Print on Demand's Real Playbook w/ David Hooker

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I feed practically synonymous with these commerce. I have done, I've been a Shopify partner for, geez, since 2011 now, long time. And early on, especially, like just these print undemand services, like print-ify or print full synonymous with e-commerce, with direct-to-consumer. Because they were early, they had plugins for Shopify. It was an easy way, you know, where a graphic designer could spin up a Shopify store and start selling a physical good and get it fulfilled. And, you know, oftentimes we see print undemand, added as like, all right, we can add additional branded merch to our store with relatively little effort. And so, when David Hooker from these services, from Fuel, we're going to find out, you know, where Fuel got that name applied to be a guest on the show. I'm like, man, I got to talk to this guy, right? Because fashion and apparel, possibly, you know, one time it was, I don't know if it still is, I believe it is, the biggest vertical on the platform. And so you just, you can't talk about Shopify and not run into these print undemand services. So David Hooker from Fuel, how are you doing? Thanks for coming. Hi, Kurt. Thank you so much for having me on. Then I believe that fashion and apparel still is the biggest sector on Shopify e-commerce. And I don't know if the top of my head, but I think if we look to retail in general, fashion and apparel is going to be right up there in the top verticals. It's got to be. But all right, you Fuel, what's, what is Fuel? FYUL. Yes. So if I could have a Uranus remember anything, it's not that I work for Fuel, but that it's the fuel is what was born out of the combination of two leading pioneering print undemand platforms. Printful and printify. When the company's merged, we merged in 2024, November of 2024. It really was a merger, right? Like we got a lot of people asking at the time, you're quite a quiet who. But really it was genuinely a merger of equals. As we were looking at, you know, what do we call the entity that sits above them, we looked at the difference, right? Because we both were print something, printify, printful. We looked at that difference and we had the full and the fire. We combined them for FYUL. It was obvious to us that that new word should be pronounced Fuel, because the, it's a really great analogy for us, because the thing that happens with us in your e-commerce store, your Shopify store is that we are there in the background, silently fulfilling your products, adding your designs, getting them out to your customer's doors, right? Your e-commerce, your Shopify store is running, thanks to us. But nobody who's buying from you knows that we're involved, right? And that's the way we like to do it. That's the way you like to do it. So it's like when you put fuel in your car. If there's no fuel in the car, it's not going to go anywhere. But if you just look at the car, you don't know whether or not it has fuel in it. So we felt that that analogy worked really well for us. So fuel is printify and printful. And printify and printful to pioneering companies, as I said earlier, they've been around since 2013 and 2015. Like you said in your intro cut, they're synonymous with print on demand, with Shopify, printify was initially simply a plug-in for Shopify, right? That's what it was and then it grew into much at more. And we obviously connect a lot of places other than the Shopify as well. But that's really where we were born and really where we came up. I want to know, truly, for the selfish benefit of me and our listeners, from your seat, because you have rare access to a lot of data and experience here, what separates the top 1% of the merchants selling print on demand from everybody else? I think it's a great question. And as well as having a lot of lines of data that I can look at, I also have exposure to a lot of those top 1% merchants. I wouldn't be doing my job well if I didn't speak to them as often as I possibly can, right? I'm the brand director for printify and printful. And you can't create a good brand unless you know how people feel about your brand. So I need to go talk to people as well as look at lines of data. The thing that I would say really sticks out for me for that 1% is their resilience, right? You know, these are talented people who have skills and ability across a bunch of different things. But if I look at the kind of commonality they have, it's their determination in their resilience. And then if you look at the data, right, not just my anecdotal feedback from all the interviews I've done, but if you look at the data as well, we see it's the merchants and sellers who are the most consistent, who keep pushing out new designs, whatever their tactics may be, whether you're going for a more brand based approach where you have a niche of people that you really identify with and you're creating designs for those people. So, Mum's the scuba dive. Like I met a great merchant who sells Lebanese food designs. She started in Canada. She had a community there, right? And she she creates for that group. Or if you're a more what I call a trends based merchant where you're looking for like the next hot thing that people are selling, finding perhaps moments of popular culture. We had a great story with one of our merchants who during the Johnny Debt trial. Now, whatever side of that trial you come down on, no judgment for me there, but one of the stars of that whole thing was Johnny Debt's lawyer, right? Camille, I think her second name is Lopez. I remember her first name is Camille because the t-shirt that exploded was Camille's My Lawyer. Just like a really simple black t-shirt, white writing, Camille's My Lawyer. When