Summary
Memories are like timeless treasures. All thanks to technology, today, with a single click, we capture thousands of them. This revolution led to immense growth for the photo printing industry. According to Research and Markets, the photo printing market was valued at USD 28.71 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 48.80 billion by 2030.
So, if you are thinking about starting your own canvas printing business, here’s another great reason why you should definitely go for it. In the market, there’s a split between low-cost providers that personalize canvas prints very cheaply and designers that personalize products at expensive rates.
Your canvas printing business could fill that gap with quality canvas printing at affordable prices, earning you excellent profits. However, there’s a lot that goes behind setting it up.
Read this guide to learn how to start a canvas printing business from scratch, launch it successfully, and emerge as a market player.
How To Start A Canvas Printing Business?
Ever noticed how canvas prints are everywhere these days? From stunning wall art in homes to catchy displays in offices, and even when it comes to personalized gifts, the canvas printing market is on fire! Well, this means it is the best time to jump into this business if you have been thinking about it for a while now.
However, this, too, comes with a lot of challenges. However, to begin with, let’s start with one question: “Where even to start?” Setting up a business in this industry is overwhelming because there is a lot to figure out.
Should you go entirely online or have a physical store? What kind of printer should you invest in? How do you actually get customers? Well, let’s get answers to all of these questions!
Select Business Model – Online vs. Offline
When starting a canvas printing business, the first essential step is to decide on a home for your business. With the eCommerce sector booming consistently alongside retail, it is best to weigh both sides of the coin. There’s nothing terrible in offline space, but it demands investment. You must consider various aspects, including the rent, hiring employees, setting the ambiance, investing in the amenities, and other miscellaneous costs.
A recent study shows that people in the US, the UK, and Australia enjoy shopping online and offline on a weekly basis.
But does that mean you should go with opening your offline business first? Well, it indeed, comes with the cons of restricting sales to first place, higher investment costs, inventory storage space, etc. However, thinking strategically, getting your shop opened online to begin with makes a lot of sense.
Why?
With the online model, you can quickly start a canvas printing business with minimum setup costs. Plus, it gives you the luxury of targeting an audience base on a global basis. If you have a great logistics partner, you can extend your business overseas as well.
Major players, such as CustomInk and Vistaprint, successfully operate web-to-print stores. Customers come to their store, personalize products the way they want, and place orders!
This model doesn’t require you to spend money on creating designs in advance. Your users can create the products of their choice and place orders. As a result, it will help you save time and money. It will also help you increase profit margins.
Transform your print business with a powerful web-to-print solution.
Expand globally and grow faster with your online print store.
The web-to-print model not only provides you a competitive advantage but also helps you quickly set up your business as a brand in the market.
Market Analysis
After deciding on a business model to start the canvas printing business, the next step is to do your research right. Often people miss the essence of this part because they do not dig deeper to understand the market. To make it easy, we have divided this section into two sub-steps:
- Your Target Audience: This step includes getting to know your target audience. Consider different parameters like age, gender, and interests to bifurcate the segments that are most relevant for you. It is important to remember that finding the right target audience is an essential part of your canvas printing business plan. A hazy understanding of your target market will not help your business succeed. You can use tools like Facebook Insights to get precise information about this data.
- Competitor Analysis: Knowing your competitors and their offerings gives you insight into some vital details. For example, their product offerings and prices help you decide how you should price your products so they remain affordable for everyone.
Mimi Ikonn, a well-known entrepreneur, launched her own company, Luxy Hair, which offers hair extensions right after her wedding. This idea was triggered when she could not find any affordable brands offering high-quality extensions for brides. In short, one of the best ways to come up with a business idea is to identify such gaps in the market and see how you can fill them in!
Steps to Follow When Starting Canvas Business Online
Once you are done with your research part, it is time to make your online debut. For that, there are several things you need to get right. You can start by registering your business name online. While choosing a name for your business, it has to resonate with your vision. To register your business’s name, go to domain registry and web hosting sites like GoDaddy or Hostinger.
Make Strong Online Visibility:
The very first step to starting a canvas printing business with a stunning website is to choose an eCommerce platform. It is like the foundation of your store, so make sure to choose carefully that fulfills your needs. Here are some of the well-known platforms listed below:
Magento Product Designer Tool
Magento is one of the oldest and most widely used eCommerce platforms. Thousands of businesses operate seamlessly with Magento-powered eStores. Flexibility is one of the best features of this platform because you can easily add and customize features as you wish in a secure environment.
All you have to consider is choosing a partner who provides a fully compatible Web-to-Print solution for your Magento store, allowing product customization on the store.
Shopify Design Tool:
Shopify is one of the popular platforms among small and medium businesses. It is a feature-rich solution with a lot of flexibility. That means you can also customize your store as per your requirements. Your customers will get a lot of advanced features to work with, such as 3D previews, easy image editing, dynamic pricing, and more.
WooCommerce Design Tool:
WooCommerce is one of the popular platforms. Basically, it is a WordPress plugin that you can use to launch your e-store. The biggest plus point is that it is free hence easy for anyone who is just getting started in the industry. With thousands of available themes and plugins, you can customize it the way you want.
