Mug Quality Wasn't What We Expected

We started our shop a couple of weeks ago and have mostly been happy. We ordered for ourselves as well as other people. We love the apparel and the water bottles we have ordered so far but we didn’t love the mugs and took them off of our site. We just didn’t feel the quality of the printing was that great. You can see a square around the design (this is on the full color mugs) and the printing comes off easily. Of course printing on mugs often does wear off over time, but this was the same day they arrived at our house, just rubbing it with my finger.

I am wondering if I should be doing something differently with the design (I used a png image with a transparent background, but would a vector design change the process used?) The water bottles didn’t seem to have this issue using the same designs.

1 Like

hmm I recently had a sale with a mug. I also want to know know.

Can you show us some pictures, I am wondering how they look since i didn’t order a mug for myself yet.

I’m on mobile so not sure if I’m doing this right but here are pics of the 3 full color mugs we ordered from our own shop. As you can see there is a visible rectangle around the design and I was able to rub off the design with my finger. The printing peels right off.

Wow that looks really bad.
Looks like the print wasn’t fixed correctly to the mug.
Maybe temperature too low or bad materials, but I’m no expert so hopefully someone from SPRD will respond soon.

How mugs are being printed: https://youtu.be/rpDuxQS33TI?t=95

Maybe @Lena_Spreadshop or @Britta_Spreadshop can provide some informations here. Otherwise I think you could contact Spreadshirt customer service and place a complaint.

Yeah, I would love to hear from someone because what is shown in the video was NOT our experience. I actually posted on the forum because that’s what they said to do when I contacted the Spreadshop customer service email. I reached out to let them know because it seemed really below the quality of all the other products we got from them (mainly apparel but also water bottles and stickers.) The water bottles seem perfect by comparison!

We only had one customer besides us order a mug before we took them off our site, but we reached out to them privately to reimburse them because we happened to know who it was, since it was a regular fan of our podcast, but anyway, they had the same issues as we did.

I wonder if it depends maybe WHO is printing the mug (how the sticker is placed, and how long the mug stays in the sublimation place) and WHERE it is printed… I guess spreadshirt has several partners to print (?) maybe some print better than others.
I had both experience with mugs I bought as “tests” : very good ones, and very bad ones (I had to return the items and buy the same somewhere else !).
Some mugs I had are very good quality, some design with white background, and one with yellow was just perfect, and we washed several times in dishwasher, no problem at all !
Then some others mugs we ordered were BAD quality : the colors were faded, the red came pink, and the black came grey, and it looked a bit “blur”. On some other ones, the colour of printings was like a “gradient”, not regular : the text started black and ended up grey.
So I really wonder if still proposing the mugs or not on the shop… They can be very nice as …horrible ! So it’s like a “guess” for our customers, who is lucky and who is not… :frowning_face:

Still no one here from Spreadshirt ? :roll_eyes: :disappointed_relieved:

Did you find your answer somewhere (on other forum maybe) ?

I’ll be really interested to know… I also propose mugs and my clients like them, so I HOPE there is NO problem when they receive the items…
No one from spreashirt ?

Hi guys, I am sorry you made some bad experiences with our mugs (and also sorry for my late answer). Usually they are of good quality and it’s of course our goal to maintain this standard.
If you or especially your customers, should ever receive a product with a quality this bad - please contact the customers service and place a complaint! It’s a simple as that. That gives us the chance to look into it - where was it produced, what went wrong here, why wasn’t the quality checked before leaving the production sight, was something maybe even wrong with the shipping. We can’t get better if we don’t receive the feedback. And of course you and your customers will get a replacement with perfect quality. It’s always a good idea to place a topic in the forum - see if anyone else encounters similar problems, also in this case! But from afar I unfortunately can’t judge what was going on there. So please: If you are ever even the slightest bit unsatisfied with your delivery: contact the customers service. Or me of course. :slight_smile:

I really hate to do this, but after registering an account and then reading several support posts, I’m going to have to find a different print on demand platform. I’ve seen very late responses (months in one case), and the very first three posts I read just browsing were very poor quality issues store owners posted about. I was VERY disappointed with the response from staff, to the effect of “quality is usually very good”. I can’t launch a brand knowing my customers “usually” get excellent products.

It seems to keep coming back to what appears to be multiple printers who I assume get assigned jobs based on availability, and not all of them are turning out good work. So to Spreadshop: you have such a great platform from what I can see on the surface, but you MUST go back to the drawing board on your quality control, specifically, in knowing for a fact that every printer vendor you allow into your process is of the best quality, all the time.

I hope I’m wrong, and if I am, please let me know - show me what you’ve done to fix these quality issues? Or maybe share with me your quality auditing process? Maybe things have improved since those posts? IF I were to continue here, which I’d love to do, then can you share with me the specific items to avoid listing? Are there problem item numbers that appear frequently on your QA reporting?

I understand no printer is going to be perfect, but I definitely have to do what I can to be sure I’m delivering only the best to my customers and not opening a can of headaches.

Hi @User_NA-7fce515e,
thanks for your feedback and concern!
Maybe you’ve seen this post about our new printing technique for mugs. This change improved the printing quality of mugs massively. Since the requirements for the print changed too there were of course some little obstacles to overcome - for us and for the shop owners as well. :exploding_head: :nerd_face:
Which products (in which color) suit what kind of design is hard to answer. That depends on the design itself (how delicate the design elements are, how bright the colors) and also on the file format (png, jpg or Vector).
If you want to make sure of the quality, I can always recommend to order some merch from your own shop for yourself to test it and also spread the word by wearing it. Shop owners get sample orders for only the base price - for this exact purpose. To look, feel and love it. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
Getting back to your question about our production. We don’t use external printers. All products that arrive at your customer’s are being printed in one of our own printing facilities in the US or Europe, depending on where you’re selling.
I’d hate to see you leave of course. Be assured though that there is nothing closer to our heart than the satisfaction of you shop owners and of course of your customers.