Spoonflower is rolling out significant changes that will impact artists on its platform. The Durham-based print-on-demand company sent an email to artists late last week detailing the changes coming in December which include limiting the total number of designs that can be uploaded in a week, delisting unpopular designs, and digital proofing. Spoonflower was sold to Shutterfly in August 2021.
Some artists who sell their designs on the Spoonflower marketplace are embracing the changes, while others have expressed disappointment and anxiety about the potential impact on their small businesses.
Swatches
Since Spoonflower launched in 2008, artists who wanted to list their designs for sale on the marketplace needed to pay for a test swatch. Spoonflower explained that this process was necessary because colors may print differently than they display on a monitor, may vary from substrate to substrate, and disruptions in a repeat may be more visible in physical form. Ordering a swatch of 1-5 designs cost $12. As a result, some artists have invested hundreds or even thousands of dollars over the years ordering swatches to be able to sell their designs.
Now, Spoonflower is switching to offering free digital proofs. Effective December 31 a digital proofing tool will become available which will allow artists to pan, zoom, and review design edges. While physical proofs are still encouraged, they are no longer required.
Design upload limits
In conjunction with this change, Spoonflower is, for the first time, limiting the number of new designs an artist can upload. There will be a weekly upload limit of 25 designs per artist.
“While we are excited about digital proofing and the removal of the proof-purchasing requirement, we also want to meter an overload of newly made-for-sale designs to the marketplace,” the announcement said.
Since March 2010, Spoonflower has been running weekly design contests to encourage artists to upload new designs and many artists have thousands of designs for sale.
Delisting
In addition, unpopular designs will be delisted. “We hear over and over from many shoppers that they feel overwhelmed by the number of search results, often receiving hundreds of pages and thousands of results to wade through,” the announcement said. “To condense search results, make new designs more discoverable and encourage more design diversity, we will be de-listing (making private) older, stagnant designs starting in January 2024.”
Designs that are at least two years old, have not sold in the past two years and have less than 50 favorites will be delisted. Artists have the option to relist designs, but Spoonflower recommends that they first ask themselves, “Do I think this is a strong design? Is there something I could improve about the design before re-listing? Can I better optimize my title, description, and tags for improved findability?”
Reasoning
Senior Director of Brand Marketing Sarah Ward explained the changes in an email today. “The feedback we’ve received from consumers time and time again is that the platform is simply overwhelming. Likewise, feedback from artists is that there are so many designs available, that they’re having a hard time being noticed/ being relevant,” Ward said.
“Supporting artists also means creating strong pathways for shopping, because, at the end of the day, shopping equates to royalties earned,” Ward said. “To be clear, ‘delisting’ does not equate to ‘deleting.’ We are making designs ‘private’ with the intent that in conjunction with our new free digital proofing tool, artists will be able to make modifications based on this review opportunity and relist them without an additional cost to bear.”
“While it would be easy to assume that a higher volume of designs would equate to more success on the site, it turns out that the average number of designs uploaded per week by the top 10% earning artists on our site is 12,” she says.
Royalties
In October Spoonflower announced a change to the artist royalty structure. In the past, artists would earn a 10% royalty on each sale whether the item was bought at a discount or not. Beginning in January, artists will earn 10% of the total sale price, meaning if the order was discounted they’ll earn less than before. Along with this change, Spoonflower announced that for the first time, artists will also begin to earn 10% royalties on home décor items customers order.
Artists react
Melissa Polomsky is an artist who designs vibrant and dramatic floral prints for her Spoonflower shop which currently has hundreds of designs available. Polomsky is also the moderator of the Spoonflower Squad Facebook group which has 1.9K sellers in it. She’s concerned about the impact these changes will have on designers. “Spoonflower has actively encouraged designers to upload thousands of new designs weekly through the design challenges, but is now going to penalize the designers when what… the servers get too full? I think fixing the functionality of the search feature of the website should be the bigger priority of Spoonflower’s development teams before removing tons of good designs from their designer’s shops,” she says.
