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Changes: Displaying your Designs in Spreadshirt’s Create Tool

Changes: Displaying your Designs in Spreadshirt’s Create Tool

Until now, all designs in the ‘Marketplace‘ and the ‘Create Tool‘ have been treated the same. Both areas of the website will now be streamlined to target different groups of customers. This will impact the search algorithm of the Create Tool. In future, only designs priced below a certain limit will be shown in the Create Tool. The design price you set will also affect the ranking.

Marketplace vs Create Tool

Marketplace customers tend to look for trendy and artistically appealing designs, whereas Create customers look to personalize products with simpler designs, photos and text. This is why Spreadshirt introduced a price limit for designs in the Create Tool on May 10th 2017.

Please note – the change only concerns those designs added to the Create Tool. On the Marketplace, all of your designs will continue to be available (if you offer them there). And, of course, they will still be available in the SpreadShop’s T-Shirt Designer.

In the process of establishing the price limit, we have put this cap to the test. We made sure that approx. 80% of all designs sold fall under the new price limit.

If one of your design’s price is above the limit, you can choose to either reduce it or concentrate on selling that design on the Marketplace at its current price.

Price Limit and Algorithm

The preliminary price limits that will apply depend on the country:

US = USD 3.50
CA = CAD 4.00
AUD = AUD 4.38
All EU countries = 3,00 EUR
SE = 30 SEK
NO = 33 NOK
DK = 20 DKK
PL = 13 Zloty
CH = 3.25 CHF
GB = 3.99 GBP

These price limits are dynamic and subject to change depending on different customer needs.

The Create Tool’s new algorithm takes the following factors into consideration:

  • relevance with regards to the tags you assigned
  • click rate
  • number of uses
  • relevance with regard to the language where it is searched
  • relevance with regard to the domain where it is searched
  • low design price as a positive factor

Selling Designs – Know how!

The question of how you sell your designs on the Marketplace or the Create Tool depends on when you opened your account and which user area version you have.

a) You set up your account before October 19th, 2016:

Uploaded designs are automatically added to the Create Tool. In order to sell them on the Marketplace, you need to create at least one product with it.

b) You set up your account after October 19th, 2016:

Your designs are automatically available on the Marketplace and in the Create Tool.

What’s next?

It is in our interest to increase your sales opportunities at Spreadshirt. This is supported by campaigns such as ‘Spreadshirt Select: Designer of the Month‘ and ‘T-Shirt of the Week‘. Here, we promote the hand-picked designs on all channels, design newsletters for specialized topics to customers, the re-introduction of regular contests and an extended reach on external marketplaces such as Amazon.

We know that this measure may lead to a loss in revenue on your part that can not be adequately compensated for. We hope you understand that these changes are necessary in order to offer the customer the best experience. We look forward to continuing to work with you to improve both your sales and the overall customer experience.

Any questions relating to the Create Tool changes can be referred to partner@spreadshirt.com.

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48 comments Write a comment

  1. Last year spreadshirt double the cost of blanks on all of us ( some items closer to tripled) Which KILLED almost 80% of my sales on this site….
    NOW A floating filter on what we can sell on the create tool but NO WAY for any of us to track what is sold on that tool. I have all but giving up on this site.

    – I am now actively looking for a new option, artists let me know if you find any-

    I use to sell shirts in my own brick and mortar store front and know for a fact that spreadshirt is price gouging when it comes to un-printed clothing. With the high units they buy that blank stock in they are getting each item at 1.50 to 2 bucks, then turn and markup to 16 or 20 BEFORE artwork.

    I don’t care about backless promises, just action. Luckly I make 90% of my sales off other sites since the last price hike or I would be jumping out a window.

    • Hi Alpha,

      The latest change regarding a design price cap for the Spreadshirt Create Tool was received with a measure of frustration. We have taken your feedback into consideration and will perform a two-week test that will run on the .fr and .com sites.

      What will we be testing?

      We’ll get rid of the design price cap so that all designs will reappear in the Create Tool
      All designs will be marked with a price tag like the one used for products
      Design price will no longer be included in the print area cost. Customers will pay for each use of these designs.

      We will analyze the test results to see how these changes affect customer behavior and if the overall prices remain attractive for our customers.
      We will make changes accordingly and address the biggest partner criticism by once again giving customers the choice to decide how much they are willing to pay for a design.

      We’re sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we navigate this tricky topic.

