Art Product Business Resources: 30+ Books, Podcasts & Vendors to Help You Package & Sell
Ready to get your product shop set up and running?! There are many moving parts when it comes to creating and managing an art product business. Here are our top resources to help you skip the stress! From Etsy podcasts to how to sell your own fine art greeting cards, this round-up has you covered!
Courses for product-based businesses
Learn from the best about how to run a product-based art shop.
Is Wholesale Right for You?
This mini-course with Katie Hunt will walk you through 12 questions to help you determine if wholesale is the best next step for your business.
The Booth Blueprint Masterclass
During this masterclass, Katie Hunt will walk you through three secrets to maximize your trade show investment and keep wholesale orders coming in long after your show ends.
Paper Camp E-Course
Learn everything there is to know about selling wholesale and exhibiting at trade shows during this live 4-week online program for product based businesses.
Building a Career in Illustration: Explore Print-on-Demand
Transform your creative career with print-on-demand in this beginner-friendly, 25-minute class.
Articles and Round-Ups for product shop owners
There are some really amazing resources for art shop owners out there, whether you’re selling art prints, jewelry, home goods, or anything in between, these guides cover everything you need to know!
Creative Hive Blog
This blog has tons of helpful articles about creating and running your handmade product business.
Creative Hive Pricing Calculator
Figure out what your wholesale and retail prices should be in a snap!
Indie Retail Academy
Indie Retail Academy offers tons of articles, starter kits, and guides to help you set up shop and deal with every kind of thing you might encounter along the way.
Proof to Product Blog
Learn everything from booth logistics, product development, sales tools, order forms and line sheets, working with sales reps, to general business practices.
Behind the Stationery
A collection of behind-the-scenes interviews with stationery designers from Oh So Beautiful Paper.
Podcasts for product businesses
Here are our favorite podcasts about running a retail or wholesale business. Even if you’re selling products on Etsy, or it’s just a small part of your art business, you’ll find lots to glean in here!
Proof to Product
Proof to Product takes you behind the scenes of growing a product-based business. Join Katie Hunt each week as her alumni, speakers and friends share their successes, struggles and how they’ve made difficult but important transitions in their business to continue growing.
Making a Business
Making a Business from Being Boss is a podcast about starting a business from scratch. Follow along as Emily, co-host of Being Boss, launches her new maker and retail business and shares the struggles and strategies, tools and tactics that she's using to make it work.
Creative Biz Rebellion
Kelly from Hello World Paper Co. & Stamps and Caroline from Caroline Creates are two product based biz owners who strive to connect with and help other product based business owners.
Product business supplies & vendors for artists
Sourcing supplies and vendors to produce your products can be incredibly intimidating! Here are our favorite resources to give you a great place to start.
Packaging
Looking for vendors who can help you create gorgeous, custom packaging for your product-based art business? We’ve got some great options.
Lumi
Lumi makes tools that simplify the complex workflows, data, and language of packaging, so that brands and manufacturers can work better together.
NoIssue
We’ve worked with noissue quite a few times, and we especially love their custom tissue paper. They can print custom packaging and marketing materials.
Our Goodtype branded tissue paper with printed with noissue tissue
Packola
Design & Order Personalized Packaging in Minutes!
PackLane
Custom packaging and boxes can turn your brand into the total package with full customization, instant quoting, and fast turnarounds.
Packwire
Create your own custom boxes.
Shipping
As a product-based business owner, you’re going to have to deal with the joys of shipping. Here are some tools to make it easier.
Label Printer
If you’re printing your labels at home (which we highly recommend for your sanity), you’ll want a label printer to streamline the process. This is our go-to printer because it’s thermal and doesn’t ever need ink! Heck to the yes.
Shipstation
Shipstation is an online app that helps you organize your orders and create shipping labels that you can print from home. If you’re serious about selling products, this is an incredibly helpful tool.
Stamps.com
Stamps.com is another great way to create and print your labels at home.
Labels & Stickers
Check out our favorite suppliers for printing your own custom stickers and labels.
Sticker Robot
Print stickers as products to sell, or use them to jazz up your custom product packaging.
Sticker Mule
Sticker Mule is another great option for printing labels and stickers.
Frontier Label
If you need packaging labels that are a bit more custom than what Sticker Mule and Sticker Robot can provide, Frontier is a great way to go.
Printing
Looking to print your art on products? Here are some quality vendors that can help you bring your ideas to life.
StationeryHQ
You can print your art on all sorts of custom products with StationeryHQ, from greeting cards to mugs and even wrapping paper.
CatPrint
From gold foil finishing to holographic prints, from traditional wedding invitation suites to DIY save the dates and custom greeting cards, CatPrint is likely to be able to print what you need!
Mama’s Sauce
Want super high quality prints? Dreaming of gold foil everything and meticulously screen printed art prints? Mama’s Sauce is one of our favorite print shops and they have the best and most consistent quality out there.
Print on Demand
Do you prefer to stay clear of printing and holding inventory yourself? Then these print on demand options might be more your speed.
Society6
Society6 is a very well known print-on-demand option, but quality can be a little up and down. We highly suggest ordering some of your own products for yourself so you can make sure everything they’ll print and send to your customers is up to your standards.
Spoonflower
Spoonflower is best known for printing patterns on fabrics, but its range of products is growing all the time.
Minted
Minted is also a print on demand company, but not just anyone can get their art featured for sale. You’re required to submit art for their design competitions, and only the winners get their pieces made available for sale.
Printful
With Printful, you can actually connect your online shop or Etsy store to their app. Anytime a customer places an order, Printful handles everything—from printing that item to shipping it out. Pretty cool, right? But of course, there’s a transaction fee you’ll have to consider when setting your pricing.
Trade shows for art product shops
Ready to take your shop to the next level and get your products in front of important retail buyers? Trade shows are the big leagues. It can be incredibly expensive to get a booth, but it can also pay off enormously if you’re able to get noticed by stores who want to carry your product!
NY Now
NY NOW offers a diverse market layout to allow you to showcase your products within a section that best suits your brand. Where brands come to stand out and buyers come to set their business apart from the competition.
LA Mart
Comprised of multiple floors of gift, home, furniture, and lifestyle brands, the LA Mart Gift + Home + Design Center features permanent showrooms for buyers to browse.
America’s Mart Atlanta
Each year, AmericasMart Atlanta hosts 14 Markets for the gift, decor and apparel industries, connecting thousands of buyers and sellers.
Tools for digital artists
If you’re creating new digital art for your business regularly, these products are going to make your life so much easier.
The darkboard from astropad
Instead of hunching over your iPad, grab the Darkboard and thank us later. This has helped our back pain so much! The Darkboard is an ergonomic ipad drawing stand designed for creatives. We love how comfortable it is, and how versatile. We work from the couch more often than we’d like to admit, and now we can do it without looking (and feeling) like a troll.