just created. One really important point is that after you select the product, you’ll see an optional check-box that gives you the option to automatically import all future orders for this product variant. You DO NOT want to check that box for custom orders. If you do, future orders will go to your regular orders page and be submitted to production automatically based on the timing you selected in your store settings – either in one hour or 24 hours. We intentionally set this product up to not do that, so don’t check the box for these. After selecting the product, click on “import order”, then confirm, and the order will be imported. It may take a couple of seconds before it is ready to submit to production and I usually refresh the page. In a few seconds it will show up on the Orders page in that blue “on hold” status and it’s ready for you to submit. That’s it, it’s a pretty simple process and now you only have to do manual work when an order is for a custom product type. 

Are there downsides to this method? There are a couple that I can think of, but I think only two of them could be dealbreakers depending on how you set up your listings and how you manage international orders. First let’s talk about the minor downsides and then we’ll talk about international orders. 

The minor downside to this method is that it relies on you remembering to do things. That may not be a downside for you, but it definitely is for me. Remembering to do things is something I need less of, not more. In all seriousness, I just mean that in comparison to the method where you set all your orders to be submitted manually, this method is les of a repetitive constant thing you’re doing every day, and more of a periodic thing that may only be necessary a couple times per week depending on how many custom products you sell. If all your orders are submitted manually, then every day you have to check your orders page and submit orders. That’s bad in terms of the amount of time and effort, but good in the sense that after you do it for a while, you likely are not going to forget to do it. So as long as you’re not just blindly hitting “submit” on all the orders, you won’t miss a personalized order before submitting it. But if you don’t do this as a repetitive action every day and you only need to go to the “other orders” page once in a while, it’s easier to forget to do it. However, no mater which way you do it, checking your incoming orders either on Etsy or in your email is extra important because that’s where you’re going to identify a personalized item. So that’s not a big downside, just something that might concern you if you know that you easily forget to do things that aren’t a daily occurrence. 

The other downside to mention before we get to international orders has to do with custom product variants within a listing, like a bundle or multi-pack where the products are all from the same print provider. For example, let’s use the original example that started this whole topic – sticker packs. Let’s say you create a combo listing where you offer four different sticker designs in the same listing because they’re all in the same niche. Your individual product variants for the different designs can be synced to your Printify account by pasting the SKU numbers for each variant into the listing. So if your customer buys one of each design, the order will come through to Printify with all the correct product variants in it. But if you wanted to offer a better price for a 4-pack with one of each design, you could add an additional custom product variant to the listing and name it “One of Each Design” and set a different price to give a small quantity discount. This makes it easier and more appealing for the customer to buy multiple. However, one variant can only have one SKU number, and so there’s no way to tell Printify that an order for that variant actually is multiple products. This is exactly why we want an order for that variant to go to our “other orders” tab so we can add the correct products to it before it goes to production. BUT…what if the customer bought the 4-pack and then added one additional separate sticker from the same listing? That’s where the problem is. Printify will import partial orders as long as there is at least one product in the order with a SKU that matches a product in your account. So in this example, the individual sticker with a SKU that matches to a product in your account will import by itself, and there will also be an order listed on your “other orders” tab with the 4-pack product in it since that did not sync. Since these products are all from the same print provider, you really want them to be in the same order to get the best shipping rates and have them packed and shipped together for the customer, but if you don’t catch that order before it goes to production, you’ll have two separate orders and you’ll pay more for shipping than you should have. This may not happen often, but if it does happen, it’s kind of a mess. 

One benefit of having all your orders manually submitted is that you can catch things like this and fix them before submitting the order. So in this example there would be no rush and you can grab that order whenever you have the time to add the 4-pack stickers to it before submitting. Using the automatic in 24 hours option does buy you some time to catch these things as well, while still taking advantage of automatic submission. Automatic in one hour is generally not going to be enough time for you to catch things like this, unless you sit at your computer all day every day waiting for Etsy orders. So is this a dealbreaker? Well that depends on whether you use any of these custom bundle type product variants in your shop. If you don’t, then you’re all set! If you do, then you just need to consider how big of a risk it is for you. Maybe try the automatic in 24 hours option for a month and see if any issues come up and then reevaluate. 

There’s one last downside to consider, and it’s very similar to what we just talked about because it’s all about having time to make changes, except it’s in reference to international orders. 

International Orders

There’s one caveat to this whole thing – international orders. Another challenge with Printify is selling in multiple countries. I don’t mean that it’s a challenge to do it in general, and you could just use your primary domestic print providers for all orders regardless o f the customer’s location. However, that won’t provide the best experience for your customers, and you’ll also likely face more customer complaints related to delivery times. 

