POD REVIEWS: Printfection

NOTE: I stopped actively using Printfection in 2010. Though I still receive their newsletter and try to keep up on changes, my experience as a day to day user is based on activity prior to 9/2010.

Product Selection
Printfection offers various styles of t-shirts, as well as a small number of gift items (aprons, cutting boards, tote bags, laptop sleeves,  mouspads, and coasters, and mugs).

They also have some colors of clothing not found at the other PODS reviewed here.

Quality
This POD is known for it's excellent printing quality. I've only bought a few things myself there, so I will defer to what I've heard.

Price
The prices are reasonable, and they offer volume discounts if you buy more than one item.  You can pass these discounts on to your customer, or not.

Production & Shipping Time/Cost
Shipping is based on weight, so you have to view your shopping cart to determine the shipping cost. I've found the prices to be reasonable on the orders I've made. Shipping time is normal for most PODs.

Storefront
The storefront offers A LOT of flexibility. You can have as many sections, items for sale, and designs that you want. The layout is completely customizable if you know how to code for it. Unfortunately, the templates available if you DON'T know how to do your own coding are somewhat lacking.

The space available on T-shirts is a little larger than most at most other PODS, and you can move your design around on your items (in stead of being stuck with it centered--though there is a limited printing space you can work with). I found it fairly easy to add new items.

Mark-Up/Commission Method
They have a base price and you set whatever mark-up you want above that. You can also set a mark-up for each bulk pricing level (for instance, if they buy 2 or 10 items, you can change your mark-up on each of these bulk pricing levels).

Customer Base
I am not even sure if they have a public marketplace now.  If they do, I can't find it on their main page.  Even when they did have a marketplace and were promoting it from their main page, I never made a sale through it...in spite of my designs being fairly high up in their marketplace under some key search words, and the same designs doing comparatively well in CafePress and Zazzle.

Summary
A great store if you want to sell mainly t-shirts, do a lot of customization to your site (and don't mind coding it yourself or hiring someone to do it), and are willing to do your own promotion (not rely on their marketplace). However, they have been doing better and more frequent sales and coupons, so are easier to promote then they used to be...which might help change that for the better.

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