 In today's video, we're going to be comparing print on demand with keeping inventory and fulfilling orders yourself. Which method is better? Which one's more profitable? And which one is best for you? Which one should you start? That's what I want to know. Now, before we get started, let me know down in the comments below, which one is your preferred method? Do you prefer doing things online and having the entire thing automated? So working with print on demand suppliers, or do you prefer to keep inventory yourself and ship out the products as you get orders? Let me know down in the comments below what your preferred method is. And with that, let's get started. Now let's start with print on demand. Well simply put, print on demand is a fulfillment business model. Now here's how it works. Somebody goes to your online store. They place an order for a t-shirt for about $25. Then that order is going to get rerouted to your printer or your supplier and they're going to manufacture the item and then they're going to ship it out. So they take care of everything from the printing to the fulfillment. You don't really have to do absolutely anything other than pay your supplier. For the most part, print on demand suppliers or print on demand websites are going to be connected to your store. So you don't even have to place the order with the supplier. It's all automated. Your customer paid $25 for that shirt and you paid your supplier about $7 plus let's say $5 shipping totaling $12. So the extra $13, that's your profit, but it's all profit for me, baby. That's really all there is to it. The entire thing is done online. You don't have to keep any inventory. You don't have to worry about anything aside from customer service. So what are some of the advantages of print on demand? Well, there's actually quite a few for one, you don't have to hold any inventory. So you don't have to keep anything on hand. You don't have to ship anything out. You don't have to worry about finding places where you need to store all of your products. Now because of that, you really don't have absolutely any upfront costs, at least in terms of inventory. When it comes to your website, sometimes you do have to pay for that. So you might have to pay maybe $30 a month to have your own website, but if you don't want to do that, you can set yourself up with something like eBay or on Etsy. These two are fantastic marketplaces to sell your print on demand products. And along with that comes reduced financial risk. So since you're not putting down much money, you don't have the risk to actually lose much money or any at all. Another huge benefit is the fact that you're able to test out multiple designs at once. So because you don't have to keep any inventory and because you don't have to put down any upfront costs, you can have as many designs as you want on your online store. So you can create as many designs as you want and see which one sells and which ones don't. From there you can start picking out the ones that don't sell and just keep your winners. And putting all of those different benefits together, it makes it easier to scale. So all of these different benefits that I talked about just make it that much easier to scale your business. It gives you a lot more free time along with a bit more money to be able to reinvest back into your print on demand business to keep growing. All right, now what about keeping inventory? Well, with keeping your own inventory and shipping out your own products, you also have a few different benefits as well. For one, each product cost actually comes out to be a lot less than if you were to go with print on demand. So you do have the chances for higher profits. You also have a bit more control in terms of the actual product quality. So because you're shipping your products out on your own, you have the option to actually take a look at your products and make sure that everything is up to standard. Remember, with your e-commerce store, you always want to have the best possible quality because if not, people aren't going to recommend you. They're not going to show you off on their social media and they're not going to come back and make a second purchase with keeping your own inventory. You also have the option to customize a little bit further than you would with print on demand. For example, when you have your own inventory or when you place your orders in bulk, you have the option for a bit more customization in terms of branding. So if you haven't noticed, which I'm pretty sure you have a lot of t-shirts on the inside, they have their tags, the tags, the state, what kind of material and what size they are with a service like print on demand. You can't really customize that. But for people that want to start their own brands, they want to have a consistent tag on their shirts. Also, they don't want to have the generic tag from the t-shirt manufacturer either. They want to make sure that the entire thing is branded with their own brand. So when you hold inventory, you have the option to actually customize those tags. You can either have it printed directly on the garment itself or you can have a tag sewn on. Same thing goes for packaging. The actual packages that your items are shipped in, you have more customizability when you keep everything yourself. OK, those are the pros. Now what about the cons? So let's start with print on demand. Now with print on demand, one of the disadvantages is definitely going to be inconsistent print quality. Now, this is really going to depend on your provider. If you have a print provider like Printify, you have the option to choose from multiple different suppliers that actually print your products. So Printify isn't just going to have one dedicated company to print its items. Instead, they have an entire network. Now, because they have so many people printing their products, everyone has different production methods, everyone has different machines, everyone has different quality controls. So because of this, let's say if one supplier runs out of a particular product, whether that be a t-shirt, hoodie or a cup, that order has to go to a different supplier. Now, that supplier has its