Shine on print on demand is a relatively new player in the POD space. Not only did they bring something new and exciting to print on demand, they continue to innovate and redefine what’s possible with print on demand.
In many ways the print on demand landscape was getting pretty stale. Apart from a few print on demand providers, it was pretty much the same thing everywhere. Shirts and hoodies, mugs and canvases.
You could find these and many variations on almost every POD platform. The problem is that the same products flooded the market.
With only that many niches, you had to really innovate and come up with truly unique stuff to make it with a print on demand store.
When Shine On came along it definitely opened up some new and exciting opportunities in print on demand.
Lets quickly look at some of what I really love about shine and also some of what I do not like about them.
High Quality Print on Demand Jewelry
Shine On is a print on demand provider that specialize in high quality jewelry. If you’ve sold print on demand jewelry before through Troupe or Gearbubble then you know that the quality is very questionable.
Thi is actually high quality products. When you hold it in your hand it looks and feels expensive and that is all that counts.
Selling jewelry online can be incredibly lucrative. Firstly, jewelry that looks and feels expensive has a high perceived value. This always translates into profit and margin.
Secondly, jewelry (like this) is mostly given as gifts which lends itself perfectly to print on demand. You can really go after gift giving events like birthdays, mother’s day, valentines day, xmas ec.
A lot of print on demand products is really just as cheap as possible and its all about the design. That is fine but it does not really inspire customers to come back.
Shine On’s products truly are great quality and you can sell it knowing that you are offering your customers a great product.
All their products are packaged really nicely with a jewelry box and this makes for a great customer experience.
Truly Unique Print on Demand Products
Setting yourself apart from the competition is the name of the game in print on demand. Selling t-shirts and mugs in 2020 and beyond will just not work (unless you have a unique angle).
If you are selling on Facebook then you should know that people see the same products in their feed all the time. They become blind to it.
Coming in with something unique gets people interested again. Shine on now has quite a big catalogue of products and most of these have not flooded the market yet.
The main products are necklaces and bracelets in either stainless steel or gold plated.
There are several necklaces to choose from and you can either place your own design in the round or heart shaped necklaces or let customers upload their own photos.
They also have a vertical bar necklaces, birthstone necklaces and 3d necklaces – the genius part is how they make this into a print on demand product we will look at these further when we look at personalization.
The bracelets have similar charms to the necklaces and gives you yet another option to do more with the same designs.
Personalized
In my opinion, what truly sets Shine On apart is the personalization they offer. Jewelry, perhaps more than any other product, lends itself perfectly to personalized products.
If you think about the fact that jewelry sales are mostly driven by gifts then it makes total sense to offer personalization.
ShineOn’s offers engraving on the back of most products. This allows you to do a cool design on the front and allow customers to engrave names or a personal message on the back.
With their 3D products they came up with a genius way to personalize it. The box design comes with a message card that you can design and personalize. This allows you to do something unique and special with a generic piece of jewelry.
Apart from the engraving and the message cards, Shineon has a third way to personalize products and that is with buyer uploads. This allows customers to upload their own photos to be etched into the jewelry.
With all the personalization options that Shineon offers you really can set yourself apart from the competition and offer something truly unique and special.
Great App (and its free)
Setting up personalization to work on your Shopify store can be tricky – especially if you have to start getting into 3rd party apps.
Fortunately Shineon takes care of all of that. Their app is free and all the personalization features are built in. All you have to do is install the app.
There might be some tweaks to make ito making the Shineon product pages match with your theme but the important thing is that the buyer uploads and the engraving features work out of the box.
Its all very intuitive and easy for customers to add engraving and photo uploads and all you have to do to have these features is to install the app.
Made in the USA POD Products
If you are selling to the US market then this is a big deal. Many Americans will go out of their way to support products that are Made in the USA.
Its not just a patriotic thing either. Its a subtle way to tell people that the rpdicts are not coming from China. So many customers who buy stuff on Facebook has become highly skeptical because they got burned with buying cheap jewelry from China.
Made in the USA gives you a great angle to sell with and it gives your customer peace of mind that they will get a quality product.
When a product is made in the USA it also implies fast shipping. Customers know that they are not buying a product from China that will take weeks to get to them.
During the Corona Virus, people developed a fear for products from China – thinking they could get infected. I suspect this fear will continue for some time which makes products from the USA a lot more attractive 😉
Amazing Product Mockups
When it comes to selling print on demand products, your mockups are incredibly important. It truly can make or break a product which is one more reason to like ShineOn.
Their mockups look amazing. In fact, they do not look like mockups at all. They look like proper product photographs.
Every product also has a good variety of images which does not restrict you to only having 1 image for your product.
Taking this one step further, you can also get video mockups but this is not free. As we all know, video ads rule these days and this can be a great option for running Facebook ads.
Price and Margin
In the end, everything comes down to price and margins. Most POD products now run on paper thin margins. Jewelry has a high perceived value which is great for us. It means you can sell it as a high ticket item.
