I'm a surface designer with about a thousand repeat designs on a print-on-demand site. They handle everything but take a percentage. How would I work with another platform without adding another percentage cut?

You’d keep your current print-on-demand arrangement for the products they handle. When orders come in through your website, the ones they fulfill would be routed to them exactly as they are now—you can set up one simple email rule to automate this. For products they don’t handle, you’d list those separately. The real opportunity is this: if your current vendor is just a middleman who subcontracts to actual manufacturers, you should try going direct to those manufacturers. If they work with just one main printer, knock on that printer’s door directly and you could eliminate the middleman’s cut entirely. The decision then becomes whether your current vendor is actually bringing buyers to you. If not, going direct makes financial sense. Regarding managing multiple platforms, modern tools can handle the routing automatically, so it’s not as complex as it sounds.

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Asked by a surface designer · Answered by Patrick · Art Business Webinar · 2026-08-26