This information is only relevant for US and Australian partners who registered with us after October 19th, 2016 as well as for Canadian partners who registered with us after May 30th, 2016.

Publishing your designs to the U.S., Canadian and Australian Marketplaces just got a whole lot faster. With Spreadshirt’s new pre-approval process, your designs can be up and earning in as little as 15 minutes.

What does that mean for me?

With the new pre-approval process, reacting to viral trends (or simply adding your designs to the Marketplace) is a lot faster and a lot more agile. What once was a lengthy approval process, has been cut down significantly, allowing you to get your designs up, selling and earning in no time at all.

Will my designs still be checked?

All uploaded designs must still be checked against printability guidelines, but moving forward, this process will take place after they have been published to the Marketplace—hence the “pre-approval”.

What if my pre-approved design is denied once it has been reviewed?

If your pre-approved design is denied for any reason, it will be removed from the Marketplace. You will receive the standard “your design has been denied” message on your design page in the Partner Area. You, of course, have the option at that point to adjust your design to meet the guidelines and republish it.

How long does the pre-approval process take?

With the new pre-approval process, a preview link for the uploaded design is available immediately, and you are looking at 10-15 minutes before you design is published for sale. PLEASE NOTE: Purchases cannot be made through the preview link. Products may only be purchased once the designs have been published to the Marketplace.

The new pre-approval process gives you the power to act, react, publish and earn faster than ever before! So, what are you waiting for? Get in there and start uploading designs now!

Happy with the new development? How is it working out for you and your Marketplace sales? Give us a shout in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

The post New Partner Area: Quickly Launch Designs appeared first on The Spreadshop Blog.

Manage multiple designs

We’ve made some helpful changes in the design overview section. Perhaps you’ve already seen the little check boxes in the top-right corner of the design tiles? Check the box to bulk-select as many designs as you want to edit at once. The menu bar on top changes as soon as you select a design. You will now find the options “Keywords” and “Design Price” there. Choose one of these options to apply it to all the designs you’ve selected. It’ll save you a ton of time when adjusting the pricing or keywords of your designs.

Select product default colors

It gets even better. You can now select a default product color to display for each product group. If your Shop is centered around the color red, you can choose to represent each product group with a red product. If you feel your designs display better on white products, you now have the freedom to make that happen. Think of this function as the mannequin that stands in a store window: there are obviously more colors available inside the store; this is just the lure that gets the customers in and buying.

You will find a color icon in the bottom-right corner of each product group tile. Click on it to select the default color of the displayed product. Customers can still freely choose from the other colors offered for each product; you are merely changing the color of the product being displayed.

More exciting news

We are in the process of working out a way for you to determine the color selection for your products. The solution to one of our more frequent requests is on the horizon. Stay tuned!

These new features are designed to help you save time and effort managing your products that you can use to better your brand and marketing. Give it a go!

Have you gained first-hand experience with the new features? How do you put the time you save to good use?  Please let us know in the comments.

The post New Partner Area Features are a Big Time Saver appeared first on The Spreadshop Blog.

Tell Me More

Based on overwhelming feedback, it quickly became clear that lumping products together into collections does not provide enough flexibility for Partners. They can’t specify which products they offer their customers.

Thank God! Now What?

The release on the 30th of March 2017 removes collections from the product creation process. They will be replaced by a tool that gives Partners the flexibility they’ve been yearning for.

Partners operating within the new Partner Area will now be able to choose from a selection of 100+/- of our best-selling products for their designs. Specifying between departments (men, women, accessories, gadget cases, etc.) and product groups (t-shirts, tank tops, hoodies, etc.) will allow for customized product offerings. Moreover, you can refine your product groups by chosing up to four categories: “fashion”, “best-seller”, “organic” and “sports”.

In other words, if you want to offer only women’s organic t-shirts in your Shop, you can. If you want to sell only phone and tablet cases in the Marketplace, you can do that too. Just baby clothing and hats? Absolutely!

What’s Next?

The release takes place seamlessly on the 30th of March 2017.  Once the switch has been made, it may be necessary to “clean up” your Shops and Marketplace offerings by recreating the products you want to offer with the new tool.

What Else Do I Need to Know?

With this release, we are reducing our product range to 100+/- products.  This selection of products makes up over 93% of Shop orders. Essentially, it’s addition by subtraction: by limiting the range to best-sellers only, the chance of making a sale increases. Products in Shops and on the Marketplace that have been created with items not included in the reduced product range will be deleted.

We’ve created a page here that details exactly which products didn’t make the cut.

And we’re not done yet! Future releases are on the way this spring and will include product color specification. Enjoy the new freedom, and here’s wishing you good sales!

Thoughts or opinions about the new product creation option? Your feedback is essential in helping us provide you with the tools and features you need to succeed. Leave a comment below!

The post Goodbye Collections, Hello Customizer appeared first on The Spreadshop Blog.

With beta testing complete, and the necessary tweaks made to the initial small-market release of the new Partner Area, we’ve come to the next phase of the project. Enter Petra Jacobs—Spreadshirt Product Owner and the tip of the arrow aimed at bringing a new Partner Area to fruition.  We sat with Petra as she kindly took us through Phase 4 of the new Partner Area project (see graphic below) and one of the most exciting developments to date: Multi-Product Creation.  You can also click here to read the entire interview.

Multi-Product Creation

One of the largest challenges facing partners is the tedious process of one-by-one product creation and publication.  This is not only a time-consuming process, but a bear of a task when it comes to populating your Shops with a variety of products and colors. Phase 4 of the new Partner Area project—Multi-Product Creation—will solve that. According to Petra, “By creating ‘product collections,’ we have effectively eliminated the immense amount of time and effort associated with creating and publishing products individually.  Once the new Partner Area is released, populating your shops with a bunch of new offerings will be quick and easy.”

What will multi-product creation do for you?

• Eliminate the time-consuming process of one-by-one product creation
• Create up to 40 products at once
• Aim your product offerings directly at your target market through the use of categorized product collections
• Quickly and easily populating your Shops with a wide variety of apparel and accessory products is a breeze

Take a look at how quickly partners will be able to populate their Shops with a wide variety of products.

Product Collections

Partners will be able to choose from 12 preset product collections in order to get their Shops stuffed with a variety of top-quality products.  Petra says:
“We have categorized many of the items from our product range into twelve product collections.  Different factors played into why certain products landed in certain collections.  Price, sales, use, materials—all of these and more were analyzed in the collection designation process. There will be some overlap because, in some cases, the same product met the criteria of multiple collections.”

The collections will be as follows, but will be subject to change with the addition/subtraction of new/old products:

1. Best Sellers
2. Workwear
3. Streetwear
4. Kids and Babies
5. Basic
6. Premium
7. Brand
8. Cases and Covers
9. Organic
10. Merchandise
11. Home and Living
12. Sportswear

We look forward with great anticipation to the boom of Shop successes that this innovation is sure to bring once all Partners are migrated to the new Partner Area in Phase 8.  Multi-product creation is a monumental step forward in the new Partner Area project and one step closer towards the ultimate goal of selling any design on any product anywhere in the world in 60-seconds or less.

Thank you, Petra, for your time and immeasurable efforts on this innovation.  And again, if you’d like to read the interview in its full form, please click here.

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