How to sell physical products without buying inventory upfront
Print-on-demand services print and ship items only after a customer places an order, eliminating the need to buy bulk stock or manage storage space. This prevents store owners from getting stuck with unsold leftovers or paying steep platform fees just to keep products available.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Using print-on-demand apps where a third party prints and ships items automaticallyDid this help you?
- 2Partnering with local makers to fulfill orders for better margins and quality controlDid this help you?
- 3Reaching out to specific printers like Better Deal Printing with pre-made PDFs or PNGs of logosDid this help you?
- 4Running ads to product pages with pre-order notices for future shipping datesDid this help you?
- 5Setting the call-to-action to an email signup instead of a purchaseDid this help you?
- 6Charging a small reservation fee applied to the future orderDid this help you?
- 7Testing credit card-backed pre-orders for the full purchase price on top SKUsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Have a product idea, but want to demand test it first, primarily through meta ads, on whether I should move forward into production.”source ↗
“It's custom formulations, so I do not want to risk getting 500-1000+ units of something without having at least some signal on if it could work or not.”source ↗
“However my fear is that this will kill the conversion rate and I won't get an accurate read on demand because who wants to order something and have to wait 2-3+ months to get it?”source ↗
“Store already has traffic. Want a few made-to-order print products without standing up printers or stocking shelves.”source ↗
“all I really want is for employees to choose their own stuff without us committing to a huge order or finding somewhere to keep the leftovers.”source ↗
“Some stores seem to charge just to stay open, while others want a bulk order before they'll set anything up”source ↗
“I want to make some products, i have the mockups coming, but theyre acrylic and can be expensive if i were to bulk buy, especially if nobody actually wanted them.”source ↗
“Could i do a preorder through etsy? so then i could order what people want, and order some extra so i have overstock, in case something goes wrong, and so i can sell more later on”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2Why does adding multiple items to an online store take so long?
- 2How to get people to join a non-profit without giving swag
- 2How to set up inventory receiving procedures from scratch
- 3How to fund inventory for a growing physical product business
- 3How to track inventory for custom made-to-order products without variants
- 3How to ship low-cost items without losing money