huge, particularly on TikTok. So that would be a more trends based approach, right? But the merchant who sold that was constantly trying things, putting out new listings, trying new designs when they found a design replicating it onto not just a t-shirt, but a mug and other things. And so whatever kind of approach you're taking, you have to be determined and resilient. You are going to have designs that don't sell. When we look at the look at the data, typically most sales from merchants are coming from about 30% of the items they have listed, which tells you 70% of stuff never goes sold. So you have to be prepared to interact with that level of rejection, right? You know, think of other things in life. If you're able to tell you 70% of the times you try, you're not going to get through, you're not doing that, right? Like I'm too old to have ever used a dating app, but I would imagine if you know, 70% of the times you swipe, right? Like it's not that you might give up. And like I said, it's too old. So let's not let's not tell that. I'm proud of laid my forties and I got married right before those dating apps took off. And man, it felt like it in the last chopper out of nom that I did not I dodged having to deal with that. But okay, with you know, what I think is so great about the print on demand and part of what has fueled its popularity is the low entry, the low baritone entry. I don't actually have to buy or pay for anything beyond my initial Shopify store to design list products and have them available for sale where people could just say, hey, I'm going to buy and then I get fulfilled. So it's really low risk to try things. And to your point, it sounds like what that enables is these like hyper niche very often temporal or it's like we're just going to have a pop culture thing that lives for a short instance and people buy the shirt. And like if you have access to the right audience, you could sell that. And then but you if a bit of a conveyor belt where like you have got to come up with the next and the next and the next. But you know, if you're in that position like you're plugged into it, you could do it. But it sounds like it's you know, a lot of, you know, make hey while the sun shines, see what sticks just like churning out designs. Yeah, for me in the joke that I do in my every day. And one of the reasons I get out of bed in the morning and go into work really happy is is that low low barrier to entry. The fact that you can start a store start selling real products and you don't need to buy anything upfront. What that has done and I love to say this phrase is we have democratized entrepreneurs. right? You don't need a garage to put stuff in like that your mom's gonna get annoyed because you've got boxes of stuff you don't need that you don't need alone from dads right so just have enough capital to start a business you don't need an MBA you don't need a fancy degree you all you need is an idea and an internet connection right laptop to okay so you need three things right so that means that anyone anywhere can go go start or we again you mentioned data before when I look at the data of like who uses printifying who uses print for what we see is we have people from all around the world old people young people we have people with all different kinds of niches right whether that you know any kind of political niche you can think of any kind of gender or sexuality niche or personal interest anything you can think of we have merchants who are selling in those niches to those people but one of the things that we do see that is consistent in the day to years our audience does tend to be people from a lower socio-economic background so that means is people who otherwise wouldn't be able to start their own businesses are able to start their own businesses which for me is thrilling like it's great like to be able to give somebody opportunity that they otherwise wouldn't have like what better place to work than that so that low barrier to entry that low barrier to entry is fantastic and if you know determination is the thing that kind of separates the wheat from the chaff then you know I'm all for that that's a meritocracy as well right that's incredible yeah we we do often say democratizing the tools because as the technology advances the barrier to entry gets lower and lower and to here but you have the data to back it up to say like okay yeah that seems to be really what is happening here interesting okay now we have focused seemingly in our example purely on t-shirts but with print on demand I could sell I mean last I looked it was a dizzying array of stuff tell me if I want to just start making some merch in whatever it is what you know I'm going to pick a niche in my niche is dog lawyers I'm starting Kurtz dog lawyers store lawyers for dogs and what can I put my logos brands and models on so yeah so give you a number on your dizzying array it's over 1300 different products right so that's that's that's not even getting into sizes and colors right like yeah it's like it's different blinks unique products the SK uses in the scoos is in the tens of thousands and I have to be careful to genuinely have to be careful that there isn't something that's been added to the castle of this week that I forgot about right because like one of the another great thing about working a private prime for him for this we get these little messages at the end of week saying all of the products have been added to a catholic and it's super fun to go through it but if you miss one week you'll be on so dog lawyers well we have a fine array of dog products for you Kurt so you've obviously got your leads your onesies in different sizes your dog bowls but then you'll find that there is an array of stuff that's adjacent to that