These are my personal recommendations for getting merch produced and printed! (Please note that since I’m based in the U.S, these will primarily apply to U.S. sellers.)
🌸 = My personal overall recommendation
🌱 = Conscientious or environmentally friendly company
⚠️ = Actively promotes NFTs or questionable political activity; informed purchasing recommended
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Business Cards and Postcards
Moo — Luxurious and premium, but expensive. They do allow you to print multiple designs in the same batch, which makes them a good option for merch backing cards.
Printrunner / Uprinting — Most affordable option if you’re ordering in bulk (500 or more units).
The Foil Printing Co. — Best and most affordable option for foil printing. Beautiful results and excellent customer service.
Vistaprint🌸 — Affordable; great prices without sacrificing printing quality. Often have sales and great for basic cards.
Books
Lulu — Print-on-demand service. Good for short-run books or selling just a few copies.
Mixam🌸 — Beautiful, affordable book printing with a large variety of options and a friendly staff. Best for quantities of 50 or higher.
Charms
Chilly Pig — USA-based manufacturer. High-quality and vibrant printing. Prompt, friendly staff, and great products. A little on the pricier end. Not pre-assembled.
Ink It Labs — USA-based manufacturer. High-quality and vibrant printing. No personal experience, but recommended by a few artist friends. Not pre-assembled.
Juno Creative — Alibaba manufacturer. Affordable prices, quality printing, and a large variety of options. Allows for low minimums. Decent turnaround time. Pre-assembled.
Kuien🌸 — Alibaba manufacturer. Affordable prices, quality printing, and a large variety of options. Larger order requirements (10 per design and 100 charms total), but boast especially fast turnaround. Pre-assembled.
Vograce — No longer recommended due to varying reports of negative customer experiences.
Pins
Enamel Pin Factory — Highly negative experience with this company. Do not recommend.
Krell🌸 — Alibaba manufacturer. Great and affordable enamel pin production. Lots of options in plating, accessories, and more.
Prints
Catprint🌸🌱 — Vivid and gorgeous printing with a variety of beautiful stocks. Pricey for business cards, but good price for art prints.
Shipping Supplies
Clear Bags🌸🌱 — Offers a huge variety of clear poly bags, including an eco-friendly bioplastic option.
EcoEnclose🌸🌱 — Focuses on environmentally-friendly packaging and shipping supplies. They specialize in boxes and mailers.
noissue🌸🌱— Provides environmentally-friendly branding and packaging supplies like tissue paper, stickers, and more that is completely recyclable and compostable.
PaperMart — Offers some poly bags, padded mailers, boxes, tissue paper, and more. Big variety of shipping supplies with good prices and products.
Pure Labels🌱 — Offers compostable and biodegradable labels and stickers. (Note as of 1/3/20: Their shipping label adhesive is too weak for my taste, so I can’t recommend the shipping labels at this time.)
ULINE⚠️ — Made for bulk orders or big companies.
Stickers
Catprint🌱 — Great quality, fast production, and affordable pricing for vinyl and satin paper stickers. Currently only offer kiss cut. Somewhat inconvenient as you have to set up files yourself.
Sticker App🌸 — Great printing, decent pricing, fast service, and a wide variety of materials.
Sticker Bunnies — Great printing, affordable pricing, fast service, and no minimums. May have a waitlist or long turnaround. Owned and operated by an independent artist.
Sticker Giant — Great for bulk labels and stickers (250+ units). Fast production, shipping, and proofs.
ZapCreatives🌱 — Great quality and super affordable pricing with a variety of options for vinyl and eco-friendly paper stickers. Takes some time with slower production and shipping.
Washi Tape
Feite🌸 — Alibaba manufacturer. Beautiful washi tapes and great customer service.
Portfolio Websites
Carbonmade — Beautiful and affordable option for those who want a more dedicated portfolio site. Very easy to maintain, with great customer service. Paid plans starting at $6/mo.
Carrd.co🌸 — Most affordable option. Great for a simple, clean, affordable portfolio. Free, or paid plans starting at $9/yr.
Portfoliobox — Decent, affordable option for a portfolio. They also offer online shops and blogs. Paid plans starting at $6.90/mo.
Squarespace🌸 or Weebly — Beautiful aesthetics. Tons of features. Great for artists who want a fully-featured website. Paid plans starting at $12/mo.
tumblr — Surprisingly, tumblr's flexible post structure, customizable themes, and ability to link a custom domain make it a strong option for portfolios and blogs.
Freelancing Websites
AND CO — Rebranded to Fiver Workspace. A robust tool for full-time freelancers. Manage proposals, contracts, time-tracking, invoices, tasks, and expenses. Free plan, and paid plans starting at $18/mo.
Bonsai — A robust tool for full-time freelancers. Track time, create and send legal contracts easily, draft professional proposals, manage projects and expenses, and send invoices. Paid plans starting at $16/mo.
Commiss.io🌸 — An all-in-one slot organizing system, messaging system, and invoicing system for handling commissions. Free with 5% transaction fee or paid at $10/mo to remove transaction fees.
Cushion🌸 — A tool for full-time freelancers. Track time, forecast your workload, plan financial goals, and send invoices. Paid plans starting at $8/mo.
Store Websites
Big Cartel🌸 — A beautiful, simple option for when you want to get your store up and running with as little work as possible. No transaction fees. Free for stores less than 5 products, then paid plans starting at $9.99/mo.
Ecwid — A fully-featured online store solution. You can embed your store in your own domain. No transaction fees. Free for stores less than 10 products, then paid plans starting at $15/mo.
Ko-fi — Mostly a donation platform, but also has shop features. Great for digital downloads, but lacks some features for physical products.
Gumroad⚠️ — A simple online option that’s great for small shops, digital products, and simple purchases. Free with transaction fees, or a premium plan at $10/mo to eliminate transaction fees.
Shopify⚠️ — A fully-featured online store solution. Expensive, but has almost everything you’d want in an online store. Paid plans only, starting at $29/mo.
Storenvy — Lots of features and affordable pricing. Personally, I’m not a fan since they have a lot of hidden fees for both artists and customers, but if you do your research then they can be a great option. Free with transaction fees.
Squarespace or Weebly — Beautiful options for those looking for a full site. Expensive, but comes with custom pages, blog features, and more. Paid plans only, starting at $18/mo.
WooCommerce — If you have your own web hosting, you can use this extension for Wordpress to form your own online store. It’s flexible and you don’t have to pay any fees, but you will be responsible for customers’ online financial security.
csp finally has the record timelapse function so i thought it’d be fun to upload the nice quality version twitter won’t accept to a site that (hopefully) will
Live venues are being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and my favorite venue in the whole world, THE OTTOBAR, is no exception. So to help ‘em out, I’ve designed a special limited t-shirt through Super Art Fight (the greatest live art competition in the known universe) you can buy with your dollars to keep this venue alive through the plague. 100% of profit goes to them and their workers, and all the other stuff goes to the wonderful Black Collar Screenprinting, the local printer making these come to life.
The Ottobar is a place that’s kept me alive and let me live some crazy dreams. (that’s me in one of those stage photos!) Even if you’ve never been, I hope you’ll consider nabbing one of these shirts, spreading the word, and/or tossing a couple $’s through the Ottobar’s staff donation fund.
You can preorder it >>HERE<< -- but be quick about it! This is a one-time limited run, and we’re closing sales on Saturday, May 30!
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