Top 25 Trending Custom Products to Sell in 2024

Summary

There has never been a better time to sell customized products online. Today, more and more customers are avoiding purchasing off-the-shelf products.

Instead, as per Deloitte, more than 50% of customers are interested in buying customized items. They are even willing to pay more for them.

Businesses that have embraced this trend are seeing an increase in sales and repeat business. For instance, look at the print giant VistaPrint. Their top-quality custom products have turned them into an industry leader.

If you are planning to kickstart a business or wondering what custom products to include in your product line then look no further.

We have made a comprehensive list of trending custom products to sell in 2023. These are products that are currently in trend and are likely to retain their popularity.

We have also discussed how to design custom products and how you can enable your customers to add unique designs to their products. So, you might want to stay around till the end! ?

Idea 1: Select Niche Customized Products Within the Clothing Category ?

When looking for custom products to sell, entrepreneurs need to find options that will be in demand for years to come.

You surely do not want to choose a fad that will diminish in months. After all, starting or expanding a business is a task. And you do not want it to fail.

Therefore, a smart thing when choosing custom items to sell is to see if they are evergreen. No matter what, their demand shall always remain. One such category is of course clothing.

The business of clothing is more than big. It’s gigantic.

In the US alone, the eCommerce fashion industry accounted for 23% of fashion retail sales in 2022. It has been projected to reach 205 billion dollars by 2025.

The global apparel market is likely to reach about 2.25 trillion dollars by 2025, with clothing leading the category.

I know, the fashion market is huge, and you are curious to know the top custom products to sell online. These are the most popular custom products to sell in 2023 and beyond.

When deciding what custom items to sell, validating the demand for products is equally important. You can use tools like Google Trends to analyze the popularity of top search queries. With the tool, you can even compare the search volume for each query.

If you look at the image below, in the last 90 days, the demand for hoodies and jackets has increased since winter is approaching.

What products you choose depends on your requirements and your target audience. But it is always a good thing to validate the demand and decide accordingly.

Categories like clothing are competitive. Also, with more and more new businesses getting online, it becomes difficult to get customers’ attention.

The solution lies in choosing a niche product. That will help you easily reach customers who are already looking for what you sell.

For example, within t-shirts, you can choose to cater to environmentally conscious customers by selling organic tees. Or maybe you can target only women, or only children, or sell only plus-size apparel.

Idea in Action: PetParty differentiates itself from other businesses by selling products to a very targeted audience – pet lovers. They sell a wide range of products like socks, gloves, etc. with dog prints on them.

Another way to beat the competition is by providing more value to your product offerings with customization. With a Product Designer Tool, your customers can add a personal touch to their products.

The user-friendly features and intuitive UI ensures that they are able to customize any product with ease. No matter what you decide to sell or what eCommerce platform your website is held on, our tool fulfills all the requirements of customization.

Idea 2: Sell Personalized Accessories ?

Another category where you can find custom products to sell is customized accessories. From fashion to fitness, and home to tech, there are so many options you can choose from.

A. Fashion Accessories

The graph of fashion accessories does not seem to go down.

The global e-commerce fashion accessories market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.7% from 2022 to 2028.

(The Scope of Fashion Accessories)

Custom items to sell include jewelry, shoes, scarves, tote bags, travel bags, backpacks, and a lot more. If you are already running a jewelry business, you can offer custom products like engraved pendants, rings, etc.

Or if you already own a clothing store, you can expand your product offerings to include products like shoes, scarfs, masks, and more.

These products are highly competitive and require innovation. With an added USP of personalization, you can attract more customers and improve the shopping experience.

Using a designer tool, shoppers can not just design products like shoes and scarves, but they can even make engraved jewelry.

B. Custom Tech Accessories

Another popular category of customized products is tech accessories. The demand for these products is never going out of trend.

A list of custom items to sell includes things like custom Apple Watch straps with inspirational quotes or unique designs, phone cases, and laptop bags, etc.

The process of selling custom tech accessories begins with deciding the kind of phone or laptop model you wish to target.

You can do keyword research to get an idea of what devices people are demanding, and what type of phone cases and laptop skin you can sell.

Products like phone cases and laptop accessories are a broad category and hence have high competition. The key to being successful is to integrate a personalization tool to let users add their names, logos, or pictures.

The category of accessories is wide. After analyzing the demand for each segment, you can proceed further in deciding what products you want to sell.

