Wall Art Dropshipping: A Complete Guide

Dropshipping is a business idea whose time has come in this digital age. Imagine owning a profitable business that manufactures and ships quality products to your customers without worrying about manufacturing or warehousing your product!

The key to a successful dropshipping endeavor lies, obviously, in the products you choose to sell. One of the hottest niche markets growing rapidly in demand is wall art and canvas prints. According to The Business Research Company, the art market is a $5.8 billion dollar per year industry, growing at an anticipated 6% per year. This growth can be attributed to several factors, the popularity of e-commerce being one of them.

In this market, you're not just selling products. You're selling aesthetics. Imagine the potential for your eye-popping web store, displaying beautiful works of art just waiting to adorn the homes and businesses of your customers. The possibilities seem endless. But, as with most things, it takes more than just a beautiful product to be successful. So, what's the best way to begin to get started? Here are a few tips to begin the art print drop shipping journey.

Getting Started with Wall Art Dropshipping

The first thing you'll need to do to dropship art prints is set up your online store. While there are several companies that can assist in this process, Shopify is the market leader in the dropshipping space. They handle the sale of your product from order placement to delivery, with everything in between. It's user-friendly and customizable, allowing you to build an online store that fits in with your niche product.

One of the most important aspects of a successful dropshipping art endeavor is aligning yourself with the right partners to source your products. You can find suppliers using the directory on dropshipping.com. With this site, you can find suppliers who can ship the products you need, but you can also filter by location, by typical order processing time, and by size of orders. You'll also be able to see how they handle returns, which is an integral part of the order-handling process. If your customer has an unsatisfactory product return, they are unlikely to be a repeat customer.

Top Wall Art Suppliers

When it comes to wall art, here are a few sites that stand out in their field:

Contrado

The Contrado app plugs seamlessly into your Shopify store. They do print on demand canvas wall art as well as artwork on clothing, home goods, wall art and more. And their print-on-demand service is free. All of their products are made in one facility, which means consistency in print quality. Imagine, if you will, that your customer has ordered several products with the same design. If each product were printed in a different place, the likelihood of noticeable differences in print quality across the products is much more likely. Contrado's one-facility print process removes that potential, giving you peace of mind for the consistency of their work. Their products are also blind-shipped, meaning that products are delivered without any Contrado branding. Only your company name will appear, allowing you to build upon your own brand identity. When it comes to drop shipping art prints, Contrado is an excellent partner.

Printful

Your Shopify store will print seamlessly with Printful, making the order creation and fulfillment process a breeze for you and your customers. Printful manufacturers its merchandise, which helps maintain consistency. It has an excellent order fulfillment process that handles everything from order creation to shipping, making less work for you as the drop shipper. They also offer tools for customized printing, enabling your customers to create their own designs right on your website.

Art.com

There is a vast selection of every genre of art available at Art.com. One of the advantages of this site is the ability to customize the size of the artwork, giving your potential buyers the ability to adorn almost any space in their home or office. At Art.com, you can drop ship posters and photographs with confidence, knowing that your customer will get a high-quality product because drop shipping art prints is their specialty.

Printify

Printify is very similar to Printful in that it also allows your customers to create their own designs. Their products may come from different manufacturers, which could potentially impact consistency, as was discussed earlier with Contrado and Printful.

Marketing

Now that you've set up your online store and decided where you will procure your products, it's time to think about marketing. You've got to get the word out to potential customers in order to generate sales. Fortunately, we are in the age of social media, and these platforms provide an excellent place to showcase your store.

With Facebook and Instagram, you can create and share high-resolution images to display the vibrancy and quality of your artwork in your online store. On Facebook, you can create something called Carousel Ads, which allows you to add up to ten images or videos in a single ad. Each image or video is a card, and Facebook can automatically reorder the cards based on their performance. Or, if you prefer to keep a specific order, either to tell a story or showcase the products in a specific manner, you can always opt out of this feature. With Instagram, you can take advantage of Stories and Reels to tell a story similar to the Facebook Carousels. Facebook has extensive ad targeting functionality, so your ads will be seen by those who've expressed an interest in art or decorating with wall art.

Another idea for social media marketing is to establish a relationship with influencers who engage with your target audience. Influencers reach hundreds of thousands of followers and can boost your brand tremendously with just one recommendation. Be sure to check not just their number of followers but also their engagement metrics to determine which influencers will give you the most bang for your buck. When possible, its best to seek out longer-term influencer partnerships as opposed to one-off ads. When followers see your products on a regular basis, you will build trust with them through the influencer.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is another thing to consider when marketing your brand. Be sure that you use keywords that a potential buyer might use when searching for your product online. Search Engine Optimization can greatly improve the quantity of website traffic. When creating content on your website, craft your content around the ways that your customers will search for your products.

Branding Yourself

When setting up your wall and canvas art dropshipping site, it's important to consider how you want to brand yourself. You'll want to establish a style that is unique to your site and that fits the type of products you are selling. For example, if your online store focuses on art classics and masterpieces, you should choose a logo, colors, and fonts to fit that motif. Conversely, if you're selling playful items, like pets or children's art, you can design accordingly with fun fonts and logos. Whatever recognizable style you choose, be sure to stick with it in all of your marketing materials.

If you've received positive customer reviews for either your products or services, don't hesitate to use them to help you build a trust factor in your brand.

Focus on Service

For many businesses, repeat customers are the key to their success. Outstanding customer service is probably the most important factor in garnering a return customer. If they aren't happy with any part of the process, they will find someone else to order from the next time they are looking to buy a similar product. And while the benefit of dropshipping is that you don't need to worry about manufacturing or warehousing, you'll need to remember that the buck ultimately stops with you. You are responsible for partnering with the right vendors through every step of the supply chain because when something goes wrong, it is you who the customer will contact for assistance. It will be your job to make it right, regardless of who may have made the error in the first place.

Be sure that your online store has detailed descriptions and images for all your products. If you've inaccurately described an item, that potentially makes for a bad experience and a dissatisfied customer. For the product images, it's a good idea to use professional photography. When selling artwork, the image itself is the product. Don't skimp on this expense.

Be sure to disclose any and all fees prior to the finalization of the sale. If shipping and tax are not included, spell that out clearly so there are no surprises once the buyer presses the Order button.

Conclusion

Dropshipping of wall art and canvas has the potential to be a very profitable business model when properly marketed and branded. The benefits of dropshipping become evident with a product such as wall art because it allows a dropshipper to sell aesthetically pleasing designs to any buyer almost anywhere in the world with only the capital required to set up an online store.

This market is growing rapidly year over year. The resources to procure quality artwork are plentiful, and with the right mix of marketing and customer service, a drop shipper could easily find their niche. If the art world is of interest to you, but your startup capital is somewhat limited, this may be a way to have the best of both worlds.