Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2013; Spreadshirt’s options, its 10-euro monthly premium plan, the platforms where shops could be embedded and its shipping areas are described as they were then and have very likely changed.
Imagine you want to sell your own designs and have your own branded online store, but you don’t have money for infrastructure, or you wouldn’t know where to start with delivery and shipping. Today it’s easier than ever to solve those small “start-up” problems.
With Spread Shirt you can make money in several ways without worrying about anything at all: not buying the clothes, not shipping, not delivery notes, and so on. You have several options:
Option 1: commission on each sale.
The first option is to create your own design and choose the type of garment you want it printed on (trousers, shirt, sweatshirt…), or have it printed on every garment. You upload your design to the platform, and for every item sold you receive a percentage of the money. You can also promote sales on social media. Spread Shirt takes care of the invoice, shipping and so on.
Option 2: your free online store.
Spread lets you install your own store on Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr and so on, where you can match your designs to the theme of your blog and promote your own space. That way you can start shaping it with an eye to the beginning of a thriving business.
Option 3: your professional online store.
If you now want to get serious about selling, there’s the premium option: for 10 euros a month you can build stores without any Spread advertising, and invoices are automatically issued with your own logo. In other words, with this option we could turn it into a profitable business, if we know how to promote it properly. One example of a store created with Spread Shirt is Cute-Monstr.
The platform is available and ships to all of Europe (including Spain), the United States and Canada. It says nothing about Latin American countries.
The idea behind this platform is similar to that of another entrepreneur who sells users’ designs and has reached 35 million dollars in clothing sales; he said that users who knew how to promote their online stores could make a lot of money.
One thing is clear: the risk is minimal, since the only investment is your time. And maybe later on you could add other kinds of products, and even your own complete clothing designs, until you achieve Sophia Amoruso’s success.
Further reading
Featured image: Reise, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
