Threadless: Helps Artists Earn Royalties With POD

What is Threadless?

Threadless is a print-on-demand site that encourages artists to upload their designs and use them to decorate a wide array of products for sale, ranging from skateboards to yoga mats. Artists get a royalty on each sale.

This post may contain affiliate links. You can read our full affiliate policy here.

How it works

Like other print-on-demand sites, artists sign up here and upload images. Then you choose what products you’d like your image to decorate and how much of a royalty you want to earn on each sale.

Threadless will manufacture the products, mail and market them. You simply collect royalties for sales of products with your design.

Threadless review:

Where some sites have artists decide their own royalty rates on everything. Threadless offers two options: You can let Threadless price your goods, offering them via site promotions, but guaranteeing that you’ll earn at least 10% on most sales. Or you can choose your own profit margin, adding that to the base price of the goods to come up with a final price for the product.

Threadless’ terms heavily favor the “managed pricing” option, promising that this will allow the site to feature your art in advertising and in the site’s online promotions. And since the site’s managed pricing program also will allow items to be sold for less than the base cost it charges artists, these products are likely to also appear to be bargains to buyers.

Getting paid

When your items sell, Threadless produces them, mails them to the customer and pays you a royalty, based on the rate you set — or let them set. Payments to artists are made once a month via PayPal.

One problem

The one problem with this site is product quality. Both buyers and sellers complain that the designs can flake off, the colors bleed and the quality of the t-shirts and sweatshirts is poor. Since those are your designs looking rotten as they flake off Threadless t-shirts, be careful about using this site to market your art.

When we revisited the site’s review in August of 2024, these quality control problems had not abated. In fact, Threadless responded to a recent complaint on TrustPilot with an explanation of their printing process, acknowledging that it can result in inconsistent images.

Says Threadless: We’re sorry you’re not completely satisfied with your tees. We want you to know that we print our tees using digital technology, which allows us to print your unique design directly onto your garment using inkjet technology. It’s like a large inkjet printer, but we print on blank garments instead of paper. However, since each tee is printed in a separate run, there may be slight inconsistencies with pretreatment application, print placement, and outcomes.

Recommendations

Some other sites worth considering: Society6, and RedBubble, which both allow you to set your own royalty rates. Also consider Spoonflower, which is particularly well-suited to people with repeating designs. FineArtAmerica, which we see as particularly adept at turning your pictures into puzzles. And, Printful, which charges less but has you do more of the marketing. (You can sign up with Printful here.)

What their customers say (from Reddit)

I just got my order of Threadless t-shirts, all in “Large” size… but apparently, “Large” means different things for each shirt?? 🤦‍♂️Seriously, look at this (image attached) – these shirts are all supposed to be the same size, but the lengths are all over the place! One looks like a crop top, and the other one could double as a dress. What’s going on here, Threadless? Did your QC team take the day off?

Trash quality. Washed it once and hung it to dry now there’s wrinkles all around the art. They don’t have any idea what they’re doing. Pretty f-d up if you ask me.

(from TrustPilot)

Four products got sold from my store, I got profit from one only. The other three mention zero profit “because they got on base price” because of some promotion or another. In the meantime my friends who got shirts lately are complaining about the abhorrent quality. The designs peel off after a few washes. This is not how it used to be.

Absolute garbage quality. One wash and the shirt shrunk around the logo on it. It looks awful. The logo also wasn’t laid right so some of the shirt color bled through the print.
Really disappointing.

I have ordered at least three batches from them, and, while T-shirts bought in 2011 is still perfect today, products purchased after 2015 have completely faded after few washes. Prints fade so much that what was once a T-shirt with a striking artwork is now a solid color shirt without any hint of a print, except maybe a few smudges here and there.

Years ago I ordered a batch of shirts from threadless that still look great today, so I thought I’d order some new shirts from threadless in hopes that I’d get the same quality. Unfortunately the Threadless quality from the past is no longer.

What their customers say (from SiteJabber):

Designed a t-shirt, simple logo format, 4 colors. The colors bled into each other at the edges, looking horrible! How can that even happen with current technology? They told me it was my fault and would not take the blame! Took the design to printify and it came out PERFECT with the exact same file! Do not use this $#*!ty web site and company!

Received my shirts, and I am appalled at the quality. It’s been a few years since I purchased from threadless, and I will not again. The quality is garbage. All four shirts I purchased have extremely low quality prints on them, and 2 of the 4 shirts are laughably crooked. I paid nearly $100 for 4 shirts and patiently waited 3 weeks… I couldn’t be more disappointed.

Terrible print quality

Same experience as many other reviews. The print quality is terrible compared to how it used to be.
In the photo, the shirt on the left was ordered in 2012, and the print is barely faded. The shirt on the right was ordered in January 2021. And it has obviously deteriorated, even though it’s only ever been washed on 20 degrees. The same goes for all the other shirts from that order. Whenever we wash them now all the clothes in the machine are covered with print particles. Won’t be ordering from Threadless again.

Products don’t make the cut

I opened a store to offer merch for my music. And I ordered a sample of each of the products I intended to offer, before making the store public, which cost me $238. Most of them, across the different categories, look cheap. The digital printing is always blurry (much less definition than in the original images). The pillows have knots in the fabric and even light brownish stains. A friend of mine ordered a zip pouch and came up with the same opinion.

The website may look nice enough, but the products they actually deliver are far from making the cut and would damage any artist’s reputation. I will have to go somewhere else.

I’ve been a Threadless customer for over ten years. I have noticed a significant drop in quality for their shirts. The design begins to peel and crack within a year of purchase. And it’s a shame when I compare those shirts to ones I bought 10 years ago that are still holding up and look better.

Updated 8/16/2024