Merchandising Your Artwork: Choosing the Right Sticker Manufacturer

1. Introduction: Stickers are the best. You can use them to keep your planner organized, slap them on your car, water bottle, laptop. They're the perfect way to showcase who you are to the people around you without ever having to say a word. They are also perfect for making money from your artwork. They're a low-cost way for people to support your creative practice. If all of this sounds exciting to you, then you're definitely in the right place. Hello, I'm Taylor. As well as being a full-time artist and Skillshare top teacher, I also run a cat theme stationery brand out of my home in Virginia. It's grown from creating stickers for fun. Just use my planner to a full-fledged shop that sells hundreds of stickers to people all over the US. In this quick class, we're going to go over the basics you need to start manufacturing your stickers. Don't let the word manufacturing scare you. For us, it just means we're going to let someone deal with the equipment, time and logistics of creating stickers. We're just going to make some artwork and get those puppies or kitties made for us. We do have to do a little leg work first, but I promise it's easy and will pay off in the long run. I'll walk you through the cost of manufacturing versus making your own stickers, how to pick the right sticker manufacturer for your needs, and how to price your stickers so that you actually make some money. Let's not waste any more time chatting and get into the class. I'll talk to you soon. 2. Your Project: [MUSIC] For today's project, we're going to order stickers from our new favorite manufacturer. In my shop I started off creating all of my stickers at home using my silhouette cameo. It worked great at first, but it costs a lot upfront in time and money. Now that my business is rapidly growing, manufacturing my stickers has allowed me to spend more time on my art work and get sticker quality that I can never replicate at home. I created this class to help you decide what's best for your business, while showing you how to go about ordering your own stickers. I highly recommend watching all the lessons through before making a decision. In the next lesson, we'll dive deeper into the pros and cons of both manufacturing and DIY stickers. I'll see you there. 3. Manufacturing vs. DIY Stickers: [MUSIC] I'm a hardcore do-it-yourselfer almost to my detriment, but we can get to that another time. Being a DIY girly, led me to making all of my stickers myself for my stationery business when I first got started. If you watch my class about making your own stickers, you heard me talk about how much money I wasted on supplies when I got started. It was mostly from learning how to do everything properly but some of it was the upfront costs that come with sticker making. While it's totally doable and a great option for a lot of people it does cost more upfront and takes more of your time to create the stickers yourself. If you have the extra cash and the time to commit to it. It's a great option for creating whatever your heart desires. However, my business began to grow faster than I anticipated, and I got to the point that I was cutting hundred plus sheets of stickers at a time, I would watch the Office for the billionth time while I spent days working through stacks of stickers. I really felt like a machine and not an artist. At that point, I decided to try manufacturing stickers with a company. It took me a minute to figure out what I was looking for in terms of quality, ease of ordering, and the general time frame. But ultimately I've made the decision to almost completely cut out DIY and stickers at home to sell. I could talk about the differences and the cost breakdown almost all day. I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to logistics, but I decided that it would be easier if I just make you a PDF guide with all the information I have on the subject. Which includes pros and cons of both sticker making methods, as well as a simple pricing breakdown for both. You can find that in the resources below. Let's go ahead and move on and talk about how to find a sticker manufacturer that works for your business seeds. 4. Sticker Samples: Why They're Important: Well, it can be tempting to pick a manufacturer you've heard of and just place an order for stickers, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. Most artists, including myself, are a little bit picky. I really want to feel the thing before I just order hundreds of them. Luckily, most sneaker shops offer cheaper discounted samples. Some will even let you order samples of your own designs to check out before you commit to ordering a bunch of them. Every sticker manufacturer also uses different materials. My personal favorite manufacturer, Sticker Mule, only offers mat and holographic. I used to think I wanted lots more options like liters and boils but after getting samples, I really just didn't like the way those looked or felt. You might check out the glitter and become a glitter-only sticker shop. That's why it's so important to order samples when you're first getting started. You can also reference them when you're ordering more. I know if I want to try out some glitter stickers from Sticker App, I can whip out my little sample sheet and pick out what color I want. To help you get started, here are some sticker manufacturers that currently offer sample sticker sets. It's also important to check the quality of the samples you get. Do the colors come out how you'd like? Is the edge cut clean enough? How does it hold up when you actually use it? The biggest pro for me when using a manufacturer is the quality and longevity of the stickers. These companies have access to really nice heavy-duty vinyl that you don't have the ability to use at home. When I'm ordering from a manufacturer, I want to make sure that my stickers are going to hold up for my customers. It's also important to think about what your customers are actually going to use your stickers for. Most people buy stickers to put on their cars, water bottles, or laptops. But maybe you're a planner sticker maker, in which case paper stickers were great. Just keep in mind what your customers are most likely to do with your stickers. A safe bet is just working with a manufacturer that makes durable stickers. Most of them will tell you how long they tend to last on the information page so be sure to check that out. In the next lesson, we're going to go over how to price your manufactured stickers so you're actually making money from them. 5. Selling Your Stickers: Cost Breakdown: [MUSIC] Like most business endeavors, you want to make sure it's actually worth your time and that you actually make money. We aren't going to go over how to market or sell your stickers in the short class, but I did want to set you up to sell them at a cost that makes you money, honey. [LAUGHTER] If you hate math, but don't worry, I do too. All you need to do is take the cost of your stickers and divide that by how many you bought. For example, if I bought 50 stickers for $68 plus shipping, always include the shipping costs, 68 divided by 50 equals 1.36, which means it cost me $1.36 per sticker. Now, this only includes the cost of the stickers, not the time it took me to create and prepare the artwork. I like to spread my production and packaging costs across all of my products evenly. For stickers, I always add about $1 for smaller items that I get manufactured. This comes out to $2.36 per sticker, and I times that by 50 percent to get 3.56. Based on what I know, stickers normally go for potential wholesaling opportunities and in-market sales. I'll round that up to about $4. This gives me a little extra cushion if I sell the stickers wholesale, which is normally half of the retail price. It also helps make everyone's life easier at in-person markets, since we don't have to deal with change. It can be easy to say all of your stickers are $4 and call it a day, but be sure to do the quick math with new batches of stickers to make sure that you're still making a profit. If you order special materials, the cost could easily sneak up on you and cause you to lose money. If you need to raise your sticker price to $5 or more to account for the size or material, then do it. This also helps keep everyone in the industry happy because undercharging for your products devalues everyone, not just yourself. In the next lesson, we're going to wrap up everything we learned about the basics of manufacturing. 6. Conclusion: Now you know the basics of sticker manufacturing. I'm happy to go in more depth on designing, ordering, and selling in future classes. Be sure to let me know if that's something you'd be interested in by posting in the discussion tab below. Also, please don't forget to share your stickers in the project gallery. I'd love to check them out. You can also let everyone know which manufacturer you ended up working with. There's tons of options out there. Just to recap, we went over the differences between manufacturing and making your own stickers, why it's important to get stickers samples from manufacturers, and finally, how to price your stickers to make money. I hope you enjoy this class. Manufacturing is a great option if you don't have the time or space to make your own stickers. It also frees up your time to create more while someone else makes your products. Last but not least, if you like the class, I'd love for you to leave me a review and follow me for more classes. I'll see you next time. Bye. However, as my business began to grow, the office grew for the thousands time, and while it, I can't say these words. I wrote them but I can't say them. It's also, I'm Cardi B. [NOISE] Maybe a two coffee day. Two of these.