so obviously your t-shirts caps tumblers your wall art whatever it may be we have within both catalogs we have dog and pet categories within that catalog so you can go select from there you dizzying array I think is a nice combination of words go go look and you'll you'll have it if if your lawyer needs a notebook to write notes down in we've got that as well like everything you everything you can think of really the yeah no I the last time I looked at that catalog I like I just I couldn't believe it because I he'd used it early on where it's like all right there's a hoodie and some sweat pants and a t-shirt and we've got a few options for t-shirt cool you know today and it's just it's like all right if you could think of it if there's something there or similar enough I would say you're looking at drop shipping stores for me anyway I suspect the biggest mistake is using a mockup for your product photo you know designing the product of the never ordering one yourself to take the photos thoughts there I think that that's definitely an important consideration the the first thing to be said is that we see that the more thought and the more unique a mockup is the higher your your chances of selling right there are a lot of tools out there to help you and a lot of them are really good mockup generators and stuff but in my personal opinion as a brand director there's no substitute for ordering a sample putting that sample on somebody who speaks to that audience and then photographing them to the best your ability but also previously I spoke about how we're lowering the bar to entry democratizing entrepreneurship right and now I'm saying okay I have to spend money on the sample I have to find a model and I have to know how to point a camera at something in such a way and do lighting and stuff right that's not democratizing you know on the level that you kind of had me thinking when you answer the previous question David so what we are seeing and doing now it's really exciting it's we're rolling this out to people like it's not all the way out to everybody on the printify platform yet but we're seeing some really great success so there is that we've been able to make it so that you're AI generated mockup like is of a really really high quality I'm skeptical myself right like when the team came to me so we're gonna do AI generating mockups and it's like you see all of the headlines out there about AI slop and all of these things but we tested it and I had my team tested and I lead the design team and the realism that those engines are now capable of and we tested across a bunch of different ones so we find the best result is amazing and again what that's allowing people to do we see on the platform is people who don't have enough money for a photo studio haven't got time to find a model are able to create lifeline unique unique is I think the word I would love people listening to really latch onto you need a unique blueprint right this unique to you because you're building a brand you're differentiating yourself with something else if people see the same model with the same thing time and time again they're gonna think okay like you know you haven't put thought into it so you're not gonna get my money AI is now at the point where you can create a beautiful mockup this unique you can tailor it as well right so you can find person with just the right skin complexion just the right high like in just the right setting for the brand product that you've always imagined so your point about a great mockup you can be more dead on I still think that there's nothing better than a mockup that's made in real life but the AI tools is democratizing that and I think that's great to I was hoping you would check out our new app promo party pro it is what I want to be the single best easiest way to run a free gift with purchase promo on Shopify we just put it live in the app store we've got less than 50 users we want your feedback so if you need to run a free gift with purchase promo in the near future install it try it there's a live chat I check that all the time and so if you have any issues at all you know or any suggestions on how we can make it even easier to use let us know we're happy to help if you want to try it search promo party in the app store promo party pros the app give it a shot it's got a free trial thanks I like I like this answer for several reasons one it has been my suspicion that lifestyle photos are going to outperform the late the flat lay lay flat the product on white right I want to see at least for my first photo I want to see that product in use with a person and like an actual background and if a good AI generated version of that is what it takes great let's go for it I you know realistically I want a real person but you know the sky is the limit on what you could spend on that like I'm gonna rent a studio and I need to get a fancy camera and I'm a higher model and I got like and then yeah I got to edit it oh no now we're gonna do a new line we got to do this again I get why it AI is so attractive there in generative AI now is really good you said you tried several models Google Man open Anna man the stuff that could do is really impressive even you know the models that aren't as good are much better than they were six months ago I could do some some really impressive things I think it's important to say that those tools are only as good as the people using them right like if you if you're not tweaking adjusting making those things perfect you're going to end up with a sloppy result right if you just type in you know mail with a t-shirt in a park you're just gonna get something generic right like you need to have a real strong awareness of what you want that brand to be like what kind of mail is it what