PlayTyme review for Kin Custom: Print On‑Demand

June 14, 2021

I've been using Kin Custom for just over a year, and I waited until now to write a review because I wanted to give time for COVID-related issues to be ironed out. They are the perfect example of a company being so close to the best in their industry but stumbling right as they get to the finish line. To start, my ENTIRE company was built around Kin Custom products for all of 2020. However, in 2021, we migrated to a different supplier for clothing because we desired to produce products with polyester & cotton blends, which Kin Custom doesn't offer. That's actually part of the reason for the 3 stars instead of 5, but I'll speak on that in a moment. When it comes to the quality of their products, Kin Custom really does a stellar job. Stitching and construction are very consistent, I can count on one hand how many times we've had a customer complaint about quality, and that's out of over 500 orders over the past year. Additionally, colors are vibrant and VERY accurate to their source artwork, which is a godsend in POD. I don't have to wait for samples typically, I can push products to our store with confidence which saves us a lot of money in production costs for new products. While we don't use them for clothing anymore, we still use Kin Custom for shoes as they remain the BEST place for shoes on-demand. No one even comes close in terms of quality, cost, presentation (the shoe box really does make it an amazingly well-branded product). Those last two are actually Kin Custom's biggest selling points: Cost & Presentation. Because they offer discounts based on order value, it means we can let orders build-up for a few days, then order in chunks to get a 20-30% discount on products. NO ONE else in the POD industry operates this way, and honestly, I wish more of them would. It's lead to major savings for big sales like Black Friday, where we got a 45% (!!!) discount on all our Black Friday orders, which led to us making even more money than usual, despite our entire store being on sale. This does mean it's more hands-on, and we have to place orders every few days manually. But in my opinion, that's well worth it for the savings. The added feature of full white-label branding for only $1.99 per product is also incredible. Not just that, but all the packaging is 100% recyclable *and* made of recycled materials. Major kudos to them for coming right out the gate with environmentally friendly packaging. Now on to the negatives and why I did not rate them 5 stars. It mainly comes down to 3 main issues: 1. Inconsistent & inaccurate size charts In my opinion, this is the biggest reason why Kin Custom is and will remain under 4 stars on the app store (with point number 2 below being a close second), despite their product quality being so outstanding. Their sizing makes no goddamn sense. A small t-shirt fits like a small, but the moment you get to a medium, their sizes are a mess. Mediums fit like a large, but 3XLs fit like a 2XL. It makes it near impossible to give customers an accurate idea of how their shirts will fit. And while the shirts run big, the pants run true-to-size/slightly small. So when we released track pants, we had many customers who were upset because they were used to our shirts being oversized, and therefore they ordered a size down. Only for them to arrive and be too small. Until this is fixed, Kin Custom will NEVER get a good rating on the app store or be able to truly contend with companies like Printful. We can't rely on our sizes being accurate and therefore provide customers with the right expectations. 2. Lack of product templates This, combined with the previous issue, is why I had to stop using them for clothing entirely. The fact they've been in operation for nearly 3 years at this point and STILL, TO THIS DAY, have no templates is beyond me. If you want to design products with a specific vision in mind (like, for example, placing your logo on the shoes in a similar manner to Converse), you have to play this back and forth with the mockup generator to make sure it looks right. And even then, it can be hard to know if you set things up how you wanted. Without templates, it's hard to ensure your artwork will show in the right places or what even the safe print area is when building out a design. The lack of PSD templates, or even just flat PNG transparent templates, as a POD company is unacceptable in the year 2021. With so much competition in POD, it's like Kin Custom said "fuck it" to actual functionality and focused entirely on their product quality. Which is a mistake. At the end of the day, POD apps are a SaaS solution mixed with manufacturing. If your software platform lacks core features, it doesn't matter how great the end product is because the experience of producing that product isn't worth it. 3. Exclusively polyester product catalog This is the final nail in the coffin of why we moved away from Kin Custom for clothing. As our customer base grew, we heard the same complaint more and more: "This looks amazing, but I wish it felt more like cotton and less synthetic." Kin Custom's clothing is 100% polyester across the board. Their shirts and hoodies feel closer to an athletic water-resistant fabric than cotton. Over the past year, they've introduced some more options, like the heavyweight sleeveless hoodies, which are a knitted polyester. Or their belted tapered pants, which are lightweight and closer to chiffon. But at the end of the day, it's still all 100& polyester, which does not meet the feel and comfort of cotton. As a result, we were forced to find a different supplier since our customers wanted hoodies that felt like regular hoodies, not track jackets or workout sweats. Now that we have found a supplier who does polyester jersey for tees (which feels closer to cotton) and 80% polyester/20% cotton for hoodies and joggers (which feels nearly exactly like 100% cotton), I can't make any excuses for producing clothing with Kin Custom, despite their amazing quality and white label branding. Ultimately the product has to be liked by customers, and ours don't like how Kin Custom clothing feels. If they improve these issues, I will be first in line to come back. But as it stands, I feel the only products someone should use Kin Custom for are shoes and accessories. I would not recommend them for clothing. I hope others find this review helpful, and I will be sure to update this if Kin Custom makes any major updates in the future to fix the issues I outlined.