Shineon’s jewelry looks and feels expensive and selling a Shineon necklace for $50 will not see many complaints from customers.
Shineon has amazing base costs with the average product ranging from $8 to $12. If you consider the fact that you can sell any of these items for $30 to $60 then it quickly sinks in.
With these kinds of margins there is some breathing space with advertising which is something that you do not get with most POD products these days.
Making $20 to $40 profit on a single piece of jewelry is completely realistic and if nothing else about Shineon perked your interest then this most certainly should.
How To Make Shine On Work For You
At this stage you might think that selling print on demand jewelry is the holy grail. In some ways it is but like selling anything online, its not that easy.
There are essentially two approaches to selling print on demand products.
The first approach:
The first approach is to “just” sell jewelry and to go after gift givers. Right off the bat I can tell you that this is a super crowded space with a lot of competition. There are a lot of well established store that only do this.
The great thing about Facebook ads though is that it gives you the same opportunity that these stores have.
Targeting men who buy gifts for their moms, wives, girlfriends and daughters is where its at.
Pull on those heart strings with your designs and your ads and you are halfway there.
Also, to make this strategy work you need to jump on to new Shineon products asap. If you can get on to a new product trend early you can cash in quickly.
Building up an audience of buyers with your Facebook pixel and creating lookalikes is how you win with selling print on demand jewelry with Facebook ads.
The second approach:
The second approach is to have a niche store and to base your jewelry designs around that niche. Some niches that obviously work well are patriotic niches (especially in the USA), firefighters, nurses ec.
If you combine that with personalization then you can see how you can really make some truly emotionally moving products.
The only thing that people love more than their family is their pets – well maybe not but it sure looks like that sometimes. Do not neglect the pet niches and combine it with personalized jewelry.
Another niche that lends itself perfectly to jewelry and emotionally charged products is any of the religious niches. Think about it, people wear cross necklaces anyway. Why not offer them something unique and personal?
You can create jewelry for virtually any niche. It all comes down to your angle and how you sell it. Baseball moms, soccer moms and even ballet moms.
The real secret to selling print on demand jewelry is to target an emotional subject. Jewelry is deeply personal and your designs and your angle should reflect that.
Using Upsells:
One of my favourite things to do with Shineon is to offer engravings as an upsell. You can easily charge $15 to $20 to add engraving to a product and it only costs you $5.
This is one of the easiest ways to bump your AOV and it adds great value to the customer. So many people take their jewelry to a jeweler to get it engraved.
Now you can offer it to them right off the bat and the take rate on this is anything from 50% to 90% (depending on the product and the niche).
The Shine On Standalone Platform
Don’t have a shopify store? No problem! Don’t like customer support? No problem! The Shine On standalone platform is similar to those on Teespring and Spreadshirt and allows you to set up your own store on their platform.
This means you can sell all their products without having to set up your own Shopify store.
They handle the order fulfilment and customer support. This frees you up to focus only on your designs and your marketing.
It is currently still in Beta and only open to selected sellers but the feedback has been really good.
The thought of no customer support really does sound amazing!
What I don’t Like About ShineOn
At the moment Shineon has issues with products selling out. This usually comes out of the blue since out of stock products with print on demand is quite rare.
I suspect that they have trouble keeping up with demand – especially on their 3D products. This can be a disaster if you are starting to scale.
There is nothing more painful then turning off a profitable Facebook campaign – especially if its because of an out of stock item.
ShineOn is moving fast – sometimes too fast for themselves. They seem to be quick to pull the trigger on new features and sometimes things don’t work smoothly. I have now learned to wait a few weeks on new products and features to make sure they smooth it out before I dive in.
Waiting too long is not great though. You want to dive into new products and features early on and catch the trends early.
While I really like the ShineOn app, they tends to mess a lot with the template. The way it works is that Shineon has its own product template for your Shopify store. This allows the personalization features to work smoothly.
It has many limitations on how you can edit it and at times it gets a bit spammy.
There are a lot of things on their template page that just do not gel with more store and even though I can customize it, every time they roll out a new product and/or feature I have to update my customizations again.
They have made an attempt to allow you to keep your customizations but from experience you still have to make manual edits and make sure everything looks and works right.
Looking back at this I would suggest you just stick with their template. It will save you a lot of time and drama.
Lastly, ShineOn has now integrated with Teespring. Teespring is a huge marketplace with thousands of sellers using the platform. This now gives thousands of sellers access to ShineOn’s (core) products through Teespring.
Why do I not like that? I think this will just flood the market with Shineon’s products. What used to be unique will now just become same-old.
These products have huge margins and most Teespring sellers are used to earning a $5 commission on a T-shirt. Now they can earn a $30 commission for the same amount of work.
Kind of a no-brainer where all the effort is going to go. For now, they have not made all their products available to Teespring so I suggest you focus your Shopify store on the new and unique products – just so you can stay clear from the masses.