age mail is it what kind of park is it and how is he standing all of that stuff and we've seen you know the the reason why an in-person filter always wins it is because of the uniqueness of it and because it captures a moment right and that's why top top fashion brands for years and years have spent huge money on faultishers right there's a reason why Louis Vuitton coach who you know Mark Jacobs whoever you want to think of they're putting a lot of money and on the model and the situation and all of that stuff there's a reason the reason for that but we've also seen those top companies are making use of AI because it's allowing them to sometimes get into situations that are out of reach even for them so why wouldn't you do that for the same as your brand as long as you're doing it in a way where you're thinking about what goes into it if you put in a generic prompt, you'll get a generic result. But if you think about what you want in there and craft it, there's craftsmanship in the use of AI, then you will get something that's not a sloppy result. So, I see on the communities, we have a lot of people who are very strictly very anti-AI, and I'm all for the artistry and the craftsmanship. And we're also, it was on the news today here in the UK. A lot of companies are rushing for a singular, no AI. What's the word, badge of approval, right? And I'm all for that as well, right? Like it's going to be people's choices. People will choose between whether they want to watch a movie with no AI or one with AI and make the decision for me. But what I think is really, really important is there's a craft to it and we should respect that and we should allow people to use it because it gives people who, otherwise, wouldn't be able to unleash that creativity away to do it. The only way to good, good at it is to keep playing with it and to keep trying. But yeah, especially the image prompts that's like an LLM text prompt, you know, I've been able to get those down pretty well. The image prompts are interesting, you know, and I ended up, of course, as an AI user, making a prompt that writes image prompts for me, right? It's all very recursive, but you get a much better result with that. But yeah, it is, you know, garbage in, garbage out. Like, if you give it a lazy input, you're not going to get an amazing result out on the other end. Absolutely. But, you know, even if I got a fiddle with it 10 times, it's still going to be easier, faster, and cheaper than if I, you know, had to go higher model, find a model. The other way to do it is, you know, trying to use influencers, content creators, like, hey, we, especially for like, you know, the top of mind, real like meme stuff, or like, hey, we saw you mentioned this, you know, could we send you a t-shirt? Okay. So then my cost is potentially, you know, just fulfillment on the shirt. And then, you know, if I'm lucky, they're going to wear it, share it, show it. You know, and that's kind of the product seedings, what we used to call that. It's like, all right, we're going to find 10 people in some of the product. And with print on demand, you know, it's like, you know, if I'm selling electronics, I talked to a guy recently with selling turntables for 600 bucks. Okay, that strategy and I got to work for someone like him. But I'm selling a t-shirt, much more reasonable where, okay, okay, you know, I could send that to a few people. And maybe you, one of them goes viral on TikTok. Ah, you know, now I got lucky. So like, a little bit of a a lot of play there, I think, but, you know, much more accessible. I think the principles that we talked about earlier still apply, right? Craftsmanship, pick your influencer. There's a lot of influencers out there. Pick one that works for you. There's right for you. There's right for your brand. Right for your niche. Right for your trend. Whatever it may be. Right? Don't just send out emails to the most popular ones that you found on the list. Like go look for the ones that you think really work for you and your store. And then resilience. Some of them are going to not reply to you. Like, influencers can be some of the most difficult people to work with, right? They're busy people on a constant hamster wheeler content in order to keep their businesses alive. So some of them just don't have the time to reply to your emails or your requests or wherever it came in. So your resilience is going to have to come through there as well. I want to hear your thoughts on, you know, I don't know if you have an answer for me, but the, I think the single biggest problem that merchants are facing in 2026 is customer acquisition cost. These ads platforms like meta are getting more competitive over time and more expensive over time. And so that it's really, really getting to be a recurring issue that you'll see like, you know, in forums and subreddits. And so do you have thoughts on branch strategy on like, because I could pay to rent traffic, right? Or I could try and build it organically. I could do both thoughts. So I, it's a recurring cycle, right? You don't want some method for advertising. It comes out into the world. The early adopters really enjoy it, make huge benefit of it because it's cheaper than it was. Like, they're the only ones doing it, right? Like meta ads is the example. But if we go back previously, like the first users of TV ads would have, you know, really enjoyed much more favorable conditions than the later people. Radio ads. As the technology comes out, early adopters get a much better acquisition cost and then you have to get creative. And I think we're really at a point where we're looking for the new dawn of where we go. There are a couple of, you know, kind of core principles to that as well. I think creativity is one of them, right? So