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*7/11 update! In under a week, together with the help of our customers, we were able to raise a total of $1,050 in profits! We split the profits and donated to two organizations- BEAM and Anti Racism Fund. Thank you again to every one of you that purchased and helped share information about our campaign. The fight isn’t over, let’s continue doing our part and KEEP FIGHTING!

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Last month I had this idea to sell shirts/products to raise money to support the Black Lives Matter movement and thought the process was going to be easy. Whoa, was I wrong.

We had our followers choose from a few different designs we created on Canva (listed below) and the final design was a blend of two of the most voted for.

We wanted to go with a slogan everyone could relate to and would feel motivated + inspired to KEEP FIGHTING.

Now that we finalized a design, we would move to next steps. Who we would use to drop ship.

This was my very first time hearing about drop shipping so in case you’re like me and have never heard of it, I’ll share a little of what drop shipping is.

Basically, with drop shipping you have zero inventory. You work with a company to directly distribute your products. It helps you save money and space on the back end because you really don’t know how much product you’ll end up selling and let’s be honest, we also don’t have all the space to house it either.

We were recommended Printify however, with it being so popular and being affected by COVID, their ship time was 3-4 weeks. There was no way, NO WAY, we were going to have our clients waiting for a month for their products.

After a lot of research we came across Printed Mint. They are a small boutique right in Arizona with lightning speed turn around time. We ordered some samples for ourselves and within a week, had our products.

We loved the products and the fact that the tag line was printed via DTP method. I’m not sure what that means exactly but if I had to guess it would be “Direct T-Shirt Print” which means it will last long after a lot of washes. This was important to us!

Everything was perfect until…

We realized we would need a store. And the store we chose was the popular Shopify however, you had to pay to play (we went with the $30 a month membership) AND though Printed Mint synced with Shopify, it wasn’t an automatic process.

Basically what that meant was that every single order we got, we would have to push them through + design them manually.

This would take an extreme amount of time, but it was either that or have our customers wait 30 days. So, we decided to roll up our sleeves and get to know Shopify with Printed Mint.

Shopify was another hurdle to learn. It was a system we never used before and it took us about a week and a half to learn it.

I am a perfectionist to a certain extent, so I wanted our customers to have a flawless experience. It’s how I run my photography business and my clients wouldn’t expect anything less.

Once we had the shop and products up, we mocked up a few designs with models. THIS WAS A LIFE SAVER because with Covid, there was no way I could have people model for me. Not to mention, we didn’t have the funds to buy extra merch. I’ll have to get back to you on the company we used because I honestly can’t remember Haha.

Fast forward a few weeks later and we are officially LIVE! You can support our movement here where 100% of the profits will be donated to support the Black Lives Matter movement.

This process has been a learning experience for sure (there’s a few other steps I didn’t mention) but it’s been amazing seeing all of the support. In only two days we’ve raised about $430 in profit and once we reach $500 we will be donating to 1 of 2 organizations. The ultimate goal is to raise $1,000 in profits so we could donate to two organizations.

If you’re looking to do something similar feel free to ping me. I am happy to help you learn the ropes so we could continue supporting the cause.

As always, thanks for stopping by!