Memories are like timeless treasure. 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 a report by Research and Markets, the photo printing market was valued at USD 20.41 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 29.19 billion by 2028.
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 rates that also earn you profits. Sounds good, right? However, there’s a lot that goes behind setting it up.
To know more about how to start a canvas printing business from scratch, launch it successfully, and emerge as a market player, read this canvas printing business plan, and you shall find these answers.
Here’s a quick walkthrough of the guide:
- Select Business Model
- Market Analysis
- Checklist to start an online business
- Tips for Growing Your Canvas Printing Business Successfully
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. The recent pandemic paved a new successful way for the eCommerce industry. A lot of businesses stayed afloat because they quickly made their shift online. So, if you are starting a canvas printing business, it is time you look at the pros and cons of both sources. There’s nothing bad in offline space, but it demands investment. Right from renting, hiring employees, amenities to miscellaneous costs.
Also, a study by Google revealed that 66% of shoppers favor online shopping for finding items, while only 27% prefer offline shopping.
And with a staggering 2.14 billion online shoppers across the world, having an online presence can provide your business with significant exposure and potential for growth.
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.
There are major players like CustomInk and Vistaprint that run their web-to-print store successfully. 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, money and help you increase profit margins.
Elevate your canvas printing business with a customized web-to-print store.
Build your online presence, reach a global audience, and unlock new growth opportunities.
To know more about how to start a canvas printing business and be successful like VistaPrint, you can read this blog post. 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 AudienceThis step includes getting to know your target audience. Make an excel sheet including parameters like age, gender, interests to bifurcate the segments that are most relevant for you. It is important to remember that this step is the essential part of your canvas printing business plan. Because having a blurred idea about the audience would not help your business in becoming successful. You can use tools like Facebook Insights to get precise information about this data.
- Competitor AnalysisKnowing your competitors and their offerings give you insight into some vital details. For example, their product offerings and prices help you decide how you can offer products at affordable prices. A well-known entrepreneur Mimi Ikonn launched her own company Luxy hair that offers hair extensions right after she got married. The inspiration behind this was that she could not find any brand offering the one-of-a-kind quality extensions for her marriage that she wanted at affordable rates. So, it is time you also identify such gaps in the market and see how you can fill in that with your products.
Checklist to Start 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. So, if your specialty is about offering customized products, then you can name your business accordingly. Go to GoDaddy and register your business name.
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 base 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 ancient and most popular eCommerce platforms. Thousands of businesses are doing businesses seamlessly with their Magento powered e-stores. One of the great traits of this platform is its flexibility. You can add features and customize them as you want in a secure way.
To extend the functionality, you can also step in the customized offerings by collaborating with PrintXpand. We offer fully compatible Web to Print Solutions with your Magento store that enables customers to customize products on your store. To know more about how it works, you can explore the product page as well.
Shopify Design Tool:
Shopify is one of the popular platforms among SMBs. It is a fully-hosted solution with flexibility. That means you can also customize your store as per your requirements. The basic version also offers SEO features with advanced analytics options.
If you want to extend your product offerings with customized canvas products, then PrintXpand can help. You can integrate Shopify based designer tools that lets you enable customization in your store. You explore it for a better idea.
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.
If you want to go with the web-to-print model as stated above, there’s integration available for WooCommerce based stores as well. Available with advanced features and flexible pricing, explore the live demo and get in touch with the team PrintXpand for more information.
We would suggest you go with Magento as it can be the perfect blend of eCommerce and customized offerings. Still, we can help you by choosing the one that fits your needs and building your store from scratch. Our team of experts has helped a lot of businesses with a successful start.
Our approach is simple – You get in touch with your requirements, we assess and understand them to suggest you the best solution.
Make Customized Canvas Products Your USP
Tesla allows its customers to design their cars. Nike is not unknown for letting you create shoes the way you want. 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 essential.
Additionally, a report by McKinsey states that offering personalization can result in a 10 to 15% boost in sales.
However, with unique offerings like customized canvas prints, it can be fairly easy. With canvas prints, people can be super peaky. They want to have that perfect piece that does not suit their style. Hence, the best way to go for this is to integrate a product designer tool in your estore. As it enables your customers to design products the way they want, you can simply receive the orders. All you will need to do is, ensure quality printed products.
Web to Print Solutions from PrintXpand can be your way to go. Available for all major platforms like Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Prestashop, it also offers API connectors. That means no matter which platform you have; you can connect your store seamlessly with the tool. Another highlight of this tool is it is an easy-to-use interface. The majority of our customers love the way it provides a user experience.
While selecting a tool, you need to ensure that it has advanced features that make the designing part easy. Our tool is equipped with features that help naive users to easily create products in minutes. Canvas prints also include personal photo prints. With features like social media upload, users can upload pictures to create their canvas prints.
Some tips for choosing a product designer tool:
- Mobile Responsive: It should be mobile responsive so that users can design the products across any device. After integrating, make sure to test if it works well across different devices.
- Customizable: There may be a need that you want to add certain features to the tool. Hence, it should offer flexibility to let you make it custom as per your needs.
- Customization Options: The tool is an investment. So, make sure it has enough options to let your customers design products easily.
- 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 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. Once your technical part is done, you can start by performing regular link building activities. It will ensure your website is ranking on the first page of Google’s SERPs. Apart from SEO, the content remains one of the most important aspects. Hence, make sure your website has stellar content copy and thought leadership articles. 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 is one of the essential parts to stay connected with your audience. Make sure to 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 outsources that can give you the best product quality, and that fulfills orders 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 local as well as foreign followers.
- 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 is not just about setting up the website and start selling. It is about creating an entire experience that your customers would love. Today when the market is competitive, it is important to understand what customers want. And providing a great customer experience is your step towards a successful brand.
Team PrintXpand would love to be part of your emerging journey. After serving clients globally in about 70+ 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 where our team representative would understand your requirements to provide the best solution.
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