Again, this is a problem that another print on demand platform has solved – this time it’s Gelato. Printful also does this for you but it’s a little bit more limited. Gelato has fulfillment partners in over 30 countries and their system automatically sends your order to the best provider. They choose the “best provider” behind the scenes based on production times and proximity to the customer. They don’t guarantee that the order will always be produced in the customer’s country even if they have a print provider there. For example, if you have an order for a customer in Spain and they have a print provider in Spain for that product, but the provider is currently facing extended production delays, they might route your order to a provider in a neighboring country who can produce the order more quickly. Fortunately and unfortunately Gelato doesn’t give you any direct control over this. I say fortunately because not being involved in this removes the manual processes and effort required from you to constantly monitor where your orders are being fulfilled, and I say unfortunately because without any control or oversight into this, you don’t know where the order is going to be fulfilled before submitting it. I might be being overly picky, but I like to know these things before an order gets submitted.

Printful also will automatically route fulfillment to a production facility that is closer to your customer when possible, but it’s limited to Printful facility locations and they are not in as many countries. But for example if you have an order in Canada, they will most likely fulfill it in Canada without any intervention from you, unless their Canada facility does not have the product in the order. 

The challenge when using Printify is that there is no automatic option to route orders based on geography. Ok, well, technically there is, but it’s part of a package deal in Printify’s automatic order routing. Printify’s automatic order routing feature is available in your store preferences in your account. When you enable automatic order routing, you’re enabling two different features at the same time. Printify will automatically switch order fulfillment to a different print provider in two scenarios – first, if the product is out of stock but is available from another print provider in the same region or country. Second, if you receive an order for a customer in a different country than your primary print provider and there is a print provider located in the customer’s country that offers the same product. You can set a price limit that applies to both scenarios so that you’re not paying more than a couple dollars above your normal cost, and you can also choose to only route orders when there is an exact product match available (which I recommend). I don’t have a problem with the second scenario at all – I would love to have Printify automatically send my orders to a print provider located closer to the customer for me like Gelato does. It’s the first scenario that I personally like to have more control over, and there is no way to enable the automatic routing for international orders only – it’s a package deal. 

Why the concern over domestic orders being routed when an item is out of stock? Well for me, it’s about control over which print provider orders are routed to. Maybe if I had no idea who the print providers were or could see a quality score for them then I would be less concerned about it…again with Gelato not showing the information about their providers, I just have to trust that it’s a good print provider for every order. On Printify you can see a quality score for every provider and for US-based providers there are a lot for some of the core products like t-shirts and sweatshirts. There are always a handful of providers at the bottom of the list with very low quality scores because they either are having significant delays or a high rate of reprints. I simply don’t want any of my orders routed to those providers. In fact, based on personal experience with a couple of them I just don’t ever want my orders fulfilled by them. Because of this, I don’t want to take a chance that an order will be automatically routed to one of these providers when a product is out of stock with my primary provider, and unfortunately there is currently no way to control that in your shop settings. If I could make changes to the Printify store settings, I would make two changes here. I would separate the options for automatic routing based on geography and out of stock products, so we could choose to enable one or both as we choose. I would also add an option to the out of stock feature where you can select individual print providers that you never want an order routed to. Actually, even just that second option would pretty much solve the issue for me and I’d probably turn automatic routing on. But for now, I don’t personally use automatic order routing because I want the control over where my orders are fulfilled. 

So, assuming you’re not using automatic order routing, we’re back to the international order problem. If you use automatic order submission without automatic order routing, then you won’t have a chance to grab an order and manually change the print provider to a different country before it is automatically submitted to production. The most time you could have is 24hrs if you use that option. So…if you like to manually change orders to be fulfilled in another country based on the customer’s location, then you might still need to leave your order fulfillment set to manual. And if you’re going to do that, then there’s really not much reason to use the manual order import option for your personalized products or custom bundle variants, because by default you will have a chance to edit those orders before submitting them. But if you do use automatic order routing or if you don’t care about switching the print provider for international orders, then the manual import option we discussed definitely is worth a try in my opinion because it will allow you to use automatic order submission for all your non-personalized or non-custom products. 

Conclusion

I hope you found some helpful information in this monthly update. Don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite platform and head over to podinsights.net to check out links to resources. And visit me on YouTube on the POD Insights channel and on Twitter for video guides, selling tips and product reviews. Also a quick reminder if you want to submit a question to be included on an upcoming episode, use the contact me form on the bottom of the homepage on podinsights.net or post your question in a comment on YouTube. 

Thanks for reading.