Adding Merch Through Fourthwall
I’m excited to announce I’m adding another vendor to my website! As you probably guessed from the title, the new vendor is Fourthwall. But first a little history and background from my side of the fence.
Background
Long time followers will recall I previously operated a storefront through Shopify where I sold prints and other products. The fine art prints were printed by Fine Art America/Pixels who I’ve used as my primary vendor for around 15 years now. I remain a fan and genuinely love their archival quality wall art products. I have never been disappointed with any print I’ve ordered from them whether for a customer or to decorate my own walls.
If money is not a concern and you’re aiming to have a piece of art on your walls for decades their acid free substrates and archival inks are the direction to go. I have prints from them on my walls that look as fresh today as they did over a decade ago. And I fully expect them to outlast me.
However I frequently hear from potential customers who for a variety of reasons wish I had more affordable options. Maybe it’s a money issue or perhaps it’s art for a child’s room or another space that you know you will redecorate frequently. Enter Fourthwall. I was actually looking for a print on demand poster option that I could incorporate with Etsy when I learned about Fourthwall. I’ve thought about selling posters through Etsy frequently over the years but honestly being the middle man in that sort of situation sounds super stressful to me.
There were two things about Shopify that ultimately caused me to shutter my Shopify store in early 2023. One was dealing with sales taxes. The US needs a better solution for online commerce than putting the onus on every little small business who wants to sell online to deal with that jumble. The other was being stuck between the POD company and the customer. On one hand, I WANT to help anyone who has ordered get their goods and to fix any issues they have with prints lost or damaged in shipping and things like that. On the other hand when selling on platforms like Shopify and Etsy utilizing a third party vendor, that means the following potential ordeal. Customer contacts me with a problem. I have no way to immediately fix it myself, so I contact the vendor and wait. And the vendor may have more questions, and the cycle continues with me having to basically be the unfortunate person caught in the middle. This happened just enough that it made me a nervous wreck which was a bad combination last year when I had other issues to focus on.
Selling through Etsy would solve the problem of sales tax since they collect and remit on their own behalf but they do not solve the problem of being stuck in the middle unless I print and ship items myself and I have no interest in doing that. Fourthwall does fix all these things. Fourthwall is sort of a middle-ground solution.
Unlike Etsy, Fourthwall doesn’t have their own marketplace so as on Shopify you are responsible for bringing customers to your shop but they handle customer service and they take and ship the orders for posters and other soft goods they offer. They also offer the ability to list and ship your own physical products or digital downloads. And they have a Patreon-like membership platform that I honestly haven’t fully explored yet. But Fourthwall really does offer a lot of benefit for small creators so I had to leap in and give it a try. And while I wasn’t looking for a solution at the time, it feels like what I was looking for in the past when I chose Shopify.
Thrilled With My Fourthwall Samples
It’s my understanding that Fourthwall partners with Printful for most of their printed products. I’ve used them in the past but wanted to order test items anyway as it had been awhile. I’ve ordered multiple items including framed and unframed posters. Those I was especially curious to see because even if I’m offering more affordable print choices, I still truly care how they look on the other end. And I was honestly thrilled by the items I received. The colors on my posters perfectly matched my expectations and the paper they were printed on was much thicker and nicer than I expected from anything described as a “poster.”
One of the main ways posters differ from the prints I offer on my main site are that they come in a set of stock sizes. They are printed only when the customer places an order just like most vendors in this space. There’s no warehouse stocking mass production copies of work waiting for customers to order. But where Fine Art America/Pixels prints my original image without cropping it to fit a standard sizes, that’s not the case with posters offered through Fourthwall. From the customer side of things that means you will be able to buy frames off the shelf if you choose an unframed poster. But that also means that some of my images simply won’t work with this choice. Some when cropped to a standard size may lose an important detail or the composition is otherwise negatively impacted. So I’m going through each image individually and seeing what works before offering it for sale.
Considering the number of images I’ve created over the nearly 20 years I’ve been at this, it may take awhile. If you would like a poster or some other product offered but don’t see the exact image you’re seeking, please send a message and I’ll move it to the front of the line for consideration.
Your Feedback?
I’m happy this means more product options for those followers who enjoy my work and want to support small creators like myself. With that in mind if you are one of those followers, I’d love to hear what you would find attractive as perks if I were to make use of Fourthwall’s Membership feature of my merch store? Physical products? Digital? Somethign else entirely?
That’s one of the things that has always kept me from trying Patreon. I’ve looked at it a number of times over the years and there was never anything obvious to offer supporters? You can respond in the comments or drop me a note privately if you prefer.
Whats’ new?
You can see the categories of the products I’ve added so far here:
And if you’re another creator or artist who is interested in learning more about Fourthwall, here’s a link to their site:
fourthwall.com (not an affiliate link or paid promotion)
