← Crickets to Cha-Chings
Crickets to Cha-Chings
180. This Bestselling Personalized Gift for Father's Day is HUGE with Anywhere POD
00:45:59
Chris Meats founded Anywhere POD to help Etsy sellers personalize their print-on-demand gifts across different suppliers. Use code GOLDCITY30 and this link for a free 30-day trial of the tool: We also mention Emily's The Gift Lab POD Course which...
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- [00:01]
Julie Berninger
Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Crickets to Cha Chings podcast. I'm Julie Berninger from Gold City Ventures and I'm here with Chris from Anywhere Pod. Welcome, Chris.
- [00:11]
Chris
Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the time today.
- [00:14]
Julie Berninger
Well, I have heard wonderful things about your software from Emily, who is our print on demand Etsy shop coach. I know many of you have seen Emily on this podcast. She reached 500k in sales in her first two years. She's a mom of two and she's a powerhouse Etsy seller, getting like 400, $500 orders out there many days of the week. It's very impressive Ecom Emily on Insta, if you ever want to follow her. But she has been talking about Anywhere Pod for a while now and I've been saying to her, like, let's, let's connect and get Chris on so that he can share with all of us how exactly this tool works. So Chris, before we get into that, can you just give us a quick background on you, like where are you from and how did you even get in the Etsy space to begin with?
- [00:56]
Chris
Sure, yeah, absolutely. So I'm located in Midwest Illinois. Kind of started out in the kind of Etsy and print on demand space and getting all involved in that back around 2016, 2017. I started working for kind of more regional pod provider at the time, kind of one of the smaller ones and kind of built their entire technology to manage all of their orders, all their integrations and all of that. Personalization was always a big focus of the companies. So we had personalization apps and integrations with companies. Etsy, Amazon, WooCommerce, Shopify, a lot of them. And personalization was always a big focus. So, you know, been helping merchants on the Etsy platform. That was one of the first ones that we did. I think we launched that, like I said, that 2016, 2017 timeframe. So I've been working with merchants on setting up listings and doing the whole personalization aspect since then. That was really kind of the early days on Etsy. Back then, Etsy didn't really even have a way to capture the personalization and we were pulling it out of order notes and stuff like that. So platforms come a long way since then as well. But during all that, as I was helping these merchants sell personalized listings on Etsy, there was always these pain points that I would see in the listing process beyond just personalization. That always kind of bugged me. I'm, you know, come from more of a tech background. So anytime I have to do something that's like this repetitive task and copy and paste and all this stuff, like, it gives me highs, like if it's something I can automate, like, I really, really want to automate it. Right? So. So traditionally in the pod space, you're going to use a provider. You're going to go on and upload your artwork and set up your product. But once you build that product, you've got two hours worth of work and five other subscriptions to be able to get your mockups and get your tags. And if you want to do group listings, you're copying and pasting 100 SKUs back and forth and hoping that you're not making mistake. So there was always these little ideas in the back of my head that was like, man, I wish I could automate that. Wish I could automate that. So they couple years ago, that provider I was working for kind of went a different route and was getting out of the pod space. And that's kind of when all those ideas I'd been accumulating for almost a decade decided to bring those to life with anywhere pod. And that's kind of, kind of how we started.
- [03:33]
Julie Berninger
Cool. And I know that aligns with what Etsy is telling us. I think they published a stat, I'm making this up, but every five seconds there's a personalized gift search on Etsy or something like that. And I know in my own life, and when I'm shopping for family and friends, whether it's for the holidays or just birthday gifts upcoming, I want it to say the names of my children, anything that's personalized to, you know, my parents. If I'm getting a gift for Nana, I wanted to say Nana in her name and. And things like that. So it totally makes sense to me why a product like yours is needed. Because when we're doing print on demand and we're selling print on demand, we're not trying, we're not manufacturing products, so we can't put the name of someone's child on every single item, then it's not passive for us anymore. So if we use a SO or like anywhere pod and it automates the process where the customer just inputs into Etsy what the name is and it shows up and it goes out to the customer. And it's not something that we necessarily have to worry about or do tons of extra work, that's just such a huge win and it can take our shop from, hey, this shop is cool. They're offering Nana gifts to like, oh, look, this is Nana Smith Gifts and you can put your name of your Nana and all these things and now it's more desirable to the customer. And I do think the marketplace on Etsy has evolved because it, a couple of years ago it was enough to just have a Nana gift, but just people know that they can get the names on Etsy. So if you are one of the sellers that does offer that, it can be a boost to your shop. And absolutely, I was going to say, Chris, I want to have you do a demo, but before we get into that, I want to explain. The majority of our listeners are actually digital product sellers, but we do have a group that is in the print on demand space and they're starting to experiment with that. So when you do kind of your demo today, if you could explain a little bit about that print on demand process before we diving into it, I think that would be super helpful.
