Print on demand is a way of selling products without owning any. The design is yours and the shop is yours. The printing, packing and posting only start once someone has paid you.

This page covers the model itself: how an order moves, what you pay and when, what can be printed and what your customer opens.

What print on demand is

Inkthreadable is a print on demand supplier, which means we print and ship one item at a time on your behalf, under your brand. Nothing is made in advance. An order arrives from your shop, we print that item, and it goes out to your customer in white label packaging.

The alternative is buying stock in advance. You pick your sizes and colours months ahead, pay for all of it up front, and store it somewhere until it sells or doesn't. Print on demand takes both the guess and the up-front money out, and puts a production lead time in their place.

What you keep control of

You set your own prices, write your own listings and own your customer list. We never contact your customers or put our name anywhere on your product.

What happens when someone buys

The order reaches us automatically and leaves as a parcel within five working days for apparel, or three for mugs and wall art.

1. Your shop tells us.

   Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, TikTok Shop, Big Cartel, Wix, Squarespace and Order Desk connect directly, and there's a CSV upload and an API for anything else. Or you can place manual orders in your Inkthreadable account each time you take an order in your store.

2. We print it.

   The print method depends on the fabric and the product.

3. We cure, check and pack it.

   Prints are heat-cured so they survive the wash, then the order is checked, picked, packed and labelled for shipping.

4. It ships to your customer.

   Where the service is tracked, tracking goes back to your shop so your customer can follow their parcel.

What it costs, and when you pay

There's no set-up fee, no monthly subscription and no minimum order, so the only money that leaves your account before a sale is for any sample orders you place.

You pay the product price and the postage at the time the order is placed. This is the whole point of the model for anyone starting out: you pay per order, not for bulk stock up front.

One t-shirt, sold at £25, works out like this.

Shop fees can be easy to miss, so keep them in mind. On Etsy that's a $0.20 listing fee, a transaction fee of 6.5% of the total including delivery, and payment processing on top, so build these fees into your product price rather than your profit margin.

Per unit, one t-shirt printed on demand costs more than one shirt out of a bulk run of 200. What that difference buys you is the freedom to list 12 designs, find out that two of them sell, and owe nothing on the other 10.

As your shop grows, reward pricing takes up to 10% off product prices based on your monthly order volume. It's applied automatically, so there's nothing to manage.

How long an order takes

Inkthreadable dispatches apparel within five working days, and mugs, posters, framed prints and canvases within three, counted from when the order is paid. UK delivery then adds one to five days depending on the service you choose, starting from £2.88, and we ship worldwide. Every option's price and delivery estimate is on our shipping costs page.

What can be printed

Clothing, accessories and homeware, mugs, posters, canvases and fine art prints, using six print methods.

DTG printing cures the ink into the fabric. The garment is pre-treated first, which opens up the fibres so the ink bonds with them rather than sitting on the surface. The Kornit printers we use have CMYK plus red, green and white channels, so bright colours land closer to your file without being mixed out of four inks.

In contrast, DTF printing sits on top of the fabric. The design is printed onto film before being heat-pressed against the product, causing an adhesive layer to bond with the fibres for a permanent finish.

If you're choosing between the two garment methods, our DTG versus DTF guide goes through them properly.

How your shop connects

Inkthreadable connects to Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, TikTok Shop, Big Cartel, Wix, Squarespace and Order Desk, with a CSV upload and an API for everything else. Or you can place orders manually as you receive them if you'd prefer.

Most sellers get connected in under 10 minutes. If you haven't built a shop yet, that's the step to do first. Then connect your store and start building your catalogue. Here's why merchants integrate their store with us.

What your customer opens

A white label parcel arrives, with no Inkthreadable branding, pricing or invoices inside, so your customer only sees your brand. Printed neck labels put your logo inside the neckline for £1.51 per garment, and you set them up once in your brand profile.

Labels are printed with the order, so there's no label stock to supply. Orders ship in recyclable paper and cardboard packaging, and the only plastic is the end caps on tubes for rolled art prints. More on materials and packaging is on our sustainability page.

Who makes your order

Every order is printed or embroidered, checked and packed in the UK by a team of print technicians, embroiderers, pickers and packers, then shipped from here. Inkthreadable is a family business, run by a husband and wife team, and we've been doing this since 2013.

Our support team is on email and messenger from 9am to 5pm on weekdays. We reply within one working day, with an average response of 30 minutes during working hours, and most setup questions are answered step by step in our Help Centre.

How to start

Order a sample of the product you want to sell, in the colour you want to sell it in, then put it through the wash a couple of times and see what the print does. That's the only reliable way to know what your customer will get.

Then create your free account, connect your shop, list the product and let the orders come to us.

Frequently asked questions