Make Customized Canvas Products Your USP
Tesla allows its customers to design their cars. Nike also lets its customers personalize the shoes as per their choice. The point is– customization is not something new in the market. Big brands are leveraging it to increase customer engagement because. today having a loyal customer is like a gold mine. As the eCommerce industry keeps growing, customers are finding too many options for a single product. Hence, making your brand popular in such a competitive industry is hard, but also very essential.
Moreover, with unique offerings like customized canvas prints, it can be fairly easy to make better sales. With canvas prints, people can be super picky.
The simplest way to provide personalized products is to incorporate a product designer tool into your online store. This allows customers to customize designs and place the order. All you have to do is ensure high-quality printing and fulfillment.
This tool is compatible with popular eCommerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Prestashop. It also supports API connectors, allowing easy integration with any eCommerce store.
One of its most notable features is its user-friendly interface, which ensures a smooth experience even for beginners. It also includes advanced features such as social media image uploads, which enable customers to quickly import photos and create canvas designs.
Some tips for choosing a product designer tool:
- Mobile Responsive: Your users should be able to design the products across any device. So, after integrating the tool, make sure to test if it works well across different devices.
- Customizable: You may want to add certain features to the tool later on. And so, the tool should be flexible enough to allow you to customize it to your specific requirements anytime you want to.
- Customization Options: The tool is an investment. So, make sure it has enough options to let your customers design products easily. For example, the tool must have AI image and text generation features, import social media images, allow custom font uploads, and much more.
- Powerful Backed: Having a powerful backend is also essential since it gives you the authority to apply changes easily. Check if the functionalities are working properly in the backend too.
- Ease of Use: The tool should be easy to use, even for customers who may not be tech-savvy. A user-friendly interface and intuitive design can help ensure a smooth user experience.
- Integration: Look for a tool that can seamlessly integrate with your existing website or eCommerce platform. This will save you time and money in the long run.
Printing Methods
Printing remains one important part of your business. After customers place their orders, it is essential to provide the exact same products. There are two ways you can do this. First is setting up the printing infrastructure at your place and doing it yourself. However, it would require you to invest in physical space and machines. If you already have the setup, then there’s no worry. When you are in the initial phase, Outsourcing can be the best option. All you need to do is collaborate with a quality print service provider.
Here are some of the printing methods you should know:
Offset Printing: It is a common printing technique for canvas prints. In this technique, the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket to the canvas print. The best part is that you can print large quantities cost-effectively. In case you want to go for black and white prints, they would be available at lower rates.
Inkjet Printing: It is one of the most popular printing methods. It works by using hundreds of tiny guns or nozzles to fire drops of ink onto the page to recreate an image or text on the canvas print. Available as a low-cost option, it offers great image quality with lasting colors.
Dye Sublimation: Dye-sublimation printing provides permanent colors that are embedded in the substrate or fabric rather than the printed surfaces. It can also be a good cost-effective option for mass production.
Marketing Store
Starting a canvas printing business takes at least 3-4 months to set up the business, but it may take years to emerge as a leader if you are not marketing it right. We all know the importance of marketing; however, today, when there are thousands of businesses out there, it can be hard to mark your presence.
As a very first step, you need to make sure that your e-store is SEO optimized. Make sure your URLs, meta details, alt tags are following Google’s guidelines. Apart from SEO, the content remains one of the most important aspects. Hence, make sure your website has stellar content copy that tells that you are an expert at what you do! It helps you attract a targeted audience to your website.
Apart from organic marketing, you can also launch Google Ads campaigns. With best marketing agencies, you can earn good revenue. The one great part is that it gives you instant results for your store. All you need to do is set up a Google Ads account and allocate a budget. After that, you can create several marketing campaigns based on keywords and bidding.
Also, make sure you are active on your social media accounts. It will help you connect with the right audience, engage with them, and attract more sales seamlessly. However, ensure you react to customer reviews and improve your services based on the feedback.
Tips for Growing Your Canvas Printing Business Successfully
Your very first goal after having everything in place should be to reach the break-even period.
Once you successfully launch your website, make sure to analyze your performance. After 3-4 months, you will be able to identify your average order count. Based on that, you can put more effort towards marketing to improve your performance. Here are some tips:
- Choose the outsourcers outsources that can give you the best product quality and fulfill all the order on time.
- Keep analyzing your competitors’ offerings on eBay to get an idea of pricing, type of designs, etc.
- Try to design your templates with some unique designs, too, so you can develop a niche market for yourself.
- Review your pricing regularly to remain competitive.
- Once you reach a certain stage where you have regular orders, keep expanding your product offerings and be a little experimental.
- Keep your product designer tool updated with the latest template designs. It helps them create designs faster.
- Invest in social media advertising on Facebook and Instagram. It can be one great way to spread the word among your targeted group.
- Keep asking customers about their experience with your company. How do they like the product quality, customer services, etc.? Based on the feedback, you can see how you can improve your offerings.
Conclusion
Starting a canvas printing business involves more than simply creating a website and selling products. It is about creating an entire experience that your customers would love. In today’s competitive market, understanding your customers needs is key. Delivering an excellent experience further helps build a strong and successful brand.
Team PrintXpand would love to be part of your emerging journey. After serving clients globally in about 40+ countries, we know what it takes to have a business. We know how a web-to-print model can work for your business successfully. With a successful portfolio, let’s work together to mark your presence as one of the top canvas printing businesses. We can schedule a personalized demo to help you understand the solutions better.
All product and company names are trademarks™, registered® or copyright© trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.