- [05:25]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you're absolutely right with how Etsy has evolved not only as a marketplace, but as the kind of kind of buyers that Etsy is actively attracting to their platform. As everybody knows, that's kind of one of the nice things with Etsy, right, is you have that, that built in traffic source and Etsy is training that traffic source to come to Etsy to look for personalized gifts. They're running, you know, super bowl ads telling people, hey, if you want that unique personalized gift with, you know, your loved one's name on it, Etsy is the place you need to go to. So your customers are coming to Etsy already looking for that personalized gift. So if you're not offering it, you're really, really kind of, kind of missing the boat on that because Etsy's telling people this is where you need to go for that personalized gift. So for those that aren't as familiar with print on demand, you know, there's a huge, huge crossover between Etsy sellers, digital sellers and pod sellers because they're really kind of almost two sides of the same coin. So on the pod side though, they're actually getting a physical product. So you're coming up still with that kind of unique design to go on a T shirt or a sweatshirt or a coffee mug. Those are some of the more popular products. We also get into dinnerware and a lot of other unique gifts. That's also a focus of anywhere pod. So you're. So you're still coming up with that design and building that design, but then instead of listing that design on Etsy to sell, you're actually taking that design and Applying it to a product so that when the customer makes the purchase, they're actually getting shipped an actual, you know, finished, good, physical product that they can receive. So with Anyware Pod, we're able to help automate that whole personalization side. So before, you know, tools like Anywhere Pod, you could do personalized products, but it was a lot of manual work. You'd have to get the order download, you know, get the name that the customer entered, and then retyping the name and hoping you don't have any typos and. And then go into your print provider and creating a manual order. And with Anywhere Pod, we've basically cut all that extra work out. So we're able to import the personalization directly from the customer automatically apply that to the artwork for you. You have the option, if you want to review the artwork before it goes to production to make sure there's no obvious mistakes. And it really just kind of streamlines that whole process. Whereas before, it would easily take two to five or even more minutes per order to do the personalization. With Anywhere Pod, it's literally just a couple of seconds. It's just logging in, clicking one button, and, you know, your order's kind of off to the races and ready to start getting produced.
- [08:13]
Julie Berninger
Well, seconds sounds good to me. Now, before we get into showing how it works, I'm just curious, because now you're the founder of this tool and you're in the back end and you can see the stats. You mentioned T shirts. And when I first started selling print on demand, I briefly sold bachelorette party T shirts. And I actually didn't like, necessarily buying them on Etsy because the shirts never fit anybody. Like, they just. They just don't fit anybody. So what I found really refreshing when we started to collaborate with our Etsy coach, Emily, she mostly sells giftable items that are not apparel. Like, she sells ornaments, she sells mugs, journals, things that are not. You're probably not gonna get a return because of the sizing or a bad review because of the sizing, for example.
- [08:57]
Chris
Right.
- [08:58]
Julie Berninger
I'm just curious your side. Like, do. Do. Does apparel still dominate? Like, for the most of the users on your site, is it. Is it still mostly apparel, or are you seeing, like, these trends also where people are gifting other people like, physical items that are not shirts and sweatshirts and things like that?
- [09:17]
Chris
Yeah, yeah. So it's a. It's a. It's a good mix of the two. Right. We have a lot of sellers that are kind of already in that kind of apparel space. And are doing well with it and they're just wanting to add that personalized element to it. And they have great sales. T shirts still sell great on Etsy. I know there's always talk of, oh, is, you know, apparel saturated, Which I don't know if I necessarily even believe in the whole, like, saturation thing. That just means there are more customers, right? Like there's tons of people selling T shirts. But that's also one of the few things that basically everybody always has. Like you always buy and you always buy more of, right? You're not going to buy one T shirt and use it for 10 years at least. Most people aren't. Right? So it's something that is constantly priced, almost a consumable type of product, which is one of the reasons why it's so popular. But it can also be really hard to break through since there are so many people selling in that space. Finding that angle that's going to make you different than somebody else and keep you from just being another drop in the ocean can be more difficult with apparel. So one of the things that is kind of one of the major goals with Anywhere podcast, besides the personalization, that's obviously kind of our flagship feature and we spend a lot of time making sure we have the best tools available for that. But we also work hard on finding kind of more of these providers that offer products that aren't widely available from some of the really big suppliers that you're used to hearing about. So we're trying to find these products that have really good sales on Etsy. It's a high quality product. People are searching for it, but not many people are selling it because it's not available from your standard suppliers like your Printful or your Printify. So it's one of those ways, especially as a new seller, that you can start to stand out right away. You're coupling that kind of unique niche that you can find space in. Combine that with personalization and then the trifecta is adding that to, you know, a high search volume product that not many people are already offering. And it really, really helps, especially new sellers really kind of be able to break through and start getting some of their first sales.
- [11:27]
Julie Berninger
So, Chris, first rule of podcasting, you can't say that and then not tell us what the product is. What is it? What are some examples here? Are you talking like socks with people's dogs faces on there or like what those.