either your ad is like so good and so creative and stands out from everyone else so well that you're really penetrating and going through. That's hard because you've got up against a lot of other people who are really, really creative. So it's difficult. The other thing that we see people doing is community, right? So like showing that resilience and perseverance in community, you know, if you're building an niche, so this is to your point of brand, right? Like if you're building an niche and you're creating your Canadian Lebanese food t-shirts, right? Just to take the previous example, you will find subreddits, communities, niches, like maybe even like physical places you can go where those people are hanging out, right? Where your cost of acquisition is going to be lower, you can speak to people more directly. You're not swimming with all of the other fish. You're like in the pool that you need to be. So that means that you need to really know your brand and know your niche and know your audience. Right? Like if you don't already know those things, you've gotten lucky and you're making sales, right? You have you have you have gotten lucky, you've struck on something. And I've seen that with merchants, right? We have a lot of merchants who the first t-shirt they put out, sells and they're like, oh my god, it's sold. And a lot of them don't really know why, right? They're just like people like the design, I guess. But there's more to it than that. There's a reason why people like the design, right? And there's a specific kind of person who likes the design. So the more you know about that person and why they bought it and why they like that design, the higher your chances of repeating that formula, right? You've got lucky ones lining down straight twice. You won't get lucky twice. But if you're smart, you go listen, find out over the bread. I love nothing more than talking to customers, right? Like I think e-commerce is a great game for the extrovert where you can go talk to people, learn why they're like some, aren't you like it because of that? Okay, cool, cool, cool. Then I'm just going to repeat that. We do that on a slightly different formula somewhere else. So I think whatever business you're in, knowing your audience, having empathy, sympathy and compassion for that audience, knowing what makes them tick is going to help you sell more and that's going to lower your acquisition cost, right? Another great way around having high acquisition costs is having returning customers, right? Like if you've got someone and they come and they buy from you once, if they come and buy from you second time, you're not going to have to pay anything from the comeback. I said, other than maybe the cost of your email marketing platform, right? But if they love the stuff so much as they come back and buy another or if they buy more than one T-shirt because they love everything that's in there because they saw one ad for one T-shirt. There was like, oh my god, I love that sandwich. And then you turn it on, oh my god, he's got all sandwiches. I love all of these sandwiches. I'm going to buy a T-shirt for all of them. Then your ALV has gone up and your acquisition cost has gone down. So I think that's the way around it and that's what we see a lot of merchants, the smart ones doing. Yes, yeah, you kind of figure like, all right, if on the first order, if I could just break even, then I have done my job. All right, really on email and organic social, but really email and maybe some retargeting ads. Can we get them to come back and make a second third or more purchases? Email for me is the great ignored, derided marketing tool, right? Like I used to have a CEO, the CMO, sorry, that I used to work for. And he used to just say to me, David, email is a print money button, a print money button, right? Like get your list and email them. Email them and email them email them. And like, who cares if your open rate is 11% and your click-through rate is 2%. Right? It's free money, right? Like just just go and do it. So I would hate for anybody running any comma store to think themselves above email marks. You're not. Do it. Hey, today's episode is sponsored apart by Zipify Plus because you've got enough to do as a business owner and marketer. The last thing you need to be worried about is optimizing your upsells. But if they're not optimized, you're leaving up to 20% of your revenue on the table every single month. So be honest, did you start a new batch of split tests on your upsells this week? Of course not. Real optimization requires constant attention, running tests, launching offers, reading reports, adjusting for sales. Your team's too busy for all that. Zipify Plus takes over your upsells completely. You get a dedicated team that builds, manages and optimizes your upsells for you. They work with over 100 Shopify Plus stores. Their average client sees 233,000 a year in extra revenue without lifting a finger. If you can't remember the last time you updated your upsells, go to zipify.com/USP to book a free strategy call today. Their team will audit your store and show you exactly where you're leaving money on the table. No commitment required. That's zipafy.com/USP because you've got enough to do without worrying about upsells too. I may I've really let my newsletter lag. >> No, get back in. >> I'm going to get back into it. >> Because I 100% know you're right. