Comic Merchandise: Where do you go to get things made?

[Tieback]

In time, I plan to self publish my comic. And I also want to create some comic merchandise as well: bookmarks, buttons, necklaces, T-shirts (to name a few) I started researching the different services and businesses out there, and as expected, there are A LOT of options! To help sift through all the choices, I was hoping to get other comic artist’s opinions. If anyone has used a service to create merchandise for their comic, please share:

1. what service you used
2. what was made
3. how satisfied you were with the process
4. cost and final product.

Ideally, I would like to find a comic merchandising producing service that is a create on demand. My living space is limited. Also, to make things simpler, I’d prefer to only use one or a few businesses to produce the products. It would be more complicated to use: business A to make the T-shits, and business B to make the buttons, and service C to make the bookmarks, and so on.

Thanks for reading!

[shazzbaa]

I use Redbubble for t-shirts and prints!! I still use Fireball Printing to make my posters for cons -- they're very quick and have good quality -- but shipping posters individually is a pain, so I let Redbubble handle online orders!

I'm really sold on Redbubble's quality, to be honest. I bought some of my own prints to make sure I was selling a good product, and I was really happy with how they looked (here's a couple photos)! I also bought a couple of my own t-shirts to make sure the product was good and to take some photos to show them off, and holy crap, I wear them all the time now because they're so freakin soft and comfortable.

Redbubble's create-on-demand, so it costs nothing for you, and they have a ton of other products, and let you customise your design for each one. They also do pretty frequent sales on various items, which are a great opportunity to promote your stuff. I haven't bought stuff from Society 6 or any of the other similar services -- I seem to recall Redbubble having a sliiightly better profit margin and that's why I went with them originally?? But I'm not sure if that's still true.

anyway that's my ad for redbubble xD

[kristintipping7]

I use moo for stickers and vista print for postcards. I know both of them do more kinds of merch, though. Vistaprint is cheaper, but moo has better quality. Both of them allow small orders. So you can see if stuff sells before making a big commitment.

[efdvorsky]

I usually stick to local but I've used PureButtons since I like their quality (although they're a tad expensive)

Next year I'm going to use Ka-Blam for printing, I've heard it's good for what you pay for but not high-quality. Still, they do custom sizes and the size I need is covered by the site. (Haven't seen anyone else who does custom without minimal order)

[GesuGesu]

Everything either via Taobao or aliexpress. I've gotten acrylic charms, metal charms, and pins ordered, and most were at the price of about $0.30-50/piece. Good shit, China.

[AnnaLandin]

I've gotten merch made with Zap Creatives (acrylic charms and stickers) and square buttons made with Awesome Merchandise!

Here's what some of the charms look like:


I've got them available at my Tictail store.

I haven't got any good pictures of the square badges yet, but they're 38mm and came out beautifully.

Both companies were easy to work with, the final product turned out really nice, and they delivered very quickly. The acrylic charms - being as large as they are - cost me about 17 SEK each (which is about 2 USD at the current exchange rate, I think?) to make, and the buttons ended up costing me less than 4 SEK each, which is about 40 cents.

Also, if you're European, Awesome Merchandise has the excellent advantage of free shipping to Europe!

[smolrice]

Hope you don't mind me asking but how was the quality of your products? I've used taobao before and I was really disappointed with the quality of my charms (they were supposed to be clear but they gave me white acrylic instead) and I'm wondering if it was just bad luck or a widespread issue.

[GesuGesu]

I have some pictures. I happened to meet a GOD of PR who did her very best to make me happy and constantly asked and confirmed all the details that I wanted or needed. I ordered 6cm, double sided white acrylic charms with epoxy coating on the front so it looks "bubbly".

http://sta.sh/01r7uky97zii (ps. I am bad at taking photos)

I also ordered metal charms. That service was not as good, but only because the charms didn't come with a strap like the acrylics did. I had to go and buy and attach separate straps. The metal itself had a good weight, although heavier than expected, and the indent/upraised metal was not as deep as I imagined.

http://sta.sh/0wu18v3mltp

[dojo]

I used Stickermule for some stickers I wanted to sell awhile back, and the quality was incredible. They weren't that expensive, and they felt like they could withstand water (don't remember if they actually can, though, but that's what the material feels like). There's been a couple times I've bought stickers from cons and the art would just immediately rub off the paper if you weren't careful, so it was nice that stickermule's stickers were so strong. When I get ready to start doing cons I'm definitely going to use them for any stickers I decide to do.

[quietsnooze]

I've used Artscow for my merch! Mostly I buy bundles of 20 for my patreon rewards and I get to test out a variety of their products (they offer a ton of selection). Never pay full price though, there are ALWAYS sales on and for a much more reasonable fee and usually free shipping.

EDIT: Here's a coupon to get you started: Any 10 selected items here for $20 with free shipping worldwide: http://www.artscow.com/photo-gifts/crazy-bundle COUPON: ZCRAYSALEZTT8G

A selection of mine:

[ComicGeek]

We typically get all our merch locally, but use Everyone Loves Buttons for our pinback buttons.

[Zyephen]

I use catprint and shortrun posters for my posters and prints. Catprint has nice quality and can be fairly cheap depending on the size you get. Shortrun has fair quality and are quite cheap for large format posters.