- [11:39]
Chris
Those are common. You get those off of Printify, one of our biggest ones right now, especially for the upcoming Father's day season and when I, when I do a screen share here in a minute I can show a little bit of those too. Is actually they're, they're platters that are unbreakable platters. They're one of the few products that's 100% made and decorated in the U.S. so in the pod space you often find products that are decorated in the U.S. but they're not actually made in the U.S. these are 100% made in the U.S. they're unbreakable, they're heat safe. It is a phenomenal product. It's sublimation edge to edge on the product hasn't been provided by any of the big sellers. The manufacturer themselves doesn't have a direct integration with Etsy. So it's really kind of one of those products that's exclusive to Anywhere pod. They have a nice product line even beyond platters. They have plates and bowls and cups. You can do like a full place setting and build that as a bundle in Anywhere Pod and with a click of a button, one click, one add to cart in Etsy the customer gets a five piece full place setting with like their kid's name on all five products. Like it's a really, really, really cool product. Really good profit margins and they sell like crazy during Father's Day. So we're recording this in May. You still have some time for Father's Day. Like if there was one product anytime, anybody, especially this time of year, if there's one product I'm going to tell you to focus on, we have so many people right now that are just starting out and within a week or two they're getting their first sales with these platters and it's a really, really good opportunity to break through right now.
- [13:19]
Julie Berninger
So with the platters I'm picturing for example someone that follows the trends on Etsy. The Christmas cookie Santa Claus platter was a big seller, right? And I can see for Mother's Day or people buying gifts for grandmothers, like for cause cooking. I'm missing Father's Day. Is it like, I know Father's Day pancakes. There's a big correlation. Is it like someone putting a breakfast platter for the father when he's making pancakes? Is that what it is?
- [13:44]
Chris
So they're more like a larger oval plate. So it's like a serving platter and they're doing really, really well. The biggest niche those are settled in for Father's Day is like the barbecuing niche. So it's dad's grilling platter with the kids names or the kids hands. I saw one really clever one that was similar to, like the grandma's garden design that you've probably seen where you have like the birth flowers for, like each month with the name. Instead they have, like meat barbecue skewers that are assigned to each name. So, you know, the shrimp or the rare beef or whatever, you know, so there's a lot of really clever ones out there. But it's kind of that barbecue niche for carrying meat back and forth to the grill that do really, really well for Father's Day.
- [14:30]
Julie Berninger
Okay, yeah, that for a second I wasn't connecting it, and now I'm like, yes. My husband, he got a trager, like the smoker thing. He's obsessed with it. It drives me nuts, like, how much he's into this thing. But, you know, guys love getting on the deck and grilling or whatever they're doing out there. They like it.
- [14:47]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, you take that. I can't say no to that. I can't argue there. Yeah, you take that. You pair it with like a. An apron, a cooking apron. Again, you can do that as a bundle in Anywhere Pod. So they have the choice of, do you want the platter or do you want the platter with the apron and the oven mitts? And there you've just really increased that average order value. Customer loves it because they were able to get all the gifts they need to for dad in one spot. They don't have to buy the platter. And then, okay, well, what else am I going to, you know, kind of fill in with to get the full, you know, Father's Day experience? So they really, really do a good job.
- [15:24]
Julie Berninger
Cool. Okay, so that was a fun little trend stat. Always welcome to share your trend stats with our audience. We love that stuff. Now, though, we've probably confused half the audience because they're like, oh, are you guys a printful competitor? Printify? But it's like, no, you're. You work with these other companies to provide the personalization for the designs that goes on it. So I think we're gonna need the demo now so people are like, clear what exactly they're using Anywhere Pod for.
- [15:53]
Chris
Absolutely. I think that's a great idea. Let me pull up my screen here and we'll walk through a quick example. Okay, so this is our system. This is Anywhere pod. So as Julie was just saying, we are not a POD supplier ourselves. What we do is we help connect you with other POD suppliers. So the benefit of that is it's a great win, win for Everybody. So you still get the same awesome level of customer service that you're used to getting from the Printifys and the shine ons and that sort of thing. You still get the same pricing that you do in your account. Basically, when an order comes in, it just first imports to Anywhere Pod. We help with the magic behind the scenes of doing the personalization and when it's ready for production, it's sent to your account with that supplier. They invoice you like they would any other order. Do the print pack and ship process like normal. We get the tracking number, update your store and it's just kind of a seamless process through and through, through that. So you're still, you're not paying anything extra per order. We don't take any order fees. We want you to keep as much of your profit as possible. You get the same great pricing, the same great support. You just have a lot of added functionality, not just with personalization, but a lot of the other automation tools that we have that I'll kind of go through a little bit here today as well. So that supplier we were just talking about is Deco Plate. If you want to connect with any of these, if you come to your store, this is kind of how it's first going to look. If you click on Connect to any of these, it'll have a list of instructions that you'll want to follow to set up your account. Once it's set up, you're all set and good to go. Which is kind of the other nice benefit with Anywhere Pod is it kind of gives you one kind of centralized hub to manage all of your products and all of your orders. So since we don't take any order fees, a lot of people end up using us to create all of their products. That way they kind of have one source to go to. It's also nice because you don't have to learn a new system every time you want to list somebody else's product. So once you learn how to build a product with Anywhere Pod, it's the same process whether you're using Printify or Deco Plate or Reliable Pod or any of the other suppliers that we have.