    • Hi Dennis,

      The latest change regarding a design price cap for the Spreadshirt Create Tool was received with a measure of frustration. We have taken your feedback into consideration and will perform a two-week test that will run on the .fr and .com sites.

      What will we be testing?

      We’ll get rid of the design price cap so that all designs will reappear in the Create Tool
      All designs will be marked with a price tag like the one used for products
      Design price will no longer be included in the print area cost. Customers will pay for each use of these designs.

      We will analyze the test results to see how these changes affect customer behavior and if the overall prices remain attractive for our customers.
      We will make changes accordingly and address the biggest partner criticism by once again giving customers the choice to decide how much they are willing to pay for a design.

      We’re sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we navigate this tricky topic.

      Thanks,
      Lena

    • Hi Sandy,

      The latest change regarding a design price cap for the Spreadshirt Create Tool was received with a measure of frustration. We have taken your feedback into consideration and will perform a two-week test that will run on the .fr and .com sites.

      What will we be testing?

      We’ll get rid of the design price cap so that all designs will reappear in the Create Tool
      All designs will be marked with a price tag like the one used for products
      Design price will no longer be included in the print area cost. Customers will pay for each use of these designs.

      We will analyze the test results to see how these changes affect customer behavior and if the overall prices remain attractive for our customers.
      We will make changes accordingly and address the biggest partner criticism by once again giving customers the choice to decide how much they are willing to pay for a design.

      We’re sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we navigate this tricky topic.

      Thanks,
      Lena

  7. My user ID is 10885 and I would really appreciate knowing my % sales in each channel. I posted before but my comment has disappeared 🙁

  8. Can you tell e the amount i sold via create tool vs marketplace? I can’t find my userID but here is my username: yiannis

    thanks

    • Hi Yiannis,

      Your Use ID is 2178726.

      Create Tool: 13% // Marketplace: 85% // Shop: 2%

      Best,
      Lena

  9. How do i know the amount i sold via create tool vs marketplace?
    I can’t seem to find it in the sales statistics page.

    What is the statistic regarding average percentage of sale for a designer in the marketplace vs create tool?

    • Hi NAF,

      Can you please let me know your UserID? I can tell you in detail the % of sales you have in each sales channel.

      Best,
      Lena

  10. p.s also could I please request a marketplace to create tool comparison like some others are arranging here? My user ID is 196343

  11. In my user area in spreadshirt I see the message “Only designs with a price of £3.90 or lower are displayed in the Create Tool. The Marketplace and Shop are not affected by this change.”

    Here in the blog it says £3.99. Which figure is correct?

  13. Despite being on Spreadshirt for years, I never realised the ‘create tool’ was a seperate thing, I’m not even sure I know what it is! All I’ve ever done is upload products to my store, then add the design and products to the marketplace.

    Reading that post left me totally confused. Although I do get that prices in our own store and marketplace are not affected. So all good there!

    But reading the comment by Susan above – am I right to understand that IF we want designs as part of the ‘create tool’, we now have to upload the design again with the lower price? So we’ll have 2 of the every design saved in ‘My Designs’? And what happens if you lower the price again, it changes automatically I presume?

    • Hi Jennifer,

      Uploading your design twice is not recommended. If you’re design is priced above the threshold for the Create-Tool then you should focus on the Marketplace as a sales channel. Can you let me know your UserID? Then I can have a look at how your sales are split between the Create Tool, the Marketplace and your Shop (should you have one).

      Best,
      Lena

  15. I just want to know if I’m doing this right.

    Starting this morning, I uploaded my design twice:

    1. First time: Priced it at $5.00 and added products to it with “Create a Product With this design”

    2. Second time: Priced it at $3.50 and did not add any products to it

    In this way would I be in the search engine of the Create Tool at $3.50 and in the Marketplace at $5.00?

    Thanks for the information.

  16. Your IT department should have made a tool for us to change all of our prices at once before making this announcement. Ooops! Not judging I have been there.

    Hopefully you are in the process of making one now. Some of us have hundreds maybe thousands of design prices to change.

    Also I think it would be a benefit to us and our collective opinion of your company to develop separate price boxes. One box for our pricing in the design tool and another one for us to place our price for the marketplace.

    This is not a even playing field at present. Please tell us you are in the process now. So as to limit the panic I and others feel.

    Thanks

    • Hi,

      You can use a Chromescript called Autofill to help you change the designprice.

      Best,
      Lena

  17. Three Questions

    So If I make a design and price it for $1 it will show up closer to the top of the list given that all other things are equal than the same design priced for $3.50?