As shown in the image, home, and tech accessories are in demand right now. You can choose to sell products like phone cases, throw pillows, laptop skin, etc. But at the same time, irrespective of the time of the year, things like shoes and jewelry shall always remain popular.

Idea 3: Make Money Selling Personalized Gifts ?

It is impossible to talk about custom products and not include personalized gifts.

With more customers looking to get custom gifts for their loved ones, personalization in the gifting industry is growing at a fast pace.

The personalized gifts market is expected to grow from US$30.3 billion in 2022 to US$47.6 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 5.8% during the period 2022-2030.

One of the factors that contribute towards the rise of custom gifts is the increase in purchasing power of millennials.

With the holiday season around the corner, adding custom gift items to your products offerings is surely a good idea. Here are the best custom products to sell.

• Greeting cards are for countless occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, graduation, etc. Starting a greeting card line seems profitable.
• Let customers preserve their memories with photo albums, photo frames, wall decor, and more.
• Wooden engraved gifts are becoming popular. You can even consider selling things like wooden plaque, postcards, keychains, etc.

Check out these personalized gift ideas that can help you make money.

Here’s an overview of the demand for each product in the USA in the last 90 days.

The gifting market falls into two parts: corporate gifting and personal gifting. The former makes up a majority share of the market and the latter is likely to increase with the growing purchasing power of the millennials.

Before choosing the best product, it is important to clarify your target audience. Have a clear idea about your target audience: you can either target the B2B segment or the B2C segment.

You will need a personalization tool that your customers can use to add custom images to the gifts they are purchasing.

Get a personalized product demo to check how the tool fits your business requirements.

Idea 4: Start Selling Promotional Items ?

Companies across the globe spend dollars and dollars on promotional merchandise.

The scope of selling promotional products goes beyond corporates. It includes a wide range of industries like non-profit, hospitals, influencers, etc.

And that is why this category is very popular among businesses who want to create and sell custom products online.

And because the size of the order is usually huge as compared to B2C, you earn more through a single order.

? Promotional Products Industry Market Size: $20.8bn

IBIS World reports that the promotional products industry has been growing at a rate of 1.1% per annum over the past 5 years. So, if you want to begin expanding your business with bulk promotional merchandise, this is the right time.

Here’s a list of the best custom products to sell in this category:

• Coffee mugs, drinkware are everyone’s favorite. Moreover, currently, the focus is a lot on sustainability, for instance reusable drink bottles.
• Things like pens, pencils, notebooks, and such stationery never get out of trend. A customizable box of stationery items is a good idea.
• Another option is selling custom printed hats and headgear along with products like t-shirts and hoodies.
• Subscription boxes are gaining popularity. You can even choose swag boxes that include multiple things like face masks, outerwear, tech accessories, drinkware, etc.

As shown in the picture below, the demand for business cards and hoodies is greater than stationery items. You can do further research to choose what products to sell.

You can even consider integrating the subscription business model. There are so many companies leveraging the concept of promotional merchandise swag boxes.

For instance, Promo Box Club caters to businesses, sports organizations, and marketing professionals looking for promotional merchandise.

In a competitive market of promotional goods, make your business stand apart with product customization. Let customers design products in bulk using a Product Design Tool. They can create their own designs, make the best use of features like names and numbers.

Real-life Examples of Brands Selling Customized Products

1. Nike By You (formerly NikeiD)

Background: Nike By You is basically a platform that allows the end-customer to customize their sneakers, including color, materials, and, of course, personalized text.

Success Story: Nike By You was a breakthrough for Nike, as it had never given its customers a chance to design their own individual and unique pair of sneakers.

That gave way for Nike to reach customers at a completely new level of emerging trends: fully customizable products with the brand staying the same. This platform became super popular, and millions of users all over the world began to create their own custom kicks.

2. Casetify

Background: Casetify is one of the specialized and only retailers online for customizable phone cases. It allows customers to design their phone cases with photos, text, and artwork.

What has been successful: Casetify has managed to eliminate a void in the highly competitive phone accessories market, delivering products that deal with personalization to match people’s individual tastes and preferences.

An easy-to-use design tool with many options for customization; thus, each individual customer would be able to create such an individual case that would be highly unique in its style. A strong focus on personalization has helped Casetify stand out in the crowded market and enabled it to build a loyal customer base. Case Study: Shutterfly

3. Shutterfly

Background: Shutterfly is an American internet-based retailer of printed products, often resembling consumers’ photo compositions, such as prints, photo books, personalized gifts, and stationery.