- [18:19]
Julie Berninger
So we should probably use Printify for the example. As much as I'm excited about these platters, just because I bet 99% of the people who are doing POD listening probably use Printify.
- [18:30]
Chris
You're absolutely correct. And that's the kind of sample that I have set up is doing a Christmas ornament. So we can walk through that here. So these are the Eight suppliers we have now, you can see a few of the unique ones are over here on the right that you probably haven't heard of. DecoPlate and USHA Mercantile are kind of the Anywhere Pod exclusive right now. And then we have Printful and probably three or four others that are in our queue of other suppliers we're working on adding. So we're constantly kind of increasing and building up that product catalog. So let me jump back over to my account here that's connected to everything and we'll walk through a quick example, like I said, of doing a Christmas ornament. So the product creation process is actually pretty similar to, if you're used to building products on Printify, pretty similar process. But we'll just walk through it here real quick. So I'm going to come up here to the product catalog and we're just going to come over here to Ornaments. Now this is one of the other nice things with Anywhere Pod is we have what I call a unified product catalog. So if you're wanting to say who has XYZ product, you can come to Anywhere Pod and search across the product catalog of all eight suppliers and in one spot be able to see their pricing and everything that is available. So that can be a big benefit when you're looking for what products are available out there. Makes it very quick so you're not having to go to each site individually to look for that. So let's just look at Printify for now and we're going to do this ceramic ornament here. So I'm just going to come here and go to start designing now. One of the other kind of awesome automation pieces that you have with Anywhere Pod is we have a direct integration with Canva. So you don't have to use Canva if you're using kittl or, you know, still using Photoshop or anything like that. You can certainly still use Anywhere pod. You're just gonna export your design as a transparent PNG without the personalization on it, and then you're gonna add that personalization back in here after you upload your artwork. But if you're using Canva, what is really cool here is if I click on ADD from Canva, this is gonna pull up all of my most recent designs here that I have in my Canva account. And I can import here not only as a png, but if I click on Import Layers here, it is going to import that entire design from Canva as an editable template. Like as though I originally created it here in Anywhere pod. I don't have to do any of the additional work to get the text layers or anything added to it. So you can see here, I've got my year and name text box already over here. So all I need to do is mark the fields here that I want to be personalized. And this design's like already set up for me, so it's able to import that entire process from Canva. This works for images. Whether you're using frames in Canva, if you're doing Birth flowers, like it really, really is a huge, huge time saver. Not having to worry about design sizes and downloading and re uploading. They can really save you a lot of time. So on this one we're just going to go with our circle ornament here and we're going to go to Create product. Now this is going to go through and generate our placeholder artwork for us with the name and everything as we had it set up. And then it's also going to generate any of the mockups that are available from the print provider. So you're not missing out on any mockups that you would normally get from Printify. Those are all immediately available for you in here automatically. So you're not missing out any of that information for this product. If this was all I was doing. Of course you can set your title description, you can set up your tags. We have a nice little Etsy analyzer tool here that helps find some of your top performing tags. You can set up your pricing, any of that type of stuff. And then you just need to publish the product over to Etsy by clicking on this Create new Etsy listing. And that's going to create the kind of default listing for you over in Etsy. Now there's a lot of other functionality you can do here too. We have a mockup generation tool. So especially if you're using your own mockups, instead of having to create those manually for every new product in Canva or whatever software you're using, you can create as a template in anywhere POD wants, set your colors to it. So say you're doing T shirts, you set the color to your blank image and every time you create that color in the future, it's just going to automatically generate that mock up for you. So it eliminates that entire kind of manual process that you normally have to do with mockups. We have a video generation tool here that will create a slideshow style video for you that will go over to Etsy with your listing, which is a huge plus and really helps you to stand out on the search results. Probably our second most popular feature is going to be this add variants functionality. This basically lets you hijack and do anything that you want to to the variant section in Etsy. If you want to do group listings like adding T shirts and hoodies onto one listing or multiple shaped ornaments that the customer can have the choice of, you can do any of that with the add variance functionality. It can be different artwork, any of that type of stuff. It really, really is a powerful tool and kind of adds a layer of personalization directly to the variant fields right there inside of Etsy. So it can be.
