Kin Custom Fashion Dropshipper

I've been using Kin Custom for just over a year, and I waited until now to write a review because I wanted to give time for COVID-related issues to be ironed out. They are the perfect example of a company being so close to the best in their industry but stumbling right as they get to the finish line. To start, my ENTIRE company was built around Kin Custom products for all of 2020. However, in 2021, we migrated to a different supplier for clothing because we desired to produce products with polyester & cotton blends, which Kin Custom doesn't offer. That's actually part of the reason for the 3 stars instead of 5, but I'll speak on that in a moment. When it comes to the quality of their products, Kin Custom really does a stellar job. Stitching and construction are very consistent, I can count on one hand how many times we've had a customer complaint about quality, and that's out of over 500 orders over the past year. Additionally, colors are vibrant and VERY accurate to their source artwork, which is a godsend in POD. I don't have to wait for samples typically, I can push products to our store with confidence which saves us a lot of money in production costs for new products. While we don't use them for clothing anymore, we still use Kin Custom for shoes as they remain the BEST place for shoes on-demand. No one even comes close in terms of quality, cost, presentation (the shoe box really does make it an amazingly well-branded product). Those last two are actually Kin Custom's biggest selling points: Cost & Presentation. Because they offer discounts based on order value, it means we can let orders build-up for a few days, then order in chunks to get a 20-30% discount on products. NO ONE else in the POD industry operates this way, and honestly, I wish more of them would. It's lead to major savings for big sales like Black Friday, where we got a 45% (!!!) discount on all our Black Friday orders, which led to us making even more money than usual, despite our entire store being on sale. This does mean it's more hands-on, and we have to place orders every few days manually. But in my opinion, that's well worth it for the savings. The added feature of full white-label branding for only $1.99 per product is also incredible. Not just that, but all the packaging is 100% recyclable *and* made of recycled materials. Major kudos to them for coming right out the gate with environmentally friendly packaging. Now on to the negatives and why I did not rate them 5 stars. It mainly comes down to 3 main issues: 1. Inconsistent & inaccurate size charts In my opinion, this is the biggest reason why Kin Custom is and will remain under 4 stars on the app store (with point number 2 below being a close second), despite their product quality being so outstanding. Their sizing makes no goddamn sense. A small t-shirt fits like a small, but the moment you get to a medium, their sizes are a mess. Mediums fit like a large, but 3XLs fit like a 2XL. It makes it near impossible to give customers an accurate idea of how their shirts will fit. And while the shirts run big, the pants run true-to-size/slightly small. So when we released track pants, we had many customers who were upset because they were used to our shirts being oversized, and therefore they ordered a size down. Only for them to arrive and be too small. Until this is fixed, Kin Custom will NEVER get a good rating on the app store or be able to truly contend with companies like Printful. We can't rely on our sizes being accurate and therefore provide customers with the right expectations. 2. Lack of product templates This, combined with the previous issue, is why I had to stop using them for clothing entirely. The fact they've been in operation for nearly 3 years at this point and STILL, TO THIS DAY, have no templates is beyond me. If you want to design products with a specific vision in mind (like, for example, placing your logo on the shoes in a similar manner to Converse), you have to play this back and forth with the mockup generator to make sure it looks right. And even then, it can be hard to know if you set things up how you wanted. Without templates, it's hard to ensure your artwork will show in the right places or what even the safe print area is when building out a design. The lack of PSD templates, or even just flat PNG transparent templates, as a POD company is unacceptable in the year 2021. With so much competition in POD, it's like Kin Custom said "fuck it" to actual functionality and focused entirely on their product quality. Which is a mistake. At the end of the day, POD apps are a SaaS solution mixed with manufacturing. If your software platform lacks core features, it doesn't matter how great the end product is because the experience of producing that product isn't worth it. 3. Exclusively polyester product catalog This is the final nail in the coffin of why we moved away from Kin Custom for clothing. As our customer base grew, we heard the same complaint more and more: "This looks amazing, but I wish it felt more like cotton and less synthetic." Kin Custom's clothing is 100% polyester across the board. Their shirts and hoodies feel closer to an athletic water-resistant fabric than cotton. Over the past year, they've introduced some more options, like the heavyweight sleeveless hoodies, which are a knitted polyester. Or their belted tapered pants, which are lightweight and closer to chiffon. But at the end of the day, it's still all 100& polyester, which does not meet the feel and comfort of cotton. As a result, we were forced to find a different supplier since our customers wanted hoodies that felt like regular hoodies, not track jackets or workout sweats. Now that we have found a supplier who does polyester jersey for tees (which feels closer to cotton) and 80% polyester/20% cotton for hoodies and joggers (which feels nearly exactly like 100% cotton), I can't make any excuses for producing clothing with Kin Custom, despite their amazing quality and white label branding. Ultimately the product has to be liked by customers, and ours don't like how Kin Custom clothing feels. If they improve these issues, I will be first in line to come back. But as it stands, I feel the only products someone should use Kin Custom for are shoes and accessories. I would not recommend them for clothing. I hope others find this review helpful, and I will be sure to update this if Kin Custom makes any major updates in the future to fix the issues I outlined.

so far kin has been great for my company. the quality of prints are great. i really love that they offer white labeling also.

