A Print-on-Demand T-Shirt Shop That Grew Into $250,000 a Year on Etsy
4 min read · RealCase summary
An Etsy print-on-demand t-shirt shop called Starfish USA, running since May 2021, had logged 46,920 orders at an average price of $17 by the time of a July 2024 case study, putting annual revenue at roughly $251,700.
The shop avoids relying on any single bestseller, spreading sales across teacher-themed shirts, holiday designs (Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day), and family group shirts for birthdays and celebrations, using unique, gender-neutral designs like an "I Survived 100 Days" character and family dinosaur sets. On a typical three-shirt family order made through Printify with Gildan unisex shirts, production runs about $10 a shirt and shipping about $8.67 total against a $17.99 selling price, leaving roughly $27.69 profit per order.
The shop leans on group family orders to raise cart value and spread shipping costs, targets holidays and celebrations throughout the year, and optimizes listing titles to use 139 of Etsy's 140 available characters for SEO.
Key takeaways
- ›Opened in May 2021 selling print-on-demand t-shirts fulfilled through Printify
- ›Reached about 46,920 units sold by July 2024, averaging roughly $17 per shirt
- ›Estimated annual revenue around $251,700, driven largely by multi-shirt family sets
Original source
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