How to Scale Print-on-Demand Without Breaking Your Business
What happens when a decade-old website finally gets the upgrade it deserves—and how do you ensure it doesn't tank your business in the process?
In this episode of Handpicked, I had the pleasure of mentoring Jash Fullinfaw from The Print Bar, who's facing one of the most nerve-wracking moments in any digital business: launching a completely rebuilt website after nearly a decade on the same platform.
Jash's journey from failed actor to successful entrepreneur running custom printing operations across Brisbane and Melbourne offers fascinating insights into print-on-demand business models, e-commerce scaling challenges, and the art of technology transformation without losing your competitive edge.
The Website Replatform Minefield: Critical Success Factors
After years of working around the limitations of an off-the-shelf printer website, The Print Bar invested three years in building a custom platform designed with customers and staff input. But as I've learned from multiple replatforms at Red Balloon and Big Red Group, launching new technology can be a double-edged sword.
Here are the essential website replatform strategies every business needs:
1. Always Have a Rollback Strategy
Never launch without a clear path back to your old system. In one of our replatforms, everything went up beautifully. In another, everything crashed—and we needed to quickly understand what went wrong.
2. Prioritize BAU Over Bells and Whistles
Launch with your most-used features first, then gradually add new functionality. This approach makes it easier to identify what's working and what needs fixing through A/B testing and gradual feature rollouts.
3. Master the SEO Migration
This is where businesses often fail catastrophically. SEO redirects, domain authority preservation, and warming up search engines to your new structure are technically complex but absolutely critical. We once took a massive traffic hit because we didn't handle redirects properly—it took months to recover.
Analytics and Performance Tracking: The Metrics That Matter
For any e-commerce business scaling operations, understanding your data becomes crucial during transitions. Key areas to monitor include:
Essential Analytics for Website Transitions:
- Channel mix analysis - ensuring traffic sources remain stable
- Domain authority tracking using tools like SEMrush
- Time on site metrics - a key indicator of user experience
- Affiliate network performance - especially critical for Print Bar's extensive partner network
- Bot accessibility - increasingly important for AI discoverability
The shift from keeping bots out to welcoming them represents a fundamental change in how we think about website traffic and search engine optimization.
The Print-on-Demand Advantage: Zero Waste, Maximum Flexibility
What makes The Print Bar special isn't just custom t-shirt printing—it's their innovative approach to inventory management. Their print-on-demand model solves multiple problems:
- Environmental benefits through zero waste production
- Cash flow optimization for customers who don't need bulk inventory
- Rapid fulfillment matching traditional warehouse speeds
- Scalable operations without massive upfront investment
This model represents a significant competitive advantage in the traditionally commodity-driven printing industry.
Revenue Model Prioritization: Focus on Your Superpower
When Jash asked about balancing investment between their affiliate drop shipping program and traditional print services, my advice was clear: double down on what makes you special.
Strategic Focus Questions for Scaling Businesses:
- What is your unique competitive advantage?
- Where do you have the strongest customer loyalty?
- Which revenue stream creates the biggest moat around your business?
- What would be hardest for competitors to replicate?
Time is your most precious resource—you can always earn more money, but you can never create more time. Spreading resources across multiple initiatives often leads to mediocre performance everywhere instead of excellence in your core strength.
Customer Experience at Scale: Maintaining Quality During Growth
As businesses grow, maintaining customer experience standards becomes increasingly challenging. The key strategies include:
Define Your Customer Promise
Like FedEx's "Absolutely, Positively Overnight," your customer commitment should align your entire team to consistent quality standards. This becomes even more critical during website transitions and rapid growth periods.
Embrace the Middle Ground
The customers who are neither completely happy nor completely unhappy represent your greatest opportunity. These middle-ground customers can become advocates with the right attention and personal touch.
Never Fear Customer Contact
Even in highly automated print-on-demand operations, direct customer communication during challenges builds stronger relationships and provides valuable feedback for continuous improvement.
Technology Transformation: Lessons for Growing Businesses
Every business leader I know uses the word "transformation" with trepidation—and for good reason. Technology upgrades are necessary for security, efficiency, and competitive advantage, but they're fraught with risk.
Key Transformation Insights:
- Invest in upgrading before you absolutely have to
- Consider both efficiency gains and new capability requirements
- Plan for at least six months of careful monitoring post-launch
- Maintain focus on what makes your business special throughout the process
The Bottom Line: Growth Without Compromise
The Print Bar's story illustrates a fundamental business truth: successful scaling requires maintaining what makes you special while continuously improving operational capabilities.
Whether you're planning a website replatform, optimizing e-commerce operations, or scaling print-on-demand services, the principles remain consistent:
- Preserve your competitive advantage above all else
- Plan meticulously for technology transitions
- Monitor performance obsessively during changes
- Maintain customer focus throughout growth phases
- Double down on what works rather than chasing every opportunity
As Jash prepares to launch his new platform, he's not just upgrading technology—he's positioning The Print Bar for the next decade of growth while maintaining the relationships and quality that built their success.
Have you navigated a major technology transformation in your business? What lessons learned would you add to this list? The challenges of scaling while maintaining quality are universal—I'd love to hear about your experiences.
Listen to the full episode for more detailed insights on website replatforming, scaling print-on-demand operations, and maintaining competitive advantage during business transformation.
