Production Partners on Etsy: An Easy Way to Expand Your Product Lines

Have you ever heard of production partners on Etsy? If not, they are Etsy’s way of allowing you to outsource work in your craft business – but still sell on Etsy. And, I love them because they are a great way to expand your product line with related products that you cannot/do not make yourself.

Put simply, production partners are companies/manufacturers that you’ve teamed up with for product creation. Let’s take a look at how you can use production partners to expand your Silhouette or Cricut based Etsy shop.

Production Partner Examples

• If you sell planner stickers and goods, find a production partner to create a few planner related coffee mugs or tee shirts with planner related sayings.
• If you sell tee shirts, find a production partner to make custom printed leggings.
• If you sell cards, find a production partner to offer high quality prints or canvas.
• And so on. The key here is to expand your current Etsy shop by finding products that complement your existing ones.

How to Set Up Production Partners on Etsy

Setting up production partners is easy:

1. Log into your Etsy account and navigate to ‘Settings’ on the left hand side, then ‘Production partners’.
2. Click the ‘Add a new production partner’ button.
3. Fill in the information on the pop up screen by adding your production partner name and basic information. In this example, I’m using Printful. 
4. That’s it! When creating new Etsy listings, you’ll choose your production partner when creating the listing. 

Who Can Be Your Production Partner?

You can add anyone who does manufacturing for you as a production partner. After following the steps above, Etsy may reach out to you for additional information about your partner. Most importantly though, Etsy wants to make sure that your production partner follows their Ethical Expectations and that you design the products.

Off the top of my head, Printful, Art of Where, and Gooten are popular Etsy production partners.

This post is just an overview of what production partners are and how to set them up in your Etsy shop. On Wednesday, I’ll go through an example showing you how to create your first listing using Printful.

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