own way of doing things. That supplier has its own way of printing. It has their own methods, their own quality control. So while the quality can be on par with it, sometimes it might not be. You really have no control over that and you're not going to find this out until the customer actually gets their item. Now, if you're using a print provider like Printful, you do have the option to opt out of this. So the order won't be rerouted to somebody else. But if you do that, then you are going to have less products to offer because sometimes there could be the possibility of a particular item being sold out or becoming unavailable. Also, depending on the print provider, you could have limited customization possibilities. Now, what I mean by that is that some providers might only let you print on the front of a shirt. Some might let you print in the front and the back, but not on the entire thing. While other print providers will let you print on the entire garment, let's say it's a hoodie all the way from the hoodie, all the way down to the sleeves. Now, one way you can avoid this is by simply going to a print provider that has proven quality products and doesn't have multiple print suppliers. My recommendation being AutoDS. So AutoDS actually has a whole print-on-demand section aside from the entire dropshipping department. So AutoDS works with one particular print-on-demand supplier that prints their entire product line. Now, the best thing is is that this is a pretty big company, so chances of them running out of any product are pretty slim. Also, all of their products have been tested to ensure the best quality. Now, aside from all of that, you also have tons of customization options. So check this out. On here, you can find your typical t-shirts, a few different hoodies, and even some baby onesies. So anything you see here with the AutoDS logo in the front, that means you can simply print on the front of that shirt or on the back. But if you keep scrolling, you're gonna find some other things that are really, really cool. Check this out. All right, so here we have a pullover, a crop top, pair of shorts, a hoodie, and you see how it has the AutoDS logo, but then it has the entire dashes all over the entire product. Well, when you see that, that means you can print on the entire thing. So you can customize that product from head to toe. You also have an entire home and living category that includes tons of other products, such as bath mats, flags, door mats, even bedding, and you have tons of other ones as well. I'm just gonna show you one last one. This is my personal favorite, and that's shoes. The fact that you can fully customize shoes to me is absolutely amazing. All right, now let's move on over to keeping your own inventory. One of the biggest disadvantages that I can confirm to you that comes with keeping your own inventory is being stuck with that inventory. So I have a few different businesses and I've tried a few different business models, and let me tell you, keeping inventory, there's money in it, but you always run the risk of keeping that inventory. What does that mean? You buy a product and nobody buys it. Let's say you purchase a particular product in wholesale, you buy maybe a hundred different units and you sell four or five, and that's pretty much it. Nobody else purchased it for whatever reason. That inventory that you're stuck with, that's not moving at all, no matter how hard you try to move it. That's called dead inventory, and that is also dead money. When you have dead inventory, you pretty much lost money because nobody wants those products. The best you could do is try to sell them and break even. Most cases, you're probably gonna sell them at a loss if you can even sell them at all. There's a lot of products that can fall into this category. Some of them being seasonal products, technology products. Now, when it comes to technology products, I'm talking about in particular phone cases. So from one year to the other, phone cases can become completely obsolete. Every single year, a new phone model comes out, and pretty much every single year, people are upgrading their phones. So this has two different effects. One, people are always buying new phone cases, so you always wanna be selling new phone cases. But two, if you buy too many of those phone cases, you could be left with that inventory and just having tons of different phone cases that you're never gonna move. Now, you see, this is where something like print on demand can really come in and be extremely helpful because of the fact that you don't have to carry any inventory. Every single year, you can come up with tons of different designs for the latest phone models. And not just for one, you can come up with pretty much for anything. Google Pixel, iPhone, Samsung, Huawei, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. I can never pronounce that phone brand. But with print on demand, you're never gonna be left with any dead inventory. Keeping inventory also comes with higher upfront costs. So since you are paying for these products upfront, you're gonna have to pay a pretty penny for some of them. So even though each individual product is gonna be cheaper in the long run, the money you have to put down right now is gonna be more when you keep your own inventory. So let's say you buy 100 T-shirts. Those 100 shirts you could get at about maybe $3 each shirt. But again, you're gonna have to buy 100 T-shirts. So you're gonna have to put down $300. Now, I know I keep referring to T-shirts as the product, but remember, print on demand, you can print practically any product. So you have the option to print things like cups, mouse pads, T-shirts, hoodies, shorts, phone cases, rugs, and the list goes on. I just always refer to T-shirts because that's pretty much like the main product in print on demand. That's kind of how the entire thing got started with T-shirts. Now, aside from those upfront costs, you also have to consider where you're gonna store all of your products. So depending on the product that you have, you might or you might not have enough space for it in your own home. So let's say you wanna sell T-shirts. If you have