In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk about selling and shipping t-shirts, and how to do it all in TypeScript!

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Show Notes

01:58 - T-Shirts 101

T-Shirts are cool
I sold 100 right away to get the kinks out
Then I did pre-order
The stack
- TypeScript
- React
- Next.js

09:08 - Selling: Front-end

Snipcart
It’s a button
When Someone buys, they scrape the site for the HTML
- If you only have a client-side rendered button, you use the JSON API instead
Integrated into Gatsby pretty easily
Wrote one custom hook to count inventory and disable when sold out
I thought Snipcart would be enough, but I soon realized it wasn’t. I needed something to fulfill the shipment.

10:10 - Selling: Shipping Quotes

Snipcart has integration for USPS, etc.
You can also do custom shippers
It’s a webhook
They also take care of customs declaration

13:30 - Selling: Backend

18:05 - Fulfilling

Printing labels
- Designed with CSS + React
- Print CSS is wild
- Fan Fold labels were way better
- I switched to Stallion Express
- Cheaper
Printing packing slips
Batch scanning
Scanning → Mark as shipped
- Started with webcam
- Bought scanner for cheap
- QR code was better because my tokens were long
- Data matrix is often better
Sending notifications
- Hit the endpoint via Snipcart

28:48 - The physical part

T-Shirts printed from local supplier
- U-Haul to get them here
Bags printed in China (about 40 cents each)
I wrote a bunch of code to organize by size
- This cut down on moving around (14 hours if you save 30 seconds per shirt)
Some got stickers
Multiples were the hardest
- 24 different types of shirts
  - some wanted 4xl
  - some wanted tall

36:30 - Common questions

Why did you do this yourself?
- Fun project
- I learned a ton
- This is how you don’t burn out
Why not print-on-demand? (DTG)
- Tonal
- Embroidery
- Quality
- Money
  - Pay people in my community
Control
- Bags, stickers, etc…
- stickermule
Why not $companyThatHandlesIt
- I want to do stickers
- I want to do decks
Why not Shopify
- Large orders still need major fulfillment strategies
- Code has to be written or money spent

44:16 - Other lessons learned

Queues would be good here
- Sometimes you had to wait 3+ seconds for the confirmation of shipping
No one reads, it was pre-order
Don’t buy shipping right away — people email about incorrect addresses
Over-order by a few each (out of 1550 orders, five got partial refunds and three got full refunds)
Pre-order is great because you can offer many sizes
Async JS to do things at most 50 at a time

Links

Wyze Plug

××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

Scott: Pixeleyes AutoMounter
Wes: Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder

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Selling and Shipping T-Shirts with TypeScript

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Selling and Shipping T-Shirts with TypeScript