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Print on demand

Print on demand is a way of selling where a product, such as a T-shirt or mug, is printed only after a customer orders it, so the store keeps no finished stock.

How it works

The store supplies the designs. When an order comes in, a print partner, or the store itself, prints the design onto a blank product and ships it. With no stock to buy, the catalogue can grow to thousands of items at almost no inventory risk. Shopify’s guide names the trade-off: a higher cost per item and smaller margins.

Several feed and catalogue rules work differently:

  • Variants. Every combination of design, size and colour is a separate feed item. Product variants of one product share an item_group_id.
  • Identifiers. For an item without unique identifiers for its category, such as a GTIN, set identifier_exists to false.
  • Delivery time. Printing adds days before dispatch. The feed’s handling-time fields count them in business days.
  • Thin data. Sales scatter across thousands of items. In our study of 1.4 million products, 64.7% of winners were one-offs: one conversion in one month.

Print on demand and Google Shopping goes through each rule.

Example

Example store, not client data.

A print shop sells 200 designs on one T-shirt in 5 sizes and 4 colours. Its feed holds 200 × 5 × 4 = 4,000 items: 200 item groups of 20 items each. If each design gets 20 clicks a month, spread evenly, each item gets 20 ÷ 20 = 1 click.

Not to be confused with

  • Private label — a brand the store owns on goods a third party makes for it. It is about whose brand is on the product; print on demand, about when it is made.
  • SKU — one item you can ship on its own. Here most SKUs exist only in the feed until someone orders them.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “4,000 items in the feed means a broad assortment.” Right: it is one product in 200 designs; sizes and colours make up the rest of the count.
  • Wrong: “A size and colour with no sale this month isn’t worth keeping.” Right: at about 1 click per item a month, that verdict rests on one click. The design’s item group gets 20.

Sources

  • Print on demand — Wikipedia: produced only after an order is placed. Checked 2 October 2026.
  • Print on Demand: What It Is & How To Start (2026) — Shopify, 26 June 2026: the supplier prints and ships; higher cost per item. Checked 2 October 2026.
  • products_common.proto (Merchant API) — item_group_id, identifier_exists, handling time. Checked 2 October 2026.
  • GetProfit study: 1,404,808 products, 130+ stores, 13 months.