i know a lot of us are at home right now trying to keep ourselves busy and maybe we’re excited about starting a new business idea so starting a phone case business can be lucrative it has high profit margins and a low upfront investment there are 8.5 billion mobile device connections around the world but there’s only a population of 7.6 billion people on this earth so lots of people but even more devices out there and 44 of smartphone users they’re going to be upgrading their device every two years so if you want to sell phone cases online then maybe this is your sign because it’s relatively easy to get into and the market is booming so in this video i’m going to teach you how you can start your own phone case business and you’re going to watch me start my own phone case business from scratch so let’s do it okay so the first thing that we would need to do is we would need to decide what kind of a phone case we want to sell and then that’s going to help us define our target audience so start by thinking of the benefit that your phone case would have and that’s going to bring you closer to deciding who your potential customers would be so let’s start with a little brainstorming so maybe you could sell an extremely durable phone case and maybe it can withstand an 100 meter drop so then in that case maybe you’d be targeting campers or really outdoorsy people or maybe we could sell a phone case that’s like almost invisible and it doesn’t interfere with the iphone’s like really sleek design so maybe in that case we would be targeting people who are design enthusiasts so for my business i’m gonna make phone cases that have artwork on them and have a slogan on them so that people that have these phone cases can really express themselves and their interests um and for this i’m gonna be targeting dog owners and dog lovers so this whole exercise that you watch me go through you’re definitely going to want to do the same for your business and i would say it definitely helps to go with an audience that you can relate to so go with a theme that you’re already really passionate about that’s just going to make it more enjoyable for you as well and another thing at this stage you’re also going to want to think about which devices you’re going to want to target so for me and my business i’m just going to target iphone users and i’m just really just really narrowing it down just to make it more simple for me operation wise um especially in the beginning but if my phone case business takes off business picks up then i can really think about holding more styles in the future but for now we’re just going to keep it super simple next step is to actually source our materials we’re going to want to think about how we’re actually going to make these phone cases so here you’re going to learn the three ways that you can actually make your phone cases you can either go the print on demand method you can make it at home or you can white label now if you’re not sure what some of these things that i just mentioned are don’t worry i will explain it in just a sec so for us for me and my business i’m gonna have custom artwork printed on my cases so i’m gonna decide to go the print on demand method so print on demand if you’re not familiar this basically means that you have your own online store you have your own designs printed on your own cases but you don’t actually have to buy the phone cases up front only when a customer makes an order do you actually go ahead and pay for the product and the printing and the shipping so the way that it works is once a customer places an order the customer is going to pay you then you’re going to pay the printing facility then the printing facility is going to get an automatic notification they’re going to get notified that they have to make an order so they’re going to make that order they’re going to print it they’re going to ship it to the customer and you never have to make or ship anything yourself and this is all automated especially if you do have a shopify store and if you’re using an app like printful or printfy but if you do want more in-depth information just all on how print-on-demand works we actually have an entire video dedicated to just that so i will link that right up here for you guys so hopefully that makes sense um but the reason that i decided to go this route is because now i don’t really have to worry about buying too much or too little inventory and especially because i don’t know what the demand is going to be like for my products i also don’t know which designs are going to be resonating with my audience so if there is a design that doesn’t sell i could just take it off my site no harm no foul and the nice thing about print on demand is that i don’t really have to be putting money down up front the only thing the only thing is that print on demand your profit margins are going to be slim you are paying a bit of a premium with print on demand but for now this is going to make sense for me because i want to avoid risk especially in the beginning so i have a custom design right over here that i hired a designer to create so i’m gonna head over to printfy.com and i’m gonna click start designing from here i get to choose what kind of a phone case i want and then i’m going to click start designing and i’m going to upload my design that my designer gave me and so far looking good and then once i click save product it’s going to prompt me to make an account so if you are going this route you can sign up here um and then we have a little preview of how our phone case might look so that’s really exciting if you have a shopify store i highly recommend you either get the printify app or the printful app it’s going to just seamlessly integrate with your shopify store it’s going to make your operations so much smoother it’s just going to make your life a lot easier but if you didn’t want to go the print on demand option you could still make your own