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Something interesting about you that I wanted to hear just a little bit about. You gave a TEDx talk on visual literacy and this is prior to your work with Printful. But it's too fascinating and being in web design, so close to UI/UX where I think visual literacy can apply here pretty directly as well. Any thoughts there, any advice for folks? >> It's a long time ago and I was like, "Well, it's eight years ago," which tells you how old I am. Perhaps about the little kind of sets me out as some kind of front runner. Because I guess visual literacy is much more important today. I gave that talk because it started from the frustration of going to an art gallery. It was one of the big ones in New York. I can remember exactly which one I think it might have been Malmö. And I got the tour guy, the one that you stick in your ear and you press the button as you go around. And the thing was just so pretentious. You have this museum, it was Malmö. I'm pretty sure it was Malmö. And they had this thing on a Wednesday afternoon that it's free. In a Wednesday afternoon, you can go and look at the great artworks to free. Amazing, making art accessible for everybody. Love that. But then you get the audio guide and it's so pretentious. I was an editor for a living. And I didn't understand 10% of the words that the snobby guy on the thing. I'm British. I'm used to snobby people as well. You're just getting this in your ear and I was like, "Why are you keeping this stuff with your. " And you know what I did? I switched to the kids audio. And I had so much more fun. And I actually learned so much more about it. Because they taught me on a level where they weren't making this thing unattainable and out of reach. And then it just spartan idea for me is like, clearly the first guide was written by someone who done a literature degree or something. And I did literature at university. But is there a visual literacy like about how to read a picture? Because the kids audio guide was so much fun. I'd love to be able to do that and relate that to people. And then I looked and there was nothing at the time. This was back in 2018. I think the University of Toledo, which you know, very honest with you, I didn't even know where Toledo was when I saw that. Sorry if anyone lives in Toledo, I'm sure it's lovely. But their university had a course on visual literacy. And I thought, well, this is just like incredible thing. You know, why are you doing it that way? And so I kind of dug deeper and more and more into it. And then I was working for Prezi in Silicon Valley at the time. So a lot of people in my audit were entrepreneurial people and stuff like that. And as I dug into it, I found that we were really at the time seeing the effect of things like Cambridge Analytica, Trump won the election in 2016, Brexit also happened in 2016. And they had really changed the game in terms of political marketing. And they were doing that with ads. And if you look to those ads, visuals played a big, big, big, key part of it. And we taught a lot at school, I think, about how to understand when someone is not telling you the truth. Or when someone is telling you the truth and why that's powerful or not powerful or why you like something. But I don't think we were, I certainly wasn't in school taught. That image is playing on your preconceptions of X and taking you in a direction of Y. And images are far more powerful than words. There's a reason why traffic signs are pictures. You know, the picture of two elderly people crossing the road to warn you that elderly people are around. There's a reason why that sign doesn't say, be careful. elderly people are known to be out on this air. Like you can't read that. But like a person with a walking stick hunched over, oh, I get that. Okay, there's old people around. So visuals are way, way, way more powerful. And I just think that we as consumers should at least know what people are trying to do to us. Right? You know, I do it in marketing all the time. I am trying to have an effect on my audience to the image I use. And you're being manipulated. Like we're all being manipulated by words and images all day every day. That's fine. Like we should be. People have to sell stuff. Right? People buy stuff. And like I'm not saying that, you know, the people doing the manipulation should stop. They should carry on. But the people are on the other end of it. I think it's good for us to know, you know, what are the techniques that are being aimed at us. Right? And you know, if we look at it now, I think visual literacy is probably becoming an outdated method. Right? AI literacy. Is a thing that's coming. I think, you know, we'll see that the next generation of kids that comes through school are way more literate reading AI. And AI images and AI texts and stuff than we are. But yeah, I just thought it was important and I was lucky enough to be invited to give a talk about it in Boston. And I did and ended up on the TED platform. And it's very cool. Is it a stick talk? I will include it in the show notes for anyone who's interested. The, but yeah, I know I think you're right. The importance of knowing what you're being exposed to. Like I want to know, okay, what are my own cognitive biases and try and be aware of and think through those. Because I am unintentionally manipulating myself to some degree. And then, okay, with sales tactics with negotiation, there are methods of persuasion at play. So, okay, I got to know those then visually a similar thing occurs. Like we look at images in a certain way. We have preconceptions and so some of that can be leveraged or even just knowing a little bit of art history can help. But, you know, that probably involves an audio guide at MoMA to figure out. So, okay. Man, but I think you write about AI visual literacy. I don't even know what's real anymore. Like I go online and I'm like, I have no idea. And it's funny, years ago we had the Turing test. I mean, say, all right, if you could chat over text with an AI and you don't know it's an AI, then we have solved AI. They are just as smart and as good