How to give a personalised gift of merchandise this Xmas using print on demand.

Were you one of the people that bought somebody something else today? Well, In China, some $84.54 billion worth of gifts were bought today on what is the 1111. It's the famous singles day, really, pioneered by Jack Ma and the Alibaba Group. This is the big festival of spending. It's like the Valentine's Day on steroids in China. Now, why am I talking about this in the context of a public relations show? Well, the reason is because giving things to other people is a really powerful way of building a relationship and I don't mean bribery. Now, what I'm talking about is the opportunity to build your own brand using customized merchandise. Now, I'm also quite excited. It's not a day that I was given something by somebody else, but when something arrived for me. I have been building out the Unnoticed Entrepreneur merchandise. And today from Latvia arrived my mobile phone case. Now, my platform of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur is these 19 dots. It's the same on the book and it's the same on the all the merchandise is the idea that there is only 5% of the population are entrepreneurs. And so I have 18 dots plus one and roughly 5% of my dots are unique, just the one.in the middle. So my phone case has arrived with my design and this is the advanced guard because coming soon from Spain are my hat and my T shirt. Now, the reason I'm sharing this is because other than an unashamed plug for my merchandise, it's just to give insight into an opportunity for every business owner now to create branded products at a fraction of the cost with a much greater range than was ever possible before. Now, I want just explain to you how I've done it, but there are other ways to do it as well. What I've done is to work on a platform called Printful. And working with a VA in the Philippines, we've made the designs of the logos, uploaded those to Printful and applied them to a number of the products that are available on Printful. So Printful's got everything from clothing to ceramics to drinkware to homeware. I've already chosen, for example, to have my Unnoticed Entrepreneur dots applied to hats, T shirts, tote bag, cooking apron, water bottle mugs, and of course, my new handphone case. All the products appear to be really good quality. And what's really fascinating about this from an entrepreneur's point of view is that you don't have to buy any stock. So you upload the design and then if you want to order a sample and order individual items, then you can make them. And of course there are others like Vistaprint here in the UK does this. There's also Spring, formerly Teespring and there's also one called Redbubble for T shirts. So there are a number of these POD platforms, as they're called, which enable entrepreneurs, business owners to design products either as merchandise or actually to sell. Now in my case I have designed the merchandise to complement this podcast and of course I have the book and I have my SpeedPR methodology. So I want to have the design applied to other items to support the overall brand proposition rather than to make it into a commercial enterprise. I do want it to wash its face, but I'm not trying to go for huge volume and low cost of production. And here really is why I think a POD is a great opportunity for all of this. Because the POD companies also the drop shipping companies as they sometimes call where you buy and sell without actually taking delivery of the goods, enable us to design something like my handphone cover. Printful will make the design and they'll also do all the shipping to the end customer. And what this means is that I can market my design or I can buy any number of my own designs to deliver to for example a customer or a member of staff or a partner without having to buy large volumes of them. In the past when we had company merchandise we had to buy minimum order of T shirts or of, of notebooks or of mugs and you end up with lots of them left over in the cupboard. But that has all changed now with the POD with Printful, for example with my, my phone case which is made of biodegradable materials, it comes in a number of different colors and it, I have one today that's delivered, it's, it's red with white dots and it cost me £11 19 for the individual, individual item, £3 29 for the shipping. That's because this one was made in Latvia. Although they are now opening in the uk. This company Printful, they have America and Australia as well as continental Europe. And then I have a 2 pound 90 VAT. So the cost of a customized phone case is 16 pounds 78 designed and delivered a one off. So this is an amazingly affordable entry level promotional item that I can give to either a member of staff or to a partner or to a customer. Now you can actually personalize a number of the items. So you could put someone's name on for example and have the design. You could have individual companies names. So the ability to brand an individual product with the name for example of the recipient is going to be a fantastic way to build a relationship. And I think this is really important because as we're not seeing one another anymore, people are not going to the retail stores or they're not going to the warehouse and if they are not going to events, although that is opening up now, but they're not spending as much time in the office. How do we keep people, if you like, connected to our brand without selling them something every day? And merchandise, branded T shirts, hats, mugs, water bottles, iPhone cases, computer bags, backpacks, all these items can help keep a brand in and around the lifestyle or the office working area of the people that we want to do business with. Now, what I have done with my Printful account is I connected that to an Etsy store. So one of the reasons I chose this Printful platform is because they have an automatic API set of application protocol interface. So what happens is that I basically load up my store with my design products in Printful and I connected it to my Etsy store. I can also connect it to a WIX platform, I can connect it to Shopify, I can connect it to a number of other stores like Shop Envy and then I can actually monetize the merchandise for my own brand. Now, I'd like to think that the Unnoticed Entrepreneur merchandise looks great and will hopefully be a way for entrepreneurs to recognize one another. So someone's carrying the phone case and someone else is carrying the phone case or a water bottle with the design. My ambition is that people recognize an entrepreneur in the other person who's carrying or wearing the Unnoticed Entrepreneur merchandise. That's my bigger picture vision. Some people may like that enough to want to buy. And I have actually now already sold a number of items on my Etsy store. So that's going to give me A a little bit of revenue, but B, a great opportunity as well to build a profile on social media that's visual for my brand and for everyone selling a service, One of the hardest things to do is to visualize that service. And we can't just keep giving people our logo or maybe doing a talking head video merchandise gives us a chance to either put a logo or a strap line or anything that we like on social media. And we all know the picture superiority effect overwhelms text. And so we can take the merchandise and even put it into a short video using a platform like Lumen 5 or videos which does full animation of a small picture. So using a platform which is a pod like Printful and there are others like Vistaprint in the uk, but they don't have connections to stores like Etsy. Gives us the opportunity to a be a little bit creative with our own brand, but also to monetize our brand if we want to, but also create a value, a perceived value of the goods that we're going to give to our valued customer. So if I have, for example, my phone case on my website at £24.99 and I give that to someone, the perceived value is nearly £25. It actually only costed me £17. So it gives me the opportunity to give favors and to reward people that I want to thank for working with me. So Valentine's Day, of course, is in February in Western Europe, in China, 1111, which is today is the big day. $84 billion worth of orders, gross merchandise value in one day day. Now apparently that was a 14% increase from the year before. This is all according to Reuters. But what it really shows is that giving is a central part of what we need to do as human beings. And as we haven't been seeing one another anywhere near as much as we might have done in the past, creating a bond through a gift is a really powerful way to of ensuring relationships are lasting and that our brand and our proposition is there top of mind when that person is starting to consider working with us or buying from us. My store is called the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Merch Company on Etsy. So if you fancy having a look for the Entrepreneur Merch Company on Etsy and liking it, that'd be fantastic. Check out the merchandise, check out printful.com and see if there's a way for you to start to build your brand. One phone case, one hat, one T shirt at a time. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Jim James. If you've got any questions, do just reach out to me, jim@eastwestpiano.com Always happy to answer your questions. You've been listening to the Unnoticed Entrepreneur and I really hope that you get noticed for all the great things that you do.