How to set up shipping and charges for print on demand

[CarlaClaibourn]

I'm working on setting up my store and have to add the shipping. It's confusing when different products and suppliers charge different amount for shipping. I do I set up the shipping rates?

[Victor]

Hi @CarlaClaibourn,

Thank you for getting in touch. It can be difficult to set your shipping rates correctly when you're selling products provided from multiple suppliers, as different suppliers will offer varying shipping rates based on their own business costs and locations. However, it can still be done if the right amount of research is done. Can you tell me how many suppliers you are using?

The first thing to do is to review the shipping policies of each supplier and get a basic understanding of what the costs will be to pay them to ship your products, as you'll need this information at hand when creating your own shipping rates. Some suppliers, such as Printify, offer live shipping rates which means that the ones you offer to your customers will be as close to the cost to you as possible.

Shopify's shipping profiles feature can also help massively with this situation. You can use different shipping profiles to separate the products on a per-supplier basis, and charge different shipping rates on this basis. This could be particularly helpful if you have Supplier A charging significantly more or less for the shipping of their items than Supplier B.

I would also recommend checking out our guide on making a print-on-demand business successful on the Shopify Blog, which covers numerous aspects of this business model including tips on how to manage your shipping.

I hope this helps but please let me know if you have any further questions.