at us. Well, it turns out that we have long, we've beaten the Turing test for a year at least. But also, it's much more complicated than that. Like there's so many more tells and things where you get suspicious. Who do the M-dash would be the thing, right? And like visually those same things are occurring. And it probably, you know, you're right with AI. More important than ever. But, okay, looking forward, you've got visibility into where your platform is going. And potentially where some of E-com is going with it. TikTok shop. Is this, are we, is it huge? Is it, you know, has it peaked? What do we think about TikTok? Is it huge? Yes. Absolutely it is. There's billions of people on that app and there's millions and billions of people making purchases through that app and influence through that. So is it huge? Yes. Has everybody figured out how to do it? Yeah. No. Like just like we were talking previously that like there's a group of people who earlier dropped something and they get to know it first and others come later. We're seeing from our data that there are merchants who really, really understand TikTok. Like really get it, know how to work on it, have found a formula. And it's a formula that we're actually in the process of a printed fire of noting down and trying to work in like democratizing that formula and giving it to people where we can. But it's, and it's a thing that's evolving. And I think you can see like if you've been on TikTok shop in terms of the progress that TikTok themselves have made in terms of that as a platform for sellers, right? The services they offer, the SLAs they ask for, that's developing all the time. Like TikTok themselves when new to commerce when when they first got into it. So they're all also working it through. But it is huge. It's going to be huge. As more people get to know it, get to know how it works. As the younger generation gets more purchasing power, right? Like as they grow up and get a little bit more money and they are going to different places for their decisions on things. I think we're going to see a grow. That doesn't mean it's necessarily for everyone, right? Like if you find TikTok daunting and scary, you don't like it, it's fine, you don't have to. But if you find it exciting, fresh, new and you're looking for the next place to go, it's it's absolutely definitely a place you should go and check out. And a lot of the same principles are going to reply resilience is going to apply. Creativity at speed is going to apply. Just the rules are going to be different. Like the specificity of some of the rules is going to be different. The yeah, I also want to hear a little bit about some of the big brands that do this. Because with drop shipping, like the context we approached it was, this is very accessible. Anyone can start for the first time with any comm store, with a Shopify store and offer print on demand. But you also do it for plenty of big brands like Netflix sells using print on demand through printify. I'm just curious about some of those who might be some of our surprising folks using it. We do do it for major brands. I'm not a liberty to diverge all of them. Like some of them have kind of contracts with us where they like it not to be known that we're fulfilling on their behalf, which we understand, right? We have plenty of very small merchants who also think in that way, right? Like it's chattizen and illusion. We're happy to be the fuel in your car and for people to never see the fuel go in your car. The reason why big brands are using it is because of the freedom it gives them, right? Like whether you're a small individual operating out of your bedroom or if you're a huge, great multi-national, there are some things about selling online, which are difficult, whatever stuff. Like so, for example, international, right? Like I've spoken to merchants who do things like drop shipping or who haven't yet moved to print on demand, who are working for companies and they're like, David, you have any idea how difficult it is to send a box of t-shirts to Canada from Texas? It's so difficult, right? And now take you through like you have to weigh it and all of this and it's Canada, it's just over there. Like, you know, it's not that far. So because Printful, for example, has, you know, we own all of our own facilities, we have nine of them all around the world. We can get you the same quality product in various different international places, we deliver to over a hundred and nine different countries. And we take that hassle of international away from you, which is great for the bedroom entrepreneur and it's great for your purchasing person and Netflix as well, right? Like it works for both of them. And then also the other great thing is what we, again, something that we see all of our smaller merchants doing is that you can test the new idea without having to buy a whole bunch of, and there's a really important sustainability element there too, as in like looking after our planet and being friendly towards our environment. If you look at, depends on which kind of figures you look at, but there are millions of tons of apparel that are either sent to landfill or even worse burn every year. It's, you know, the numbers are pretty horrific. We believe that if every product was made on demand, we're gonna take a huge chunk out of that and stop people doing. And, you know, it's interesting because these big retailers, but big retailers, big budgets, really smart people, algorithms, AI and all of that, still are not really good at predicting whether a yellow t-shirt or a white t-shirt is gonna be the big thing next time. Right? They're not great at it. And they're never going to be-- No matter what, those things, those predictions are largely based on what