Checking your print placement before you list

Print-on-demand introduces a gap that traditional retail does not have: you design a product you have never seen, and a third party manufactures it without your inspection.

Most of the time it is fine. The times it is not are almost always placement or colour, and both are discoverable in ten minutes with a sample and a tape measure.

Placement drifts, and the drift is not random

Every printer has a standard placement — typically a set distance below the collar — and every printer's interpretation of your file differs slightly. Print areas vary between blanks. Larger sizes often use the same placement as smaller ones, which means the design sits proportionally higher on a 3XL than on a small.

None of this is negligence. It is the normal variance of manufacturing, and your listing needs to reflect what actually arrives rather than what your file suggested.

Measure the sample

When a sample arrives, measure three things and write them down:

• Distance from the collar seam to the top of the print.
• Width of the print at its widest point.
• Whether it is centred, and by how much it is not.

Compare against what your mockup implied. If they differ by more than a centimetre or two, your mockup-based listing images are inaccurate, and you should replace them with photographs.

Check colour against the file on a calibrated-ish screen

Perfect colour matching is not achievable and not the goal. What you are checking for is whether the printed result is recognisably the same colour family as the file, particularly on dark garments where the underbase shifts everything.

Photograph the sample in daylight next to nothing else, and compare on screen. Colours that came out noticeably duller or lighter should be reflected in your listing photographs rather than in an idealised mockup.

Photograph the actual placement

Once you have the sample, the listing photograph solves the problem by definition. It shows where the print sits, on the garment it ships on, in the colour it prints.

This is the argument for sampling your best sellers, and it is a commercial argument rather than a purist one: accurate listings on the products that carry your revenue reduce returns where returns cost most.

Document the sizing separately

Placement accuracy and fit accuracy are different problems and buyers conflate them.

Include the blank manufacturer's measurement chart as an image, and if you have sampled multiple sizes, note where the print sits differently. A line saying "print size is consistent across all sizes, so it appears proportionally larger on smaller garments" pre-empts a common complaint.

Re-check when your supplier changes

Print-on-demand suppliers change blanks, change printers and change print methods, sometimes without notification.

If you notice a change in customer feedback, or if your supplier announces a blank substitution, sample again. Listings that were accurate two years ago may not be now, and old inaccuracy is indistinguishable from carelessness to the buyer receiving it.

What restaging cannot fix

It restages what you photographed, faithfully — including a placement that came out three centimetres low. That is a feature rather than a limitation: the listing shows what ships.

If the placement is wrong enough to be a problem, the fix is with your supplier or your file, not with the photograph. A photograph that quietly corrects a manufacturing error is a promise the parcel will not keep.