Kin Custom Fashion Dropshipper

Im a little bit unsure what people are upset about. You are somewhat limited in terms of the types of materials you can use if you want to keep things really custom. But that fully custom material in most cases is really great quality. Customer service always responds within 24 hours as stated. Not really sure what else you expect from a print on demand company. Branded hang tags, shipping bags etc. Its hard to beat. Profit margins are not good at all if you are in Canada but thats expected. This is a marketing tool so you can easily justify sacrificing the profits on the merch so its getting on peoples bodies. Great marketing tool.

Prior to this review the stars would've been at 5, but we have run into a snag and not sure what is going on behind the scenes to solve our problems. We've been trying to reach you guys the past couple of days but no response. We're aware the virus outbreak has wreaked havoc in the supply chain especially overseas but thought that someone would be able to get back to us from the OH location. We've also attempted to contact you on FB but nothing yet. We have ordered samples from you guys in the past to gauge fit and quality, but as of this hour - all of our previously created merch and designs have disappeared from the site via Shopify and on the full site (it doesn't matter which).

Some of these designed products were going to be presented on our site, but with the uncertainty now, that cannot happen. Prior to this time, the site was easy to use and the quality of products on offer was proper - and never had a problem with customer service.

Please let us know something so that we can proceed accordingly. Help?

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Edit 12/2/2020

KC has reached out to us and have been abundantly helpful in attempting to resolve our issues and at the very least to provide information as to what is going on behind the scenes so we're not completely in the dark. We appreciate the quick follow up and response from KC and will continue to do business with them. Our rating goes to 5 stars.

Update: I was contacted by Kin Custom following my review. I have adjusted my review slightly but cannot do anything more until they have a working customer service; again, the products and printing are incredible. But this holds no merit if you can't reach your vendor immediately. There is absolutely no excuse for that in today's day and age. None. I am willing to change my review if Kin Custom ever gets back to me after the three inquiries I have sent them WEEKS ago. I have no phone number, no email address, and no chat box to try because they don't offer them. I NEED them to contact me or I will be forced to go elsewhere, which is HORRIBLE because their products, their branding sets...all awesome. I have never had a print issue, but you HAVE to be in contact with your customers. If I ran my business this way I'd be out of work in an instant.

Their quality is amazing!! Even with the polyblend tees, they feel exactly like cotton!!!! I'm excited to see the product lineup for this year.

Kin custom has really proven to be a top-tier POD maker. They are close to blurring the line between wholesale and On-demand suppliers. My only critic is that they offer more options when it comes to their shoes. Would love the option to have alternate colors for laces, the mid and outsole (black would be a great option, my customers constantly request). Also, can we get more customization for the boxes? Don't know why you stop shipping boxes with the padding. More Sneaker designs, Please! Can we get PSD template options? the generator can be tricky and not as accurate. I would appreciate the ability to design the inner lining of the bomber jackets. I forwarded many emails to your staff in regards to this yet no definitive answer or help in regards to this. Can we get winter-ready bomber/ down jackets?
Better discounts for samples as well

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.

Would recommend using this if you like to design.Good printing quality and service.I'm very confident using this app to design and fill my store with products.

UPDATE: Rating to 5 stars as the product is great quality. I highly recommend using the custom tag sets if you can. They look great and really strengthen the look of your brand.

The only thing we don't like is that if you add a custom product and a wholesale product to your store and the customer buys one of each then your custom tag sets won't be utilized. So both products will show up with the Kin Custom branding even if you created one of the products yourself. Hopefully this can be fixed. Otherwise great app and I highly recommend.

UPDATED - After submitting my review I was contacted by Echo and received a detailed response to the issue I was having with getting my order properly imported. Thank you for getting back with an appropriate response that actually resolved my issue. Now I'm looking forward to receiving my custom apparel to see what the quality is. Will update with 5 stars once I confirm the quality of apparel. I think this app is going to be a great choice for us if the quality of apparel is as good as it looks in their promos.

Unfortunately, after having an unresolved issue with the FIRST order I have to delete. Don't want to risk hurting my brand with bad customer experience. Very sad because I was so happy when I found this app.

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).

This was my first drop-shipping app and i must say they have been nothing but consistent. Their products are top rated in terms of quality. Their personalize material, (boxes, bags, tags) is very cost effective (only 1.99) and presents a very professional look to my products. My only issues with them is the limitation in their products. There are many more products i wish they offer. All-over print sweatsuits, all-over print bucket hats, chunky shoes just to name a few. However overall i check with them before going to anyone else because i know their stuff will be excellent.