- [24:15]
Julie Berninger
Let me pause and restate this for everyone who's like me and I'm currently pregnant, so I have like a mom brain situation happening right now. But I just want to make sure we're on the same page. So what I need, I already need to have my Printify account and then I log into Anywhere Pod. My design is ready when in here. It's an example of the deer with the name of the said My First Christmas. For those who are just listening, who aren't watching. And you could, you can watch this demonstration on YouTube if you go to the Gold City Ventures YouTube channel. But it says First Christmas is a little deer. It says Emily and then the date, which makes tons of sense because I know grandmas love to gift First Christmas ornaments to the kids. My kids have gotten them from.
- [24:57]
Chris
Absolutely.
- [24:58]
Julie Berninger
But for this particular product, you already made the design. You put it in here and when you put. It's almost like you're filling. You're not. You didn't create the listing in Etsy yet like you're creating the listing in Anywhere Pod and all the choices that are available on Etsy, you kind of pulled them over and they're here. So I'm guessing when we hit publish, it's going to create the Etsy listing for us. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when someone buys it, it's going to go through your software so that when they put Emily 2025 first Christmas or whatever the options we're going to give them, it's going to. You're going to change the design on your end and then it's going to actually print out to printify and ship to the customer through them without and let me know like what steps a person has to do after. But is that the basic understanding?
- [25:46]
Chris
Yeah, absolutely. So we hit Create Etsy listing here. That's going to create a draft listing for you in Etsy. If you want to make any additional edits inside of Etsy, you can, you'll turn on the personalization field inside of Etsy. When the customer purchases, they type in their name. That order first comes into Anywhere Pod with that customer's name. We're going to swap out the kind of placeholder name that you have that you entered for your kind of mockups here. And then you'll have a chance to review that if you want to, before it goes off to production. You click on Release hold, it goes into Printify and everything's kind of automated completely from there. So you have a change.
- [26:27]
Julie Berninger
So if person put Emily with like a weird Y at the or something at the end, you're like, ah, I better check with the customer. It's not going to go right out. Like you're going to review it in Anywhere Pod, make sure it all looks good and then send it through.
- [26:39]
Chris
Right. So you have the option here on every product of whether or not you want it to auto fulfill, which means as long as it meets all of our pre checks, when that order comes in, we generate that artwork. As long as there's no issues, we automatically send it to the supplier. You can see that by default that's going to be turned off so that you have a chance to review it. Because especially when you're first starting out, you want to make sure that you have it set up. Right. That you're confident in the software before money starts coming out of your account. Right. But especially if you're just doing, you know, only asking for a name, that's something that a lot of times people will end up deciding to automate as they get more and more sales. So you kind of have the flexibility to be able to set that kind of, you know, per product as you want to.
- [27:26]
Julie Berninger
Okay, cool. And for anyone that's in Emily's the Gift Lab course, she has a print on demand course where she talks about how she creates five of her top selling products that led to the 500k in her first two years. Ornaments are one of them. She recently recorded videos for Anywhere Pod to show everyone what her personal process is for using the tool. So if you already have access to that course or you want to check it out, you're going to get those videos too so you can follow along in more detail. We're not going to go through the entire thing today or this would be a very long podcast episode. But Emily will take you step by step through.
- [28:05]
Chris
Perfect.
- [28:06]
Julie Berninger
Cool. Well, I think is there anything else you want to show the after here or do you have the order dashboard? Can you See that?
- [28:15]
Chris
Yeah, I can pull that up here, over here on your orders in the left here. I probably have a bunch of test orders here that you can ignore the details of, but your order will first come into here, be placed on hold. This is where you would come in and be able to view that order, be able to edit the personalization, swap. The artwork will really give you kind of the full flexibility. So if you just need to change the name, you can do that. If your customer asks for something completely crazy, like say, hey, instead of first Christmas at the top, can you have it say, you know, something else, you're able to still accommodate that without a lot of extra steps. So we give you the simplest solutions of just editing and personalization if you need to. But if you need to completely swap out the artwork, upload something new, make any edits here to the full artwork, you have that full flexibility to do that here. Once you're happy with it, you just click on this release, hold here at the top, and it goes off to your supplier for fulfillment.
- [29:14]
Julie Berninger
All right, cool. Well, I think this was a great start to the demo. I want to end the podcast by asking you some more questions. I think we can turn off the screen share if you're comfortable with that.
- [29:23]
Chris
Perfect.
- [29:24]
Julie Berninger
Awesome.
- [29:24]
Chris
There we go.
- [29:25]
Julie Berninger
Cool. So I'm really excited, Chris, about this tool and I think you gave us something fun to think about with the platters. I'm just curious, does anything else come to mind in terms of trends? I guess, first question, how long have you guys been in business? Have you seen a full calendar year of Etsy sales?
