We have a merch store where our community can purchase high quality PostHog-branded merch. As we have a limited number of Shopify admins on our current plan, message Grace or Charles in the #team-people-and-ops channel if you need any help sending out merch or gift cards, as you probably won't be able to do it yourself.
How do we think about merch?
We care about:
- Quality - our merch must be something you would personally want to wear or use
- Sustainability - our merch shouldn't be something that's never used or made in an unsustainable way
- Shippability - we should do our best to ensure anyone in our community anywhere in the world can receive merch easily
How do we manufacture merch?
We use Printfection to manufacture and store our merch - request access from the Marketing team or Grace if required. Anyone can suggest a product for us to sell or give away.
- The Marketing team ultimately decide on what items we wish to sell or give away (including how many and sizes)
- Lottie provide assets to produce and order these items in to stock
How do we ship merch?
Shipping is also done through Printfection - they can ship to over 200 territories worldwide:
- When orders come in from our Shopify store they will automatically be shipped to the people who order them via Printfection
- If you want to ship merch for an event or as part of a giveaway, create a one-off campaign
How do we sell merch?
We sell it through our merch store store on Shopify - request access to our admin portal from Marketing team if required.
How do we give away merch for free?
Individuals
Create a gift card in Shopify admin. You can either copy the code, or create a 'new customer' and send them the code directly. For contributions we tend to do $50, with no expiration date.
Alternatively, if you want to send them a specific product via Printfection, you can create a 'New Order' under this campaign.
YC Deal
You can find instructions for this on the dedicated YC Deal page.
Events
Follow Printfection's instructions on creating a giveaway campaign for this.
How are Prinfection and Shopify connected?
We integrated the two via Zapier. Unfortunately this part is a little complex - here are the details on exactly how the integration is set up.
If you need to make any changes to how the two are connected, reference the article above and follow it very carefully.
In summary:
- Order is created when someone checks out on Shopify
- This order is picked by our PostHog Zapier account (details in 1Password)
- Zapier then sends this order to Printfection along with delivery details
How do I add a new product to Shopify?
If you have created a new product in Printfection, adding it to Shopify is quite straightforward but a little nuanced - and very important to get right:
- Go to Shopify, click 'Products' -> 'Add Product'
- Add all the details about the product, including images, description, title etc.
- Add the IDs from Printfection (this is essential for the integration to work). To do this review the section "1. Add products and required ID fields to your store" from this setup document.
- Select "Track Inventory" and set it to match what is available in Printfection by adding the quantity to the Printfection location name.
- Set the product to 'Active'.
If you're confused at any point, take a look at an existing product to ensure you have all the right details.
Warning: If you have something with different sizes, it's a little more complex, so make sure you read the documentation carefully.
Troubleshooting customer orders
Sometimes customers get in touch with us because their order hasn't arrived. There are a couple of things you can do:
- Log into Shopify and check that an order was actually created for them. If it was, and it has shown as dispatched, use your judgement to determine whether it is probably lost in the post. Cancel that order and issue them a new gift card for the value of that order so they can place it again.
- Sometimes the Zap connecting Printfection to Shopify fails, usually because the customer hasn't entered their address details completely (e.g. no postal/zip code). In this case, cancel their order in Shopify and ask them to place it again with full address details.
If for some reason their second order attempt doesn't make it through, refund their money and apologetically let them know that unfortunately our supplier is having issues shipping to their address. It's better to stop the back-and-forth at that point, rather than having a frustrated customer placing multiple orders that don't work. We aren't an e-commerce business, so ensuring a flawless merch store experience for a handful of edge case orders is not a priority!
If the customer was given a merch code to thank them for submitting a PR, you can offer to make a donation on their behalf for the equivalent amount to a company of their choice on Open Collective instead.
Legacy setups
We have integrations with many other providers from Printify to Printful and Gelato. For the most part you can ignore anything that references these as these are legacy settings from previous fulfillment channels that are no longer used.