Well, after two weeks of research and preparation the ChemScrapes Shop is live on Etsy.

Over the next three months or so, I will be trying to build it to be quite a unique shop. Just thought I’d share some of the background to the current form of the shop.

Etsy: I have decided to go for Etsy as a marketplace. This is to get access to the ~400 million users that go through the platform every month. One of the issues I had with Redbubble and CafePress was low traffic. In addition, there were no tools to interact with people on those platforms. Etsy has a more community-like feel, so it gels more with the way I work anyway.

Print on Demand: I have a fairly busy day job. Maintaining an inventory and shipping parcels is not something I have a lot of time to do. So as before, the shop will be linked to a print-on-demand (POD) provider.

Quality: In terms of POD and fulfillment, I want as little variation as possible. I noted when I ordered products from my old CafePress or Redbubble stores the quality was widely variable. This is because they used different printers for different products. My research suggested that Printful is a good option. They do not outsource their printing, and have sites all over the world. In some locations they have partner facilities which have to meet their QC. This will allow me to have more control over the quality.

Quantity: Through all my research, I decided that I really missed the point with the previous stores. It was quite a lazy approach I took – just slap cartoons on as many different products as possible. But actually I only ever sold mugs and the occasional clock. I stopped selling t-shirts because I was unhappy with the quality. I put all my sciart on mugs, and had a range of Grumpy Caffeine mugs. These barely sold. I slapped some of the stickers I made for WhatsApp on phone covers, tote bags, blankets, phone cases, notebooks and the list goes on. I never sold a single one of these items. Some market research on Instagram indicated that most people are happy with mugs and t-shirts. So this is all the new shop will have.

New Designs: Enough with being lazy! The new shop will have new designs. There will be some new takes on some of ChemScrapes most popular cartoons. There will be patterns, more colour, less swearing and less anger.

Pricing: This is the hardest part. On the old Redbubble and CafePress stores, a lot of the fees were covered by the platforms. But the compromise was quality. Postage was also very expensive, and somewhat random. By using Printful the products are higher quality, so the base product is higher. This means the products be ~SG$1-2 higher than previously, but these will be better products.

Delivery in EU, UK and US will be much cheaper than previously because of Printful’s presence in these locations. A lot of those fees will be local postage. Brazil, Australia, and NZ will be a more expensive for postage. South East Asia and other countries are quite expensive. This is unavoidable at the start until I get some traction and can start to investigate alternative POD providers in these regions, or finding other ways of absorbing some of the postage.

The journey continues.