Success Story: Today, Shutterfly is one of the leading retailers of individualized gifts and personalization services forged from the powerful capabilities of customization.

Easy-to-use design tools and world-class printing services make it easier for people to bring their photos to life with added sentiment and personal touches. By tapping into the emotional appeal of giving personalized gifts, Shutterfly has built up a huge customer base for repeat business and is leading the market in custom products. Case Study: Vistaprint

4. Vistaprint

Background: Vistaprint is a firm that provides a wide variety of custom printing products, including business cards, marketing materials, signs, banners, apparel, and promotions.

Success Story: Customers chose Vistaprint, as they always had an eye on the brand and knew they were synonymous with custom printing for small businesses and individuals looking to create professional-looking materials without a large investment. With design tools that are fast and easy to use and turnarounds, businesses will always find a partner in them regarding effective promotion for their brands. Their dedicated efforts to innovation and client satisfaction establish them as a solid force in the market for custom printing. It is also how Vistaprint has millions of clients globally.

Figure Out How to Design Custom Products

If you want to create and sell custom products online, you can not skip the design part. There are a few ways you can design them.

One is you can create print designs all by yourself. Tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Canva, etc. will help ease the process of designing.

Second, you can hire designers from communities like Dribbble, Upwork, Behance, etc. The cost of hiring a freelancer depends on who you are hiring, and the quality of the work.

Another option is to invest in a customization tool. With preloaded templates and thousands of artwork designs, your customers will be able to design their products easily. This will help improve the shopping experience and lead to more satisfied customers.

Decide How You Will Sell Customized Products Online

This part answers two questions:

How you can build a store from scratch to sell customized products online.

And second covers how existing store owners can begin with customization on their store.

If you are planning to sell customized products online from scratch, you easily get started with our Web to Print Storefront. It saves you from the complex process of developing an eCommerce store from scratch.

The ready-to-sell storefront comes with all the features you need to start your business. It comes with a customization tool that enables you to easily let customers customize their products.

Our solution offers a wide selection of industry-standard themes that are visually appealing and optimized for search engines.

This helps your store stand out and attract potential customers.

With seamless integration, setting up your dream store is quick and easy, allowing you to showcase your products in no time.

Plus, it has an integrated designer tool, enabling your customers to customize their purchases.

To add convenience, it also integrates with multiple payment gateways, providing a variety of payment options for your customers.

You can get more information here.

For businesses looking to enable customization on their stores, our Product Designer Tool is the best bet. It provides everything you need to become successful in selling custom products online.

Here are a few features of the tool that you just can not miss!

• Artwork Manager – Create predefined artwork and assign them to your products. That way you can sell unique designs and quicken the process of customization to close the deal.
• Template Manager – Using this feature, you can create ready-to-sell product templates with the help of artwork, clipart, etc. Users can then use those templates to customize further.
• Layout Manager – Irrespective of whether you sell apparel or greeting cards, our layout makes it easy to deliver a personalized experience as per each industry.
• Dynamic and Live Pricing – With dynamic pricing, you can decide the pricing for each designing attribute. And with live pricing, your customers can get a complete bifurcation of the price in real-time.
• Admin Control: Enable or disable specific functionalities of the tool, giving you full control over the customization experience according to your business needs.
• Mobile Responsive: The tool is designed to be mobile responsive, ensuring a seamless user experience across different devices, allowing customers to easily customize products on their mobile phones or tablets.

To get a detailed understanding of how the tool works, claim a personalized demo.

So, What’s Your Plan?

Well, that was a complete list of potential custom products to sell now and in the future. Out of these, some are evergreen like apparel, drinkware, jewelry, bags, and gifts.

Choosing what to sell entirely depends on your business plan and your target audience. But, the custom product market is as competitive as opportunistic.

In a market full of thousands of businesses selling the same thing, gaining traction becomes a challenge.

And what differentiates you from the competition is a personalization-led customer experience. Product Customization Tool makes it possible for you to seamlessly enable customization on your store.

It is easily integrable with all popular eCommerce platforms and works on any product with a printable surface. With features like ready templates and artwork, you can enable customers to finish customization in a hassle-free manner.

Whether you are an already established business or looking to start from scratch, PrintXpand can help you with all your customization needs. Share your requirements with us and we will get in touch with you.

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