- [29:42]
Chris
Yeah, we are just over two years of having anywhere pod out there. So yeah, as far as like new products, any of the products from Deco Plate do really well. The other kind of exclusive supplier we have right now is Usha Mercantile. They sell kind of higher end home goods. So they have like cotton beddings, full cotton bedding, sets, rugs, different tapestries, stuff like that. So that's another good one. As far as unique products go. Ornaments is kind of one of those that, you know, is always kind of good, especially Christmas time. But even kind of year round, people are always, you know, getting married or celebrating, you know, the birth of a baby. You got newborn ornaments, a lot of different things that you can do there. I really like journals as well. They do really well. Golf towels actually is one that has really kind of started to pop off over, you know, this year. Another really good Father's Day product that was recently added to Printify. So isn't something that's been kind of out there a whole lot in the past. So that's another really good one.
- [30:57]
Julie Berninger
Oh, yeah. I mean, I know we're coming off the whole Masters thing and all that hoopla surrounding it. I participated in a square. I did not win. I was so upset. I thought it was going to be Scotty, not Rory. It's fine.
- [31:13]
Chris
Golf is. Golf is always one of those that seems harder to predict than most other sports.
- [31:18]
Julie Berninger
Yes. I put into Chat GPT too. My family thought that was hilarious. They're like, who Chat GPT is this. But I'm like, I just want to see who has the best odds and Right.
- [31:26]
Chris
Yeah.
- [31:26]
Julie Berninger
Steer me wrong. It stared me wrong. But that's interesting about the golf towel. I'm not. I'm not shocked by that. Okay, so in terms of just general, you know, Etsy stats, calendar year, we know it's super seasonal. Are there any other, like, big seasonal trends that you're seeing or things that you. Oh, like, I see a lot. For example, we know Christmas. There's going to be a big movement on Christmas. When I've talked to other people that own different Etsy softwares, they're like, oh, yeah, like, 50% of the volume is done between November 15th and December 15th. Like, Jim, any weird stats like that or any, like, surprise holidays that you're like, oh, this seems like a sleeper holiday, but it's actually huge.
- [32:03]
Chris
Yeah. So that. That is true with. With Christmas. You know that pretty much anything that you. That you list during the Christmas season is more likely to get sales. Like, everything pops off during the Christmas season. I really like going after things that have kind of other kind of good evergreen items kind of that happen throughout the year. So things like, you know, people get married every day, people have babies every day, they have an anniversary every day. So focusing on some of those that not only do well, like, throughout the year, there is a wedding season where you'll see a bit more of a spike for that. But then those are the same products that end up kind of popping off during the holiday season as well. Not to keep going back to the platters, but that is one of those products that for the May and June time period, so of 2024, they actually sold more products in May and June than they did during the previous November and December. So another reason why I really like those, you kind of have that mini Christmas in the summertime when sales are traditionally a little bit slower. You really kind of are able to see a boost in those sales and kind of helps level off your sales throughout the year because of that.
- [33:14]
Julie Berninger
Yeah. And that's. That is a good piece of advice because we always tell people to go after seasonal things, but spread it out so that you can be getting sales all year round versus just the big primetime events. Okay, two more questions. Can you, like, I was joking about the dog face thing, but I do know that that's a big trend right now. People want their pet faces or faces of their kids. For example, can you accept. Can it automate accepting like a photo from somebody? Or is it still or this is the process still. The person needs to message the picture through you to messages and then you got to put it in the Canva design and then either exp port it or pull it over. There's no way to automate it through Etsy right now. Right.
- [33:55]
Chris
So it's not 100% automated yet. We have some plans in the future that's going to make that process a lot easier. Again, it's kind of one of those manual processes that like, I got to find a solution for. Right. But in the meantime, yeah, they would just send you an Etsy message or an email with their photo. That order comes in, it goes on hold and then right there on the order, you don't have to like go recreate the product or artwork or do it in Canva. You do it all in Anywhere pod. You just edit the personalization, upload that photo. It'll even work and give you a little cropper if you need it in a specific shape. Like if you want their. Their photo in the shape of a heart or something like that, you can do all of that right inside of Anywhere pod. So it's not a hundred percent automated, but it's about as streamlined as you can get with the current processes that exist.
- [34:41]
Julie Berninger
Okay. And you can still do the text automated in that aspect where someone could still type in baby's first Christmas 2025 or whatever. But then the picture will just come in additionally.
- [34:50]
Chris
Exactly. Yep. It will just come in, go on hold. It'll import the text and kind of just sit there and wait until you're able to upload that photo to it.
- [34:57]
Julie Berninger
Okay, that makes sense. That's cool. Excellent. And then I think my last question when I first saw this, and I thought we'd be talking entirely about print on demand today, but have you ever used cordial or template? Have you heard of those?
- [35:12]
Chris
I have heard of cordial for sure. At least. Yeah.