    If I make the same design and price it for $0.50 it will show up even closer to the top of the list given that all other things are equal?

    If I make the same design and price it for $0.01 it will show up even closer to the top of the list given that all other things are equal?

    • Hi,

      “given all other things are equal” is a really theoretical question here. Indeed, there are multiple factors affecting the ranking: relevance with regards to the tags you assigned, click rate, number of uses, relevance with regard to the language where it is searched, relevance with regard to the domain where it is searched. It is impossible for these things to be equal. But if in theory, this would be the case then yes, you are correct.

      Best,
      Lena

  18. Really frustrating that you didn’t separate a price for the tool and the marketplace when forcing our hand here.

    How do we know in dashboard reports which designs are being sold in the tool vs. marketplace so we can tell if it is worth us changing our prices?

    • Hi blister,

      Can you let me know your User-ID so I can tell you about your % of sales in the Create Tool?

      Thanks,
      Lena

  20. This is an elegant way Spreadshirt is telling us, the designers…

    ‘Reduce your design prices or we won’t be showing and selling your designs on the Create Tool anymore.’

    … and then add …

    ‘Our business needs to stay competitive and we’ve decided that designers will have to pay the price’.

    🙁

    • Hi DisappointedDesigner,

      You can also chose to ignore the Create Tool as a Sales Channel and solely focus on the marketplace.

      Best,
      Lena

    • > You can also chose to ignore the Create Tool as a Sales Channel and solely focus on the marketplace.

      … and get lower sales or lower your commission and get less revenue.

      These are my two choices, right?

  21. Any way we can get the sales statistics to show when designs are sold through the create tool vs the marketplace? Maybe under the “origin” header on the credits page adding in create tool as a source?

    • Hi Troy,

      You can see this under “designs sold” in your statistics. However, there is a bug in this section. It shows both the sales from the Create Tool, as well as the sales from the “edit designs” – function on the marketplace.

      Best,
      Lena

  22. Is it possible to set the price at $3.50 in Create Tool and higher in the Marketplace?

    If so, how would I do this.

    Thanks.

    • Hi Susan,

      This is unfortunately not possible. You would have to upload your design a second time.

      Best,
      Lena

  23. I think I understand it a little better from reading the prior responses because my first thought was, “I am not goint to adjust all these prices again” because they keep lowering the “top selling price point”. I did that before to the 3.99 and I have a huge collection. To someone with a small store and a few designs it may not be a big deal but until they come up with a mass pricing tool where you can adjust them all at once, changing prices for me is just a headache. If I am not understanding then I will just have to lose out this go ’round because I just can’tttttttt with all that keying 🙂

    • Hi Angie,

      Please note, that this change only affects the Create Tool and not the Marketplace and the Shop.

      Best,
      Lena

  24. Approx. 80% of all designs sold are below this price limit specifically in the Spreadshirt’s Create Tool or in general? Because obviously shops don’t need high design prices. You can still get away easily with over $5USD per sale with a lower design price because of volume commission. But the limits are so random. What about the 4.00CAD? So if you’re canadian you can only hope for USD2.92 max at today’s exchange rate. The canadian dollar hasn’t had a value of 4CAD to 3.5USD in over 2 years and isn’t predicted to go back there. Talk about devaluatng work…

    • Hey Chipdale,

      these changes ONLY AFFECT the Create Tool (specifically: https://www.spreadshirt.com/create-your-own). The statistics is therefore also only valid for Spreadshirt’s Create Tool.

      These changes DO NOT affect your designs on the Marketplace and in your SpreadShop.

      Let me know if you have any further questions.

      Best,
      Lena

  25. One more step toward taking away our freedom to put a value on our own work? The message you are conveying to all people who know how to use their minds is that you own their work, not them. First our freedom to determine the amount we earn per product was taken away. Now the amount we earn per design is practically taken away from us. The concept you obviously fail to understand is that you work for us, not the other way around. Without designers spreadshirt wouldn’t exist. So guess what: I am not lowering the price of my designs. One more step on your part toward devaluing my work, and I am out of here. Thank god there are a lot of places I can submit my work to. This message should not be answered. I only write to express my attitude.

    • Hi Boris,

      of course we value all the hard work you put into Spreadshirt. I can only repeat myself. This change does not affect your designs on the marketplace. On the marketplace you can continue to set it between $0 and $20. It sounds like you should only concentrate on the Marketplace.

      Best,
      Lena

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