About Teelaunch
Teelaunch is a print-on-demand (POD) app focussing only on Shopify stores. You do not sell on a platform they provide, rather, you connect the Teelaunch app to Shopify and upload your own design to the products offered.
You are able to place your designs on products such as shirts, tote bags, mugs, and even things like laser engraved cutting boards. They charge a base price per item, and you set the retail price. Whatever the difference is, you keep as profit.
This makes it possible to launch an eCommerce store with a lot of SKUs for only the price of the designs you had made. If you make the designs yourself, you can launch for only the Shopify subscription price. Essentially, you don’t pay Teelaunch anything until you sell something.
Companies like Teelaunch have enabled entrepreneurs to get in the eCommerce game for little to no risk. My company sells novelty apparel for stage performers, and we have made six figures every year selling with this model.
Teelaunch Review: Should You Use Teelaunch For Your Print-On-Demand App?
Teelaunch Review Criteria
All print-on-demand apps and companies will have their flaws, so it’s crucial to weigh the pros and cons of each. It will be hard to get a perfect customer experience with this model, but the goal is to get as close as possible.
We decided to base this review off of 5 categories:
- Print Quality
- Product Options
- Pricing & Margins
- Shipping Times & Customer Service
- Platform Usability
1. Print Quality
Many store owners focus on pricing and margins, but print quality will make or break your print-on-demand eCommerce business. Teelaunch also uses 3rd parties for some of their product offerings, so quality can even be inconsistent depending on the type of product.
Since I’ve been selling on Teelaunch for years, I can see first hand what type of quality they produce. For this review, we will base the quality off of 3 sample items: a t-shirt, tote-bag, and cutting board.
2. Product Options
Over the years, Teelaunch has stepped up its product options for sellers. They started with basic apparel, which was a great idea, and every year they have added new product categories. This is one of the reasons we have stuck with them.
Types of products offered
Last time I checked, there were about 124 different products offered. These products are divided up into categories and sub-categories, including:
- Accessories: This includes things like tote bags, mugs, stickers, and phone cases.
- Apparel: Men’s and women’s t-shirts, hoodies and tank tops. Kid and baby options are also available.
- All Over Print: Tees, tanks, and shoes.
- Drinkware: Mugs, beer steins, and tumblers.
- Home Goods: Coasters, towels, pillows, etc.
- Jewelry: Bracelets, necklaces, and jewelry boxes.
- Lifestyle: Bluetooth speakers, backpacks, and headphones.
- Office: Journals, notebooks, and mouse pads.
- Pets: Dog bowls and pet bandanas.
- Wall Art: Flags, canvases, tapestries, and posters.
- Kitchen: Plates and cutting boards
3. Pricing and profit margins 4.5
Figuring out your profit margins is one of the most important things to do when deciding on a print-on-demand company. You need to make sure you can cover all your costs, including inventory and customer acquisition.
Teelaunch’s pricing is very reasonable, and it’s also one of the biggest reasons I’ve stuck with them so far. Of course, quality is key, but pricing is a close second. Your profit margin is relative since you control the retail cost of goods, but you also have to stay competitive and not charge a ridiculous price for a basic cotton t-shirt.
When it comes to apparel and accessories, I will rate Teelaunch as having very good prices. As for some of the other categories, say jewelry and home goods, they’re a little on the steep side.
Let’s take a look at some examples of pricing and potential profit margins. For the sake of ease, we will include shipping costs into the retail price as if we were offering free shipping in our stores.
4. Shipping Times & Customer Service
I bundled these two things into one category since they all affect the customer experience. This is by far the most frustrating thing about Teealunch. To be fair, shipping will never be incredibly fast with the POD model, but I believe it can get faster.
5. Platform Usability
Teelaunch has a fairly good backend experience for store owners. You can control the entire product creation process through your Shopify dashboard. Creating a product is easy and they provide helpful templates for product types to help your designer.
You can also create multiple products at once and choose if you want to offer them as single products or bundled together with a dropdown menu for different styles.
Tracking numbers for shipments are automatically entered in the system, and you can find them on each order page. You can also see what orders have been batched out into production.
One feature recently added is the ‘manual order’ feature. This allows you to create replacement and exchange orders manually if needed.
You can also choose to have Teelaunch automatically batch your orders out. This saves you from manually paying to process orders. All you need to do is enter a credit card and change the automatic order processing settings to ‘on.’
Another useful feature they offer is the ability to add your store logo to order packing slips, enabling you to customize the branding experience. You can add insert cards and stickers as well.
Review Summary and Results
Overall, Teelaunch offers a good print-on-demand option for your Shopify store, but there is still room for improvement. The primary reason I have stuck with them is for the product selection and margins, but if something better comes along, I won’t hesitate to move platforms.
They are a good option if you’re looking to fill out your store with a variety of product types and want something that integrates well on the backend of Shopify.
