Seed round led by Bling Capital with participation from YouTube co-founder Steven Chen, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Google Adsense Godfather Gokul Rajarm and many other prominent investors.
In the early days of Wattpad, I always wanted to send swag to our loyal Wattpad fans and ambassadors in showcase of our gratitude. These passionate users filled my heart so much that I just wanted to offer something to them to express my sincere appreciation of their support. Of course, from time to time, I would receive enquiries from our users asking where they could get those Wattpad hoodies and T-shirts that our staffs were rocking on social media. While we’d love to send out swags frequently, we ran into one undeniable problem—our user base is international. Creating merchandise and shipping it worldwide from Toronto can be a costly and time-consuming endeavour. That’s why when I was introduced to Printify I immediately felt connected to it.
Printify is, in their own words, a “transparent print-on-demand network.” The company is not a manufacturing business themselves but rather an online manufacturing marketplace that puts brands in contact with manufacturers around the world. Typically, when a brand creates merchandise they will find a print shop in their city, get their merchandise made, sell it online for their supporters to buy, and ship it out all on their own. This kind of merchandising can often become overwhelming and expensive due to international fees, but Printify exists in order to relieve stress and reduce costs by printing merchandise on demand in the very country it’s made to ship out to.
When I first heard about this company, I saw the value in it straight away. The digital world is full of what we call ‘micro influencers’ (definition: social media influencers with 2000 to 100, 000 followers charging $100 to $300 per post) who have started their own brands and are looking to grow their careers but may not have the funds to go out and mass produce merchandise for their supporters. Printify works as a solution for those who don’t have the means to create merchandise in the traditional way—Printify is also modernizing the merchandising landscape in this new digital age.
After meeting with James Berdigans, CEO of Printify and learning more about the business, I knew I wanted Two Small Fish Ventures to invest in their journey. My experience of building a large network of users allows me to see the value in such an innovative network dedicated to helping any size of business from small brands to enterprises alike.
So today, I am happy to announce that Two Small Fish Ventures has the privilege of investing in Printify. James and I both believe that building a strong network is critical to Printify’s success, and I cannot wait to share my knowledge and experience with their team while they embark on this exciting journey.
While we take this journey together, I would also like to highlight what a privilege it is to be working alongside some fantastic investors including Bling Capital (lead investor), Steven Chen (the co-founder of YouTube), Kevin Lin (the co-founder of Twitch), and Gokul Rajaram (the Godfather of Google Adsense). I cannot wait to see where this adventure takes us!
– Eva