custom designs but you would just make your cases at home um that way if you are the more creative type and you want to be involved with the actual making process you could still do that with this method that we’re about to talk about so to do this you’re going to use a process called sublimation this is going to include making your designs on the computer at home and then printing them onto some blank phone cases but to do this you’re going to need a sublimation printer kit so i’m going to leave a link in the description box for you guys just an example of a printer but of course you’re going to want to make sure that you’re choosing the printer that’s you know within budget and right for you and then you’re also going to want to order some blank phone cases online so i would recommend you just type into google sublimation blank phone case and then it’s going to bring up some results that are local to you um and you can choose from the phone cases that make sense for your business with this method the nice thing is that you can really customize your phone cases so when we’re thinking about print on demand you’re really just limited to printing um and you’re limited to the unboxing experience that your partner provides like you can’t really customize that unboxing experience but when you’re doing this at home you have the control to really customize your phone cases you can glue on accessories you can add textures you have that control and you have control over the unboxing experience as well you can add in inserts or really make it very branded and that can really set you apart from other brands since this market is definitely competitive so the thing about going this route is that the cost of the printer is going to be a little bit high so you’re going to have a high up front cost printers are around 500 but the thing is when you’re printing at home the actual cost for each of the phone case that’s going to be less than a dollar now with printful when you’re doing the print on demand route each phone case is going to cost you upwards of 13 so if this is a business idea that you plan on sticking with that upfront cost of the printer is definitely going to eventually pay for itself so the next option is white labeling so if you’re not already familiar with what that term means basically it means you are taking an existing product and you are reselling it under your own brand name so if you wanted to find a case that already exists you would basically just go on aliexpress alibaba um so i’ll give you an example here i search for an iphone 8 case and i chose one that had a very clear benefit like this one says that is it’s an anti-stress phone case so that’s perfect um and while you’re on the product you want to of course make sure that you’re looking at the price make sure that it supports the device types that you want to support and look at the details about the manufacturer if you are going this route and you are sourcing your products we actually have a whole video just on how to find the right manufacturer so i will leave a link for you guys to watch it right up here for when you’re done this video the nice thing about product sourcing is that there’s very little time investment on your part you know you’re not making the designs um you’re not coming up with the concepts like this has already been done for you but the drawback is that if you’re able to buy this product and sell it yourself there will be other companies out there that are selling the exact same thing as you so it can be a little competitive going the product sourcing route so by this point we’ve defined our niche we’ve decided on our audience and we’ve decided what it is that we actually want to sell but the next thing that we’re going to have to do is decide how we’re going to sell it so by signing up with shopify you can easily source and sell your products all in one centralized place you can also design your store to look exactly how you want it you know make it super on brand um and of course you get to take advantage of those powerful apps that we talked about like printify and printful and the nicest thing is that you have a 14 day trial so that you can just you know play around um see if it’s for you um and one thing that i do want to mention is that if you do decide to go the drop shipping route you can be up and running in as little as a day so i will leave the link in the description box for you guys if you do want to take advantage of that free 14 day trial all right so once you have your store up and running the next thing that you’re going to want to think about is how are you going to market your products are you going to use google ads are you going to use facebook ads are you going to go real hard on social media of course the options are endless but if you’re asking me i would recommend that you create content on tick tock especially if you are a maker especially if you’re making these things at home i think people love to see that behind the scenes you know process video and we actually have an entire video dedicated just to tic toc marketing so i’ll just link that up here for you guys and you can watch that later so that is pretty much it you just successfully learned how to uh start your own phone case business if you guys found this video helpful make sure that you’re giving it a thumbs up that’s going to help our community grow it’s going to help our channel grow and we love to see when you love content um if you have any suggestions for future content if there’s you know a burning question definitely let me know in the comments section um make sure that you are subscribed we’re constantly dropping new videos just like this so if you’re wanting to learn how to start run and grow a successful online business you’re definitely going to want to make sure that you are subscribed to this channel learn my shopify thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in the next one
