A couple of KahunaCart customers asked for Printful this month. One of them was moving a PrestaShop store across, where some products came from Printful's own plugin and the rest went to different printers by SKU range. Nobody wanted to hold stock, and nobody wanted a second shop just for the printed stuff. So we built it into KahunaCart. KahunaCart Print on Demand is available today.
How it works
You design a shirt, a mug or a poster in Printful, Printify or Gelato, the same way you would for any other shop. Then you import it into KahunaCart. Its sizes and colours become options, its pictures come across, and each variant keeps what the printer charges you for it, so you set your own price and can see your margin.
A customer buys it from your store and pays you, through the same cart and checkout as everything else you sell. The order goes to the printer, the printer makes it and posts it, and the tracking number comes back onto the order. The customer sees it on their receipt and in their account, and gets the usual shipped email.
You can connect all three printers at once. Each product is made by one of them, so checkout never has to choose.
Nothing is printed until you say so
This is the part I care about most. Sending an order to a printer spends your money, and the first few orders through any new setup are the ones most likely to be wrong. So every printer starts in review mode. A paid order becomes a free draft at the printer and waits on the order screen with what it will cost you and what you'll make on it, until you press Send to Printful for $18.40.
Once a few have gone through cleanly, switch that printer to automatic and paid orders go straight to production. A refunded or cancelled sale is checked again before anything is sent.
Printify needs one extra step. A Printify shop sends orders to production by itself after 24 hours unless you set it to Manual order approval, and its API can't tell us which way yours is set. So KahunaCart asks you to confirm it before it will switch Printify on.
Your own files on their blanks
Not everything you sell has to be designed in the printer's dashboard. If you keep your own artwork, pick the printer's blank for each variant, say a Bella + Canvas 3001 tee in black or an A3 matte poster, and upload a print file for each print area. The store checks each file against the size the printer wants and warns you when it would print soft.
That's also how a big catalogue moves across. Assign by SKU links every variant whose SKU matches a rule, so 7000 to 7999 can go to Printful tees and 8000 to 8999 to Gelato posters. There's a dry run that shows what would change before anything does, and an undo for the whole run. A spreadsheet of links works too, in and out.
Their shipping at checkout
Each printer adds its own delivery options to checkout, priced live for the customer's address, so what the customer pays for postage matches what the printer charges you. A cart with a printed shirt and a mug you post yourself is two parcels, each with the right options. If a printer can't give a price, your own shipping methods carry on as before, so checkout never ends up with nothing to choose.
Which printer?
- Printful is the most complete. Clothing and accessories, embroidery, your own designs or your own files on their blanks.
- Printify has a huge catalogue from lots of print shops, and it's the easy choice if your designs are already there.
- Gelato prints close to the customer, from clothing and mugs to wall art and cards, from your own files or a Gelato template.
The overview has a side-by-side table, and each printer has its own setup page in the docs.
Look around first
The add-on comes with a pretend printer called Kahuna Print Co. Switch it on for a test store and you get three products, invented postage, and orders that move from made to shipped to delivered on a clock, so every screen has something on it before you sign up anywhere. The demo printer page explains it.
It's running on the live demo too. Put the surf tee in the cart and checkout offers the printer's Standard and Express postage. Then open the admin to see its orders being made and shipped, with the cost and margin on each. The sign-in details are on the demo's login page, nothing is charged, and everything is wiped on the hour.
Also new in the core
KahunaCart 1.4.7 came out alongside it, with a few things worth knowing about:
- Batch actions on variants. Tick the variants you want in the product editor and change or delete just those. Leftovers from an old set of options can all go in one go.
- Merge two customers. When someone has bought under two email addresses, you can merge them, or they can do it themselves from their account. Their orders, licences and history move across, and the old address still signs in.
- Other email addresses. Customers can add a second address to their own account.
- Shipping fixes. The fallback shipping method you nominate is now actually used when a carrier can't quote, and a product type that holds no stock is never stock-counted.
Get started
Print on Demand needs KahunaCart 1.4.7 or later, the store's job worker running, and a public https address so the printers can send tracking updates. It's $149, a one-time purchase for your site, and updates are covered by your site's single renewal. You'll need your own account with Printful, Printify or Gelato. They bill you for each order they make and its postage, and the add-on doesn't add a fee on top.
Add it to your licence in the store, install it through Grav's plugin manager, and follow the getting started guide.
If you sell merch, prints or anything else a printer could make for you, I'd love to hear how this works for you. Come and tell us on Discord.
Andy