- [35:15]
Julie Berninger
Yeah. We've used cordial for a while for our editable products, for printables. Because Gold City Ventures is a giant printables digital products brand. Sure. And recently though, and I mean recently meaning like we started in 2019. Canva though has improved so much by 2019. A lot of our sellers now actually like they just, they just stick with Canva end to end for editable templates, for printables. But when I saw what you guys offered, it looks very similar to Cordial. I'm like, you guys could make like for example, the birthday invitation situation, like I bet, I bet this could be through Anywhere Pod too. Do you have any plans to add that functionality like for the printable people? And it's okay if you don't. I mean it's a whole different niche. But when I saw it, I'm like, oh, this looks very, this looks similar to how kind of it is there. Like you could offer people both worlds.
- [36:02]
Chris
Yeah. So we actually do have a few digital product features in Anywhere Pod now. It's really kind of more geared towards the digital seller that is selling like SVG files to like Cricut users that are then, you know, printing it on their own Cricut and putting on their mugs or whatever. So you can still generate mock ups and do that sort of thing in Anywhere pod. But yes, we have thought a lot about adding in additional features to be able to do personalization for digital products as well. So that is likely something that will be coming in the future.
- [36:34]
Julie Berninger
Okay, cool. All right. I thought I said one more question, but then I thought of another one. Sorry. So you have a very, I love the idea that you have an interesting perspective where you can kind of see the orders that are moving through the system and you can see what people are connecting for designs and such. Canva obviously is the dominant player when it comes to designs, but we all know that Kittl, well, maybe not everybody, but Kittl recently came on the scene maybe last couple years and more and more people are trying that out. I'm just curious like percentage wise, if you, if you know this off the top of your head, like can you see are most people using Canva like 85% and Kittle has like 15 and maybe another one has two. Or what is the breakdown in terms of how people are using the different design software?
- [37:16]
Chris
Yeah, so I'm not sure on the exact percentage. I will say it kind of seems the majority of people are using Canva now. So we can kind of tell if our customers are using Canva or if they're using something else. We don't necessarily know if it's you Know Photoshop or Kittle or. But those are kind of the top three that people use. Photoshop's really kind of come down, you know, back in 2017 that's pretty much all there was. Everybody was using, was using Photoshop. So now that's definitely switched over to where Canva is definitely kind of the top dog there. They really make things super simple. KITTL has some really interesting features as well though, especially when it comes to AI and some of the additional edit functionality that, that they have, depending on what you're going for. So those are definitely the top two. Canvas in the lead for sure. But we do have quite a few KILL users as well.
- [38:05]
Julie Berninger
Okay, do you integrate with Playground AI as well?
- [38:09]
Chris
We do not. So right now our only kind of direct integration to design software is with Canva. We do hope to be able to integrate with some of the other platforms as soon as they have the kind of API functionality we need to suck in those designs. We're hoping to be able to integrate KITTL and some of those other ones too.
- [38:29]
Julie Berninger
Yeah, I know that's a lot of work on their end. Like Canva recently came up with all the different, you know, connect with us and the big push to get people to do that. So kudos for you guys for setting up that because that's, that's huge. Everyone's using Canva so it's super easy for people.
- [38:41]
Chris
It's. And it's such, such a time saver. I mean even, even for your non personalized designs, like you don't realize how much of a time suck it is and how big of a pain point it is to have to download a PNG and upload a png, like that's just like part of the process that everyone just assumes that you have to do that. As soon as you don't have to do that. It's like almost frustrating when you do have to like download a PNG to your computer. It's like come on, you know.
- [39:08]
Julie Berninger
Yep. Oh yeah, I totally agree and I appreciate, you know, I think the non engineer folk like me, we appreciate people like you who get frustrated because I know we're frustrated and we're complaining to people like you and then you guys figure out how to actually some solve it. So thank you.
- [39:21]
Chris
Yeah, we love hearing feedback from our customers. So we are definitely open to feedback. We want to make this the most productive software that it can be for any of our users. So we love hearing feedback from our customers. If you get in there and ever have a question or any feedback for Us, we are more than open to hearing that. We try to offer. It's really kind of a fanatical level of customer support. So most of the time we're answering questions within an hour or two. Always daily things are answered. And we always try to give the level of customer support that we wish we had on other software that we had throughout the years that you just, in the software world, you never quite seem to get. So we try to do our best at keeping above par on that too.
- [40:09]
Julie Berninger
Well, thank you. For anyone that does want to try it out and be trial user, I think, Kris, you set us up with a special code. I believe it's Gold City Ventures. No, It's Gold City 30. Is that what it is?
- [40:21]
Chris
Gold City 30, yes. That will give you one month free on any of our plans. I could probably mention the subscription plans that we have. So our basic plan starts at just $10 a month. We don't charge any order fees on any of our plans. The basic plan gives you text personalization and one print provider. And then our Pro plan is basically two providers and then adds in some of the image capabilities that you can do. And then with the PRO plus plan, that's where you kind of get unlimited use of all the features and Canva integration, videos, adding variants, unlimited suppliers, all that sort of thing. And that top plan is 39.99amonth.
- [41:05]
Julie Berninger
What's the middle one?
- [41:07]
Chris
The middle one's 24.99.
