Developing a new Partner Area that quickly and efficiently enables you to profit from your drive and talent is Spreadshirt’s top priority. Helping turn your designs into dollars is at the forefront of many of our departments’ daily endeavors.
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:
- Best Sellers
- Workwear
- Streetwear
- Kids and Babies
- Basic
- Premium
- Brand
- Cases and Covers
- Organic
- Merchandise
- Home and Living
- 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.
I have to echo a few sentiments above. It’s a great new layout for the users and the design adjustment feature is wonderful. However this mandatory collections thing is a bit of a cart before the horse choice here.
Forcing undesired products (Ex. illegible light design on lighter material) to be included with the desired products will at best, simply impact a business’s first impression with a client… at worst, it creates the potentiality of a customer purchasing one of these unwanted products and the artist dealing with the complaints afterward.
Very much hoping this feature is included soon. Would really like to use the service.
Hi Casper,
Thanks for your feedback. Yes, from January onwards we will get rid of the collection and you will be able to chose product groups and filter these product groups if necessary.
Thanks for your patience.
Best,
Lena
I was excited at first to use spreadshirt after watching videos from youtube. Now I have to say that I am extremely disappointed. The “collections” are really annoying. I pick a collections, and then I view my store. Colors don’t match (for example, part of a logo is black and you automatically put it on “darker” shirts – you CAN’T see the logo). It’s sad because I am now looking for another company to use. You should still have it where we could customize the images and make it more user friendly.
Hi Katie,
Thanks for your feedback. From January onwards you will no longer have to chose collections (as we have seen that this leads to much confusion) but you will instead be able to chose specific product groups.
Best,
Lena
I am 100% on the same page as Jake. This is a nice theory, but in practice it is INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING not to be able to limit what items your design appears on!!! Never mind that you can’t even tell what brand of product you’re printing on now. The new interface is so nice, it’s really a shame that there’s such an enormous, glaring issue like this.
Hi Samantha,
Thanks for your feedback. We have noticed that our users are getting confused by the concept of the collections which is why we will be allowing to chose specific product groups (instead of entire collections) from January onwards.
Best,
Lena
Is there a document that specifies what products are in each collection? That would make it much easier to decide which to choose, rather than play guessing games…
Hey Shaheen,
right now there isn’t such a document. A helppage is in the works and should be available in January.
Best,
Lena
Please add the options to only add one product and what type of product to add to my store! The ability to chose what design goes on what brand of t-shirt was perfect! Instead it creates women’s t-shirts and kids etc and i cant delete the women t-shirts etc! i also want the ability to choose what brand of t-shirt i use! please fix this!
Hi Jake,
Due to the fact that we have gotten so much feedback concerning the collections we will, from January onwards, leave you the choice to chose products and instead use the collections as some sort of filter. We will inform you via our partner newsletter once we have the exact details of this change.
Best,
Lena
Is it not possible to manually change the design on individual products after choosing a category? Now it looks like horrible (doesn’t fit) on for example cases for smartphones, mugs, caps.
Is it true that ‘old’ users have an other system for adding designs on products? I hear and read that they have the option to add individual products. I can’t find that in my shop.
Thanks for your response!
Inge
Hi Inge,
It is not yet possible to manually change the design on individual products but this will be possible in the coming months. Yes, some of our partners are still using the old user area but will be migrated to the new one some time next year.
Best,
Lena
“We have some issues”. You are having lots of issues. That system is buggy as hell. Alpha release and new users are beta-testers. 🙁
Hey Jan-Olof,
Not sure what you mean. The system should not be buggy. This is not an alpha release and the users are not beta-testers. Can you maybe elaborate on your post? Thanks!
It’s been a minute since I’ve added new stuff to my Spreadshirt but I went in there today and it went smoothly except I couldn’t find the line where I add in shop profit. What happened?
Hey Marc,
we have changed the way you can earn money. Have a look at this help page: https://help.spreadshirt.com/hc/en-us/articles/210769049-Earning-money
Best,
Lena
Please make sure there are ways (either automated or manual) to ensure that design placements on the multiple products all look good. Today’s “automatic product creation” often crams designs up against the very edge of the product images, and sometimes even shows parts of the designs hanging off in empty space past the edge of the product! This looks terrible and unprofessional and is a turn-off to potential customers.
Correct those problems, and this will be a very nice feature. It looks very promising!
Hey hwhit,
Yes, you will be able to adjust designs manually or automatically.
Best,
Lena
You see, Lena, I have a time machine and currently it is October 23rd, 2017 where I’m at. 🙂
I’m so excited! This has been a big ask for a long time and I’m thrilled the SS team has been able to implement it! Natural 20 Shirts is thrilled 😀
Hey Carl,
Thanks for the positive feedback 🙂
Best,
Lena
Lena,
Did you mean late 2016 in your reply above to John? If no, then wow late 2017 is going to be a long wait.
Jeannette
Hi Jeannette,
Yes unfortunately this will only be released to users of the old user area sometime in 2017. As you can see in the graphic there are still some issues to be resolved before we can migrate you guys to the new partner area. I know it’s a long wait but I’m sure it will be worth it!
Best,
Lena
2 minutes after I posted the message above, I was able to access my designs page. When I go to create a product, I still see the old designer. The internet haaaates me 🙂
LOLz.
Hi John,
this is normal – you will only be migrated to the new partner area sometime in late 2017. This blogpost is to inform you about the ongoing developments.
The new product creation tool is therefore not available for you yet 🙂
Best,
Lena
I haven’t been able to see the new project creation tool because I keep getting “504 Gateway Timed Out” messages.
This looks great and what a time saver! I can’t wait to try the multi-product creation tool. FYI, the video was easy to follow.
Thanks.
Jay
Hi Jay,
happy to hear you are as excited about this tool as we are. You will have to be a bit more patient tough before this will be available for you. We will be making sure to keep you guys up-to-date.
Best,
Lena