happened historically. It's a, you know, entased and fast. It's so subjective, right? And oftentimes kind of arbitrary. And it's so changeable, right? Like who knows if Charlie XX is gonna decide that her album cover should be green, right? Like she knows, but like is she gonna tell everybody and she might not know the next day. And then we don't know if she's gonna take off or not, right? Like it, and it might be someone else. So yeah, they're not really, they're not really good at it. And what on demand allows you to do is like, okay, I'll test it in every color, right? Without having to buy boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff, the sit-in of warehouse will still go to landfill or get burned like afterwards, right? No one wants to do that. Like whatever your opinion on the environmental situation, nobody wants to burn a power, right? Like no one wants to do that. So the ability to test it without wasting both money and products is a fantastic thing. And that's why we have companies like Netflix who work with us. - It makes perfect sense to me. So anything new coming down the pipe with Printful? - Yeah, so both on the Printify and Printful side, there's a lot of exciting news. I mentioned on the Printify side that we're rolling out our next generation of AI mockups to more people like that. That's something that people are logging into the platform. We're gonna see more and more of them. We're really super excited to get that out to everyone. On both sides, new products are constantly being added all the time. If you go to our communities, our biggest communities are actually on Facebook. You'll see that like all of the different products that people are always asking us for, they're still adding new things. So we're doing that all of the time. And yeah, I think those are kind of the two kind of real principal ones that I would have people look out for. We're also doing some a lot of stuff to help people who are new to e-commerce get started, like making that journey to a first sale easier and easier 'cause we've democratized it for a bunch of people. We want to do it for even more. So we're very focused on allowing the people who can get into the POD game to expand and be more. And we're doing a lot of work with our communities to find those boot prints for success and then share them. One of the things that I'm always very grateful for is that, and I'm sure you experienced this too, Kurt, is that e-commerce, Shopify, sellers who know how to do it. And they don't care about sharing it with other people. They're like, I know how to do e-commerce. You want to learn how to do it? Like do it. And let's do it, right? Like it's not like, oh no, no, no, no, no, this is my secret, you can't no go away, right? Like it's not like that. The community is amazing. So we're doing a lot of things, for example, with our sellers club community. We're seeing a lot of growth in that. And we're seeing a lot of mentorship. As I mentioned, we're working hard on these boot prints for success and getting those out to people that are democratizing them too. So yeah, there's a lot coming up and it's all exciting. - Man, David Hooker, I am so glad I had you on the show. I learned, I'm familiar with the services, with print on demand, have used them, you've managed them, enjoy them, but hearing it from your perspective and getting some of that inside baseball on the thinking behind the product and the experience, very cool. - Ah, thank you for having me, Junca. I'm sure you've forgotten more about e-commerce than I know, but like it was great to have you on it. And you know, I think everyone can tell, like we talk about this stuff and the amazing things that our merchants do forever and ever. It's a really fun place to work and the reason for that is because of the amazing things that we empower our merchants to do. - So if I want to learn more about you and about print on demand, where am I going? - Ah, so first let's start with print on demand. So we mentioned you have both printify and print full. They, we are, you know, one company now, but like the two platforms are very separate and we're going to keep them very separate because they work in a very different way. Printify works with a third party network. So what you get there is a few more products in a more places is a bigger catalog. Printful, as I mentioned, we own all of our own facilities and every product you're getting is coming out of a facility that we run or highly vet with one of our partners. So the catalog is a little bit smaller, but you are getting a product from our facility rather than from a partner one. So depending on whether you're, what exactly kind of story you're looking for, you'll find that either printify or print full might work better for you. We've got on the website printify.com or printful.com, we've got lots of comparison pages to help you choose, but it's important to know that we're really, really separate platforms and we're going to keep them separate because they provide value to a different groups of people and different types of merchants. It's one of the things when we first merged people were like, "Are you going to merge the platforms?" We're not. We're keeping them separate and the reason we're keeping separate is because I'm just told that they want to keep it separate. If someone really wants to learn more about me, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm not a stranger. I'm there. You can look me. Or go click on, after you've been to printify and print full, go click on the show notes and look for my TED talk. I'll take the extra views. And I will, I will include links to everything in the show notes. David Hooker, be all. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kurt. [BLANK_AUDIO]