For decades, print-on-demand businesses have defined themselves narrowly by either 1) what they make or 2) how it’s made.
For example you’re a t-shirt and polo shop or alternatively you describe yourself as a screen printer. In merchandise I see firms define themselves as being a drinkware producer or a badge maker or alternatively as dye-sub or DTO shop.
These labels don’t just describe what you make – they define the processes, skills, equipment choices, staffing, your identity as a business, and strategy.
But as we move rapidly down the path of mass customisation – there is an argument to be made that this definition could be the very thing that is holding you back?
A powerful way to think about your business is not by what you produce today, but by what you can do – by that I mean the underlying skills, capabilities, and workflow strengths that sit beneath your operation.* And thinking that way makes product range extension a lot easier to contemplate.
My view is that there is ‘a lot’ that is shared by merch and apparel and that an extension of your range from apparel into merchandise (or vice-versa) is far less complicated than most operators assume.
The real barrier isn’t the equipment. It isn’t the substrates. And it’s not product complexity. It’s that we’ve become used to defining ourselves by categories rather than capabilities. By changing the way you describe yourself (for example “I am a branded goods specialist” rather than as a “mugs and drinkware manufacturer”) opens up a whole new strategic vista.
If you pull apart the workflows of apparel and merchandise, in most use-cases they share most of the same core processes. Job intake, artwork validation, colour management, queueing, batching, picking, imposition or ganging, QA, finishing, accessorizing and packaging, and dispatch. Both depend on teams who can manage variable orders, meet tight service levels, and maintain quality across a wide SKU range. And both succeed or fail based on the strength of workflow discipline, not what the substrate is.
In other words: the core processes of much of merch and apparel largely mirror each other.
Operationally there are differences and things to learn – sourcing, press types, heat profiles, curing behaviours, jig systems etc, and finishing flows vary from one product to another. But these differences are incremental rather than transformational – the business already has the core processes to handle the new SKUs. A business that can successfully manage 500 variable t-shirt orders per day is over 80% of the way to extending into personalised mugs, coasters, or mousepads.
And the beauty these days is that new product lines don’t need to force you into new workflow methods. Modern workflow automation platforms like ZenSmart allow you to introduce new SKUs without rebuilding the factory flow. If your operation already has disciplined order routing, clear production stages, barcode-driven tracking, and well-defined finishing steps, then adding merch is simply a matter of adding new rules, from a workflow management perspective, adding a new range can be done in hours.
My argument is that there is a whole other lens from which a business can be viewed, such as:
- We’re good at variable data
- We handle multiple order sources well
- We already handle high SKU complexity
- Our team is trained in flexible, single-unit workflows
- Our finishing discipline is consistent
- Our packaging and dispatch systems scale
With that mindset, merchandise or apparel becomes a logical extension, not a leap.
Having worked with many large factories that have an eclectic product range that extend from paper products to drinkware, cards, gifting, display to apparel and have executed ‘very’ well, I think there is a lot to be taken from their playbook and applied to small to medium business. Further the more the industry shifts toward mass-customization, the less relevant old category boundaries become.
Customers don’t care whether you’re “an apparel decorator” or “drinkware manufacturer”. They want a flexible partner who can personalise reliably, fast, and at scale.
If you define your business by its skills instead of its current product set, the path from apparel to merch (or vice versa) starts looking very interesting.
* Have a read of “The Core Competence of the Corporation” from Harvard Business Review, May 1995 to explore more