- [41:09]
Julie Berninger
Okay, so if you wanted to do like the heart image thing that we talked about with like the ornament, then you need the middle plan, right?
- [41:17]
Chris
Yes, correct.
- [41:19]
Julie Berninger
But for any of them, you need the PRO plus if you want to integrate with Canva directly, otherwise you're exporting. Is that right?
- [41:27]
Chris
Correct. The biggest things you get with that PRO plus is the Canva integration and. And then also that add variance functionality that I talked a little bit about. That's very, very powerful tool as well. The coupon code works on any of the three, and you can downgrade at any time. So I would recommend getting the PRO plus plan. That way you can kind of see what all the features are about. And if you decide you only need one of the other ones, you can always downgrade before it renews. If you see this and you're all in, you can actually also use that coupon code to get $40 off kind of the already discounted yearly plan for Pro plus as well. So just so everybody's aware, that's available too.
- [42:06]
Julie Berninger
Okay, so for. And I'm. And I Think the variance thing is very helpful because I know when I'm a shopper on Etsy and I'm buying for my kids, like I know, for example, if they could pick between mermaids and unicorns, like I know which kid wants the mermaid and which one wants the unicorn.
- [42:18]
Chris
Exactly.
- [42:19]
Julie Berninger
If you like create two separate listings, you can always do it that way. But then you're competing against yourself when you can just get all the traffic.
- [42:26]
Chris
One of the really nice things that a lot of people do, you can actually, so like using your example of mermaids and unicorns, do that as a group listing. So from the variant the customer is going to be able to say, okay, do I want the mermaid or do I want the unicorn? And then what you can actually do is have one listing with your title and your featured image and your tags and everything geared towards mermaid and then you can duplicate that listing and have the second one geared towards unicorns. And then you're almost even doing an AB test between the two listings on which one's going to rank better. That's a very common strategy that people use. So you're kind of getting the best of both worlds. You're giving the customer the choice if they end up wanting one of the different ones. And you're also able to kind of target to mermaids and to people that are searching for unicorns.
- [43:15]
Julie Berninger
And I love that. Do you sell on Etsy too? Or like, how do you, how do you know that? Like, you just know that from seeing what the sellers are doing or are you also experimenting too?
- [43:24]
Chris
So I have, in the past, I don't currently have an active Etsy shop just because focusing all of our time on Anywhere Pod. I see a lot of people's designs and I don't want there ever to be any kind of conflict or anything there. But we do work with a lot of coaches, do some coaching ourselves and are still, you know, super, super active kind of in that, in that world and in that community. So.
- [43:48]
Julie Berninger
All right, cool. Well, we're gonna put, we're gonna put the link below, it's go.goldcityventures.com anywhere pod and I'm gonna link to it below if anyone just wants to click. And then when there's the option for the coupon code, put Gold City 30 to get the 30 day free trial.
- [44:06]
Chris
You got it.
- [44:07]
Julie Berninger
Cool. That seems like a great thing for people. They can test it out, see if they like it. That's awesome. So thank you, Chris for coming on today. We really appreciate having you here. It's Been an absolute bless last and thanks again. We're going to put the link below so people can check out. Is there anything else that you want to conclude with?
- [44:24]
Chris
No, I think that's, that's pretty much it. Just want to say thanks for, for having me on. I know I mentioned it earlier, but I will say if anybody gets in, they have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to reach out to our customer support. If you have literally any question you're not sure on something, you want to schedule A1 on one call to walk through a specific scenario, you have any of that sort of thing, we're more than happy to help. Anytime we'd rather you reach out, we can usually get you an answer really fast and we'd rather that than you kind of struggle through something if you are having any issues. So feel free to reach out anytime. And thanks again for having us on. I appreciate it.
- [44:55]
Julie Berninger
Awesome. And yeah, I think that's a pro tip because I've noticed when beginners, they're like afraid to contact support or they don't think of doing support tickets. But now, for example, Cody and I, we've been active since 2019 here. We send support tickets like every day to whatever software. If there's confusion, if we have problems, like we just send them out. I mean, you, you know, we're not setting them on in a wild goose chase, but I'm sure we are helping them if there's an issue or providing areas where people are getting confused. So I think people should do more of that. And thank you for pointing that out because we, we don't want to be left on an island trying to figure this tool out. So much appreciated.
- [45:27]
Chris
Yep, yep. Yeah, no, absolutely. There are too many people that are kind of scared of sending a support ticket and it's, it's kind of funny. But like, I'm begging you to contact us because that, that level of feedback, if you ask a question, someone else has that same question. So that's not an issue with you, it's an issue with us. And we need to do something either better training or change things to be more clear. So really by reaching out, you're helping us. And you know, so at the end it's, you know, helping us and, and they're getting the benefit as well. So. Yeah, absolutely.
- [45:54]
Julie Berninger
Don't be shy. All right, thanks.
- [45:56]
Chris
Yep. Alrighty. Thanks a lot. Take care.