I definitely recommend this app to people because the material quality is unmatched to me. If something isn't right, they will correct it every time. I had on a few occasions of misprints but they immediately reviewed the issue and corrected it. These guys will continue to get my business at this rate!

Shopify Integration App Review: The Shopify integration is complete crap - please fix your app! None of the app buttons work, including the orders button, so i always just have to go to the full website to get ANYTHING done. Seriously, they are like dummy buttons.

Kin Custom Review: The product selection is just okay, though I really appreciate more trendy styles that other companies don't have - still, have to source products from other POD companies to round out my catalog (i.e. no hats, etc). Prices are VERY high compared to competitors like Printful and Printify, i'd understand this if branding was included and customer service was strong. Neither is true. You pay an additional 1.99 PER PRODUCT for custom branding. I'm actually not too upset about that and i think it's worth it if you are building a brand. The quality of the branding sets are top notch! BUT it definitely hurts the margins, unless you want to charge $40 for a basic tee with free shipping... (shirt base price + shop fees + shipping + branding + taxes + your markup...yikes) - not even accounting for marketing and returns. They should revise their pricing model to be more competitive, as I can only reasonably source trendier items like joggers, track pants, and a few more niche items that i can't get elsewhere.

TLDR: Crap app. Decent selection, best for more trendy attire. Very expensive. Great branding sets (at an additional cost).

My initial order was cancelled because they were unable to apply a promo code discount. However, they kept my money. Still waiting for a credit to my Paypal account. Unable to recommend this supplier at this time. They took my money $226.88 without providing product. Customer support is a 24 hour email response. Not effective in resolving order issues. Sure hope this is not normal.

Update; Within 24 hours I was contacted by Amina at Kin Custom. They credited my paypal account and corrected this issue. They also admitted accountability and assured me they will learn from this scenario to improve in the future. Very Good! I Look forward to working with them in the future.

I initially liked the app but have NOT been able to add new designs to my website for weeks now because the page crashes on my macbook, ipad, and computer.

What the hell happened to you guys! You really do this to your sellers? Change the way you handle shipping and not let anyone know about it! Im done using this company and I recommend anyone that wants to run a successful ecommerce business to stay away! Their support has gone dark and do nto respond to any of my inquiries. Recently my orders were getting delivered within 3-7 days now im showing they are using freaking e-packet delivery and SF express which is taking a month or more without proper tracking!

Then im seeing they are tacking on an extra $6.99 for premium shipping without letting anyone know about it! WOW talk about shady business practices from you guys!

The least you could have done was reach out to your sellers and tell us that you are changing things instead of leaving us in the dark. What a joke this company is and i am removing all the products from my store ASAP!

I don't expect them to answer me, but the worst part of this process, will be having to created all of my designs and merchandise all over again.

The hits just keep on coming. Delivery is the backbone of any business. If you can't deliver, on products or promises, you're not worth much. As a service industry provider for the last 15 years of my life, I know what underdelivering, can do to a reputation.

I'm not sure why, for THIS last order they switched carriers, from DHL to FedEx, but it is generally known, that FedEx has the worst reputation out of all of the carriers out there. I ordered the items on Thursday October 31st, with rush delivery. Had this been DHL (based on ALL prior deliveries, at least 7 by my count), the latest I would have received my items, probably would have been Wednesday. DHL is known, at least to me, for sending me updates regarding shipping, stating that a package will arrive on a Wednesday, and they have ALWAYS overdelivered, and it arrived the day before. There hasn't been 1 shipment, where DHL hasn't delivered a day in advance.

Now, for the most important delivery I have to date, they use the worst shipping company on the planet. The worst part is, throughout this entire process, Kin custom has been dismissive, flippant and extremely cavalier about the fact that I'm going to miss having clothes I had designed, and paid double to have made in time for this event, arrive 3 days too late, without an apology.

The sublimation process for the clothing, is far better than expected. That being said, it's definitely not that way for the sneakers. The one's that I've designed, that have colors on the tongue part of the sneakers, show cracks through the color, after only wearing them for a day. I personally would gladly pay more for a deeper, richer sublimation process, so that the sneakers don't look like they've been spray painted in the area, where the foot motion leaves a crease. The crease itself is not the issue. It's where the color cracks where the crease is, and it looks like it was wrinkled white spray painted sneakers. I'm not sure why I'm not able to upload pictures here, but I will send it to them directly. Outside of that, the cushioning on the insides of the sneakers is better than expected.

The socks on the other hand, are way too thin. I had to take them off my store. They are not all what I expected. The consistency of the material, is like a dress sock.

I hope that they can improve in this area, because I believe the shoes are good quality. Out of the box, they look good, but after a day of wearing them, the color on the sublimation process, does not hold up.

I’ve been using kin custom before they had a app on Shopify for my store and never had any issues. Now my orders never import over. I keep getting told to set up a API and download the app in the app section when the app is downloaded. Then I’m prompted to login in all over again and when I do that I get “system is busy try again” . This has been going on for almost two months. I’ve reached out to customer service and it took forever to respond & the one that did just sent a basic answer and never responded back.

I don't get the bad reviews.

I was wary of using kin custom based on some negative reviews. I'm glad I tried them.

Their products are awesome, the quality is great. The prices are fair and the branding option for the price is very good too.

I would recommend and hope to deal with for more products on the future