“It takes most designers several years for their shops to gain enough traction to finally see their sales numbers, number of hearts, and overall traffic to their shop increase. It was certainly more than two years in my personal experience with my shop,” Polomsky says.
“Designers want Spoonflower to be successful. They want buyers to be able to easily shop. They want to see Spoonflower continue to evolve, expand, and be updated and work more intuitively and be more user friendly,” says Polomsky. “Penalizing your designers however I feel is not a step in the right direction.”
Other Spoonflower artists are noticing an uptick in the number of AI-generated patterns being uploaded to the marketplace since the announcement was made. One artist in the Spoonflower Fans Facebook group remarked, “This situation is worse than we all thought. If you look at the new designs being listed today, it is very heavily AI by several known AI shops. They are going to nonstop list between now and December 31 to combat the listing cap. This is ugly, Spoonflower.”
Other artists are more optimistic. Liz Masoner, an artist based in Alabama who has hundreds of designs for sale on Spoonflower, says that although she feels the Spoonflower search engine needs to be made more powerful and effective, she can see the logic behind the 25 uploads per week limit and the delisting of unpopular designs.
“If people flood the site without any self-editing, it just exasperates the site problems. With moving to a no-purchased proof system, fail-safes are needed. Is relisting more work, and will it require spacing out relists? Sure, but it really gives us an opportunity to target older designs for rework and fresh optimization.”
Abby Glassenberg
Co-founder
Abby co-founded Craft Industry Alliance and now serves as its president. She’s a sewing pattern designer, teacher, and journalist. She’s dedicated to creating an outstanding trade association for the crafts industry. Abby lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
As much as I don’t love the proofing process, I think it’s necessary. Some colors change quite a bit from what you see on screen to fabric. I feel by not proofing, the quality of what people are purchasing will drop. This could become an issue for Spoonflower and it’s reputation for quality thus affecting the artists who sell there. I will continue to proof for most projects.
Spoonflower might benefit by looking at how Etsy works. I feel that when consumers try to buy on Spoonflower, they are overwhelmed because of a lack of control by each artist. If we (artists) could organize our “shops’ as we can in Etsy, it would be so helpful in so many ways. SF is not consumer friendly!
I’m OK with the drop in royalties, as long as it doesn’t go any lower. I’m OK with 25 listings a week, that is a ton if you are actually working hard on making great designs.
AI is a problem everywhere and we will need to find a way to control those ‘artists’ listing on SF.
I feel like my shop is only just starting to get traction (my first design was uploaded in June 2020) and by traction I mean sales on some designs that are 3 years old with little to no likes/hearts. I think for any business it takes at least 5 years to build a brand. 2 year old patterns have therefore got no chance yet…
I really think this is unfair on fairly new businesses like my own…
Especially as “bot” designs/accounts aren’t being deleted and other search engine buttons aren’t being utilized or implemented properly first.
I feel the same.
Several designers list multiple colors and size options for each design. The 25 limit will have an impact on those designers.
As a newer designer (starting mid 2020) I’ve yet to be ‘found’ and see traction of sales. To now have the bulk of my designs delisted is very distressing. I put many hours of work into listings, hundreds of dollars into swatches. There are many great designs there but my shop needs more time to gain momentum. A limit of 25 designs uploaded per week is fine if it doesn’t include the relisting of designs. The Spoonflower search engine is what needs more work. I flagged with some designers recently that even with their exact shop name the search was not finding them. This is disappointing. Spoonflower could improve their customer experience and search overwhelm by grouping scales and colour versions of a design in the same way we would shop a dress in multiple colourways and sizing on a fashion website.
