We have all seen some form or another of an on-demand printing service. With the start up of the 20th century, I think on demand print technology was something that was simply inevitable to see. Everyone these days seems to be on a whole other level of education than they were decades or centuries before, which leads to an increased amount of individual creativity and a desire for expression. Even companies like Office Depot are allowing small local business owners to create promotional products from inside their stores. Though to me, the whole thing is kind of ironic. The desire behind on demand technologies does not seem to necessarily be aiding those to make quality products with which to sell or promote themselves, it seems to be about making a profit, just like anything else. Companies everywhere are doing it, and these days even young kids are getting their own custom t-shirts for birthday parties or families for their 50 year reunions.

The hottest craze that has enabled literally millions of people to design and sell their own products are online custom t-shirt companies like Spreadshirt, Disney’s Zazzle, or CafePress.com. My own apparel brand, Dirty Mechanism, utilizes the tools of CafePress itself. CafePress literally has over a million different shopkeepers that I am competing with, and a question of whether or not any of them have had much success is a good one. My own personal success? I’ve earned an extra chunk of cash using it, but thus far nothing to write home about. But the real deal behind these on-demand stores that allow you to make your own products is that they really are giving artists an opportunity to start fresh, and see if their ideas really are worthwhile. In a sense, the test bed that is search engine optimization and product field testing with on demand companies is vital, in that if you are vastly successful with starting your own brand using any such service or technology you can move on to design more expansive products using startup money you gained from those ventures.

Still, while starving artists or perhaps just aspiring creators are sitting at home in their spare time designing t-shirts and merchandise, the companies that are allowing them to do so are the ones who take more than 99% of the benefit from the work. No matter if the products one individual makes fail or fly, all they need are minor successes. Digital storage and hardware that allows individuals or companies to hang onto thousands upon thousands of digital images at once at a cost effective rate allow for millions of failed designs to slip through the cracks and never sell a single item – all they need is maybe one out of every 20 to sell to make a solid profit, perhaps even less to break even. Still, don’t hold me to those numbers specifically – it certainly could vary from company to company depending on their methods. The point is simply that these companies are making a killing by taking advantage of cheap digital storage hardware of the modern age combined with automated systems that fulfill the majority of their orders without them really having to lift a finger. It’s genius.

But that is not to say that if you have a spare million dollars lying around in the bank that you should just sit up and open up your own on demand printing company. There happens to be a lot of competition, and ever more as the big guys are taking the majority of the money home to the bank. The prospect of on demand printing technologies and merchandise created by the common user gets me thinking, though. Could the business model, as well as the social model, that this creates allow for a new age of self expression in the future as more and more people become computer literate, shop online, and the fashion marketing machines work their brainwashing magic on the masses? After all, if these companies can expand and grow to a high enough level, what hope do the large companies like Abercrombie & Fitch or Limited Brands have when a single on demand company can offer more than 20,000 times the merchandise products a big company already offers? Are young teenage girls always going to be hell bent on spending their mother’s wallets on overpriced “premium” quality clothing with company logos on it or will they somehow develop brains to buy clothing that more accurately reflects them and what they’re interested in?

Then again, I do not relinquish all hope for the big companies. Teenagers are impulsive, hormonal creatures, and it is very difficult to break apart a multi-million dollar money machine that has been working for many decades. As far as the prospect of graphic T’s and the success of large apparel companies, much of that success is held almost exclusively to the United States. Upon my trip to London in March of 2006, I saw virtually no graphic T-shirts(possibly zero actually), and much of the clothing looked a lot more modest, classy, and sharp than that of its American fashion counterparts. But American culture is different. In a country that experienced the counter culture revolution, invented rock and roll, ran the race-oriented civil war of a previous century, and its romantic principles of love and freedom – graphic T’s probably have more of a place, both in marketing aspects, and from a cultural perspective.

Teenage guys and girls are still going to be centered on attracting each other, especially toward the later years of high school. Social cliques have a tendency of not going away, even through countless different generations. What one clique will commonly wear, all members of that clique must follow, and thus the individual expression of an on demand apparel lifestyle could be doomed. What has more effectiveness? An advertisement littered with hundreds of different designs that might appeal to one niche targeted person, or a single ad with a visually attracting young couple adoring each other in the clothing of choice? Unfortunately, it seems that sex and image are more universal than following individual interest, and even in evolutionary terms that makes sense.

But getting back to the point. On demand printing technologies can be profitable, but like anything else, they do not hold much incentive to really become a large seller under their model. Once you reach a high point of selling, you might as well move off the on demand model to sell from inventory, because at that point you are able to, and it makes cost effective sense to do it that way. Again, though, that is assuming you have a high moving volume in sales. An on demand model can get you started as a nifty tool, but it will be up to you to push forward and make yourself fly.

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