Skip to content
KahunaCart

Powered by Grav CMS + Helios Theme

Custom products

A custom product is one where you keep the artwork. You pick the provider's blank for each variant (a Bella + Canvas 3001 tee in black, size M; an A3 matte poster) and upload a print file for each print area. When an order is sent, the two are put together and the provider prints your file on its blank.

Printful and Gelato take custom products. Printify does not; see Printify.

Use this when your designs already live with you, when you sell the same artwork on several providers, or when you are moving a store that worked this way. For many products at once, see Moving from another platform.

Before you begin

  • Printful or Gelato connected. See Getting started.
  • kahunacart.pod.manage on whoever sets Made by and uploads print files.
  • Your print files, at the size each print area asks for.

Made by

Every product has a Print on demand panel beside it in the admin. Made by is where you choose who makes it.

  1. Open the product and pick a provider under Made by.
  2. Find the blank. Search the provider's catalogue ("Bella Canvas 3001", "hoodies", "embroidery", "posters a3"), or type a catalogue product id.
  3. The add-on matches your product's own colours and sizes to the blank's. Close spellings count as the same: Grey and Gray, XXL and 2XL.
  4. Anything it could not match is listed under Pick these by hand. Choose a blank for each, or Paste a blank id per variant.
  5. Save. Nothing is saved while any variant has no blank, and the answer says what matched and what did not.

The product becomes a Print on demand product, with the provider's shipping profile, and stock counting is switched off because the provider holds the stock. What it was before (its type, shipping profile and per-variant stock counting) is kept on the links.

Made by: Nobody puts all of that back as it was.

Upload one file per print area, on the same panel. A file can be for the whole product (every variant uses it) or for one variant (Upload for this variant), which wins over the product's own.

  • PNG, JPEG or PDF. The type is read from the file's bytes, not its name.
  • Up to 100 MB by default. The limit is Largest print file (artwork.max_mb), checked before the file is read.
  • The pixel size is read. A file that would print under 150 dpi on its print area says so, with the size that would print at 150 dpi. It is a warning, not a refusal.
  • A print area the blank cannot take is refused when you save, naming the areas it can take ("Its blanks take: front, back, sleeve_left, sleeve_right, label_inside").

The panel shows every print area the blank has, with the size the provider wants a file for each, and names the ones still missing.

Which areas need a file

  • A Printful blank lists every area it could print on. A tee takes a front, a back, two sleeves and a label, and nobody fills them all. So a Printful custom variant needs at least one file, and until it has one the front is named as missing.
  • A Gelato template names the areas its design uses, and every one of them needs a file.

A variant still missing a file is refused at the cart, with a sentence that names the product and the print area that is not ready yet.

Where the files are kept

Print files are kept privately in the store, under a name no web server serves. The provider fetches each one from a public address with a long random token in it, which only an order names. Replace a file and its token changes. A file an open order at the provider still names cannot be deleted, because the provider may fetch it again for a reprint.

Centred in the print area

There is no designer. The add-on sends each file with its print area and no position, so the provider places it the way it places any file sent without one, across the print area. So:

  • Make the file the size of the print area, at the pixel size the panel shows (150 dpi or better).
  • Put the design where you want it inside the file, with any empty space around it as transparent pixels (PNG) or white (JPEG).
  • Don't rely on the printer to move it. A small logo in a corner of the chest is a full-size file with the logo drawn in that corner.

There are no mockups for a custom product either. Use your own product photos.

Synced and custom in one order

An order can hold a synced Printful shirt and a custom Printful mug. It goes to Printful as one order, with one shipping charge. Printful's older v1 API is the only one that takes both kinds of item at once, so custom items always go through it.