While I strongly favorite the upload limit, I do have a problem with Spoonflower delisting “unpopular” designs. Because the error in thinking lies in the word “unpopular” Likes come primarily from fellow designers who promote each other and not necessarily from customers. And although many of my designs are definitely popular and sell well, it’s mainly the ones I’ve made for the contests that have more than 50 likes. And if I create coordinates for a design (which Spoonflower has always encouraged us to do!) then it’s very unlikely that a simple stripe pattern will get more than 50 likes. And not every coordinate pattern will sell either. So many coordinates will disappear from the marketplace due to delisting and I at least will probably only upload one hero pattern each in the future. Relisting the delisted designs is also not an option, because you would then need more than 25 slots per week.
I agree with your point about coordinates, well said!
I agree about coordinates.
As a small business owner who makes my products with fabric from all you amazing designers I’m frustrated with Spoonflower since they were sold.
Shipping is terrible, fabric that was once nicely packaged isn’t anymore and packages that never arrive!
From a consumer point of view I’d love to see more coordinating fabrics, tags in alphabetical order would be huge too. I’ve often asked designers for a change in scale which you all are so nice to do, I’d hate for you not to be able to do that anymore because of it adding to the weekly limit you have. How about letting us adjust the scale to what we need?
I have to say I’ve now started purchasing from other print on demand sites whereas I use to only buy from Spoonflower and the whole experience has been much better.
Lynn, can you tell us about the other POD sites where you’ve had good experiences?
Karen, not sure, but one she may be using Raspberry Creek Fabrics. Many of us, as Spoonflower designers are also on this site. You can resize the designs there and can still get in touch with many of the designers through their facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/769800326451652
Hi! I haven’t tried them because I don’t think they have 100% cotton fabric but I may be wrong.
I have used Hawthorne Supply too, I like how they show all the coordinates for a design.
Lynn,
Raspberry Creek has four cottons and add on occasion due to requests.
Quilt Weight Cotton
42” 4 oz 100% cotton.
This medium weight woven fabric is mainly used for quilting, handbags, totes, accessories and home decor. While it can be used for clothing, it is not as soft and does not drape as well as other fabrics.
Cotton Canvas
58” 7 oz 100% cotton, natural color.
Canvas is a sturdy fabric. This is a mid-weight canvas great for bags, backpacks, art work printing, upholstery.
Twill
58” 4.5 oz 100% cotton.
Twill gets it’s name from the diagonal ribs in the weave of the fabric. This twill is referred to as a ‘clean room’ twill which means is does not continually give off lint. It is more of a general use twill, than an apparel twill. Great for bags, upholstery and some apparel projects.
Double Gauze
48” 3.5 oz 100% cotton.
Gauze is a light weight open weave fabric. Double gauze is two layers of the light weight fabric woven together. Double gauze is geat for baby swaddles and lightweight dresses and blouses. This fabric will crinkle and ‘bubble’ up when washed.
also Organic Cotton Interlock
58” 220 GSM 100% organic cotton, off white, 40% 2 way stretch.
Interlock is knitted with interlocking stiches that create a double faced fabric without the fabric being a double knit. Interlock tends to have more structure than a jersey knit. Cotton interlock is great for sleepwear, childrenswear, dresses and bottoms.
I’ll have to get a swatch of those, I always use a cotton with no stretch, I make coffee cozies and dog bandanas. Thanks for the info!
Lynn unfortunately they do not have swatches at this time but they do have a sample book/pack with all their fabrics included.
https://raspberrycreekfabrics.com/products/custom-printing-base-fabric-swatch-book-raspberry-creek-fabrics
I would say the quilting cotton would be good for those uses.
all the fabrics soften with washing as most digitally printed items do.
I have had makers of bandanas and cozies purchase my designs so you might try and see.
Thank You!
I absolutely love Littlecocalico, their Kona Cotton & brushed organic is amazing, best customer service and shipping.
Some designers on Spoonflower also sell their designs on Etsy so I’ve purchased the design had them print for me. So easy to do and they’ll ship in a day or 2.
If you haven’t checked them out I encourage you to.