a bunch of T-shirts that you're gonna be packing and shipping out yourself, then you could probably buy a drawer and just stick them all in there. But if you're gonna be selling cups, tumblers, things like shower curtains, more T-shirts, hoodies, and you vary your entire line, you're really gonna have to start considering finding somewhere else to store your products because the more products that you have, the more space it's gonna take. And then that can potentially increase your upfront costs. So you might have to get a warehouse. You might have to get a storage unit. You might have to just rent out a little space in somebody else's warehouse. It really all depends on how many products you're planning on keeping. But just remember, the more products that you keep, not only are your costs gonna be higher simply because you're buying more product, but also because you have to figure out where you're gonna store all of those products and then some. Now again, personally, I've tried both models. I still do both models, but it really depends on the business that you're trying to run, which model's gonna work best. So I found that with certain products, keeping inventory can actually be a bit more beneficial rather than using print on demand. But using print on demand can really help expand your product line. So you really have to do things strategically. And at the end of the day, you can combine both. So let's say you have a product that's going absolutely crazy on your print on demand store. Whether that be you're selling on TikTok shop, you're selling on Etsy, eBay, your own website, whatever it is. You have a product that's going viral, it's getting a lot of sales and it's consistent. Well, if you wanna increase your profits and start making some more money, then you can stop that product from being sold through your print on demand store and instead fulfill the orders for that particular product yourself. Now this will be a lot more time consuming than letting a system do it through print on demand, but you do have the option to get a bit more money. Much more money now. And depending on how many sales you're actually getting, it might even be easier and a lot cheaper for you to hire somebody to do it for you. So maybe you have a brother, maybe you have a cousin, maybe you have a friend that can help you out throughout the weekend or a couple of days throughout the week to just pack up a couple of items. That way you can keep focusing on scaling your business, adding more products and most importantly, taking care of customer service. But again, remember, you have to be smart about things. Let's say you have a phone case design that's going absolutely crazy on your print on demand store. In that case, I wouldn't suggest to you to order that particular phone case in bulk because what's gonna happen the year after? Not as many people are gonna be buying that phone case because the next generation phone already came out. So be strategic about it. Think about the product that you're selling and think about whether or not it's worth to order in bulk right now and if it's gonna be worth it a month from now, a year from now. Because remember, when you order your products in bulk and you're keeping inventory, sometimes you might keep them for longer than you expect. That's why I suggest to start with print on demand, test out different products, see what works and then you can make the decision whether or not it's smart to order the items in bulk. All right, let's break down some numbers. So let's figure out the price for a tumbler. Now, in general, a tumbler on Etsy, you're gonna sell it for about $30, $25 to $30. So let's do $30. Now, when you're producing this item yourself, you're gonna be spending, I would say, about $8. If you're ordering tumblers in bulk and you can think about spending maybe about $10 to $12. So let's do $10. That gives us a profit of about $20 per tumbler. All right, so now let's do it again with print on demand. Let's go ahead and take $30 and subtract about $18 and that gives us a profit of $12. Now shipping it ourselves, we make a profit about $20. Using print on demand, we make a profit of about $12. So as you can see, you have a bit more profit potential when it comes to shipping out yourself, but take this into consideration. How long it's gonna take you to actually package that order, print out that shipping label and go drop it off at the post office or UPS or FedEx? Is the gas from your location to the drop off point? Is it worth those extra $8? Is your time gonna be worth those extra $8? In my opinion, probably not. It would be a lot easier and a lot quicker for you to not even have to think about it and just have the entire thing automated. At least at the beginning, if you're making 20, 30, 40 sales every month, you could be missing out on some money, yes, but it's kind of negligible. Let's say you start getting into the hundreds of sales a month, then that's when you can start considering actually bringing those items in-house and shipping them out yourself or having somebody else do it because that's when you're really gonna start to see a considerable difference in profits. But again, this is something that is really personal for some people making 50 or 60 orders in a month. That might be the time for them to order in bulk. As long as you have the consistency and the order volume, then you can consider actually ordering the items in bulk. But until then, go with print on demand. Testing out products, print on demand is the way to go. Now again, let me know down in the comments below what your thoughts were on print on demand versus keeping your own inventory. Which one have you done? Which one are you currently doing? Are you doing both? Which one's your favorite? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. I would love to hear them. Huge thank you to everyone for watching, especially if you made it all the way to the end. If you're still here, that means you definitely enjoyed this video. So make sure you smash that like button. Also hit that subscribe button ring that little bell notification. And with that, my name is Mario with AutoDS and I catch y'all next time.