Lynn, anytime. The response line went a bit wonky there. But, glad to help if I can, if you have any questions. They sell by the half yard, but they are continuous pieces if you order 2 half yards it prints on a single yard.
Lynn,
Thank you for giving the designers positive feedback. Some of the things you mention we have asked for over the years. The weekly limits may occasionally cause delays.
I did mention below that you may have already tried Raspberry Creek Fabrics, but you can re-scale designs there and many of us as Spoonflower designers are there.
I think it’s going to be OK. Spoonflower has said you can re-list the designs, no questions asked. They do encourage you to see if you can improve the design, it’s name, and tags. I think that’s a good thing. I have a couple of popular designs, but most of my sales come from the ‘long tail’, so I will definitely be taking the time to look at any de-listed designs in a new light before I re-list them.
An idea that came to me last week regarding making the search more effective is to have each design tagged with colors from say, a 36-shade (or more) color wheel (spectral + tints and shades). Customers can then search more accurately for colors that they might want rather than depending upon very non-specific keywords.
And the comment about coordinates being at risk of delisting is very important.
I mostly support the changes. I think the best solution all round would be to limit the number of collections and items for sale by each designer. Almost 10k designs by some artists is not only ridiculous, and somewhat greedy, but this would fill any platform! Give artists an allocation and SF won’t be overwhelming as it most definitely is.
I agree that allowing one designer to upload 10k designs is surely way too many. I can’t even conceive how you’d make that many patterns. Quality not quantity is generally a good rule of thumb. Limiting the number of designs seems a good way forward.
Another way SF could help tidy up the search results (not to mention designer shop pages) and reduce work load for both designers and SF staff would be to allow buyers to edit the scale of a design themselves…
The idea about listing colourway versions together under the same design ‘page’ sounds neat too. .. i feel like i have seen this on a few designs already? – maybe they are testing that idea …. Unless i saw it on another site…
The 25 a week limit doesn’t seem too awful to me … as long as re-listing older designs that have been removed and fixed up doesn’t come in under that number….
Also … what about customer requests for different scales and colour versions of existing designs?
They don’t happen often, but Honouring those would eat into the 25 a week ration… and it could be awkward if you get a request that you can’t fulfil for a week because you have 5 days to go before your ration re-sets. …
Will they allow more designs if they are print-tested as well?
Jay, I agree that allowing buyers to rescale a design is a great idea and I have submitted it many times. Requires significant software work to implement. Changing the scale is the most frequent request that I get from buyers, and I worry that sales are lost because buyers don’t realize that they can do that.
A subset of my designs were selected for the multiple colorway feature and it looks great. They used an automated image analyzer to identify designs that are the same except for colors. But it didn’t group the same designs at different scales. I’d be happy to do the work myself as the designer (rather then their automated approach) because I already use collections to group multiple colorways.
SF used to create a new design for you at a different scale upon request, with no additional proofing required. Don’t know if that service is still available.
There is a company called WeaveUp which already allows customers to change color ways and scale by themselves. Of course, to do so, designs must be uploaded in a very specific format. Still, if this was an option on Spoonflower, not necessarily a requirement, it could be a great solution for many people.
WeaveUp has shut down. It was bought out by Joann’s.
Also a company called Raspberry Creek Fabrics allows the ability to resize the scale of the designs. Many Spoonflower designers are also on RCF.
Let’s be real, Spoonflower is no longer a “durham based company.” It is now Shutterfly, which is has no heart and doesn’t care about the independent artist. They smaller artists will never gain traction as long as Spoonflower keeps promoting the big names.
Hopefully the upload limit will limit the AI designs, I see that as the biggest issue. As an artist, its obvious why I feel that way. But even for them with profit as motive, It may make them more money temporarily but I think will reduce sales in the long run and definitely lower their reputation and ability to charge as much as they do.
Combatting AI on the platform is definitely a huge challenge. Or maybe it’s about labeling and categorizing AI designs so that it’s transparent to the consumer? Either way, somehow that issue needs to be confronted head on I think.