[Customer Success Story] Giftymize - From passion to real business

Teeinblue Customer Success Story: Giftymize

giftymize success in selling personalized pod products

Founded in 2020, Giftymize is an online business with the mission to provide people with highly-quality personalized gifts. Its goal is to inspire customers to speak out of love for their beloved ones through something that always appears in daily life. With the online customizing tools, each gift from Giftymize is created from customers' stories and love.

It's a pleasure for us to have a conversation with Thanh Dang - founder of Giftymize and discover how and why he chose Teeinblue to be his tools for product personalization.

The Story Behind Giftymize

From the end of 2019, Thanh Dang, a passionate young man who has a dream to build a business of his dream - started to incubate a plan to enter the print-on-demand market with the idea was his special love for pets. At that time, he only knew the rough definition of print-on-demand.

Yet, after having done some research, he realized the fact that there are tons of print-on-demand businesses out there that have been competing to sell to the same target audience as the ones he chose, the market was too broad and competitive.

“At that initial stage, everything was hard for me.”

By the beginning of 2020, he saw the trend that from start-ups to big brands, businesses started to offer customizable product options to extend their product lines and increase sales. That’s when the idea of a personalized gifts brand, Giftymize, was born.

Plus, as he approached the trend, he realized it was not possible to do all that work with Shopify’s current features, and the process of selling a personalizable product was way more complicated compared to a normal print-on-demand product. The only skill that Thanh had to support him when starting an online business was Photoshop.

So, Thanh decided to find a Shopify app that could help him turn his idea into a real online store.

Initial Stage: Start from 0

“I was looking for a tool that was easy to use and friendly towards both technical and non-technical folks. Teeinblue was exactly that. It was trivial to set up, offered an intuitive Photoshop-like design experience, and made it easy to create customizable product pages. The ability to manage, and generate order design was powerful for me.”

By the end of his search, he chose Teeinblue Product Personalizer to be the app for product personalization.

Following the initial introduction to teeinblue, he spent a weekend trying it out. “I don’t have any coding experience and it came to me naturally because of how intuitive it is,” he said. It took him about 2 months to set up Giftymize. While he was still in the process of filling the store with his design ideas and campaigns, he launched the brand Giftymize on June 9, 2020.

 

“ The system of managing cliparts, designs and orders had saved time and repetitive tasks reduced to a few simple clicks and leaving me free to focus on the creative parts”

giftymize obstacles

At first, the personalization idea he asked for instruction on was allowing customers to choose between many clipart images of dog breeds.

With the optimized features of teeinblue, his 99 dog breeds clipart images didn’t affect the loading speed of the store, then his customers could enjoy seamless online shopping experiences where they could choose their dog breed with the most similar characteristics.

Put the designs aside, to sell any products, the important thing is the interfaced-friendly and seamlessness for buyers when entering your store, especially when your store has over 3000 personalized products like Giftymize. There will be a mass of templates, plenty of customization choices like clipart, colors, and the other options like personalized fonts, curve text.

"In order to enable customers to choose easily with just a few clicks like that, my whole setup process behind is complicated and Teeinblue helped. These guys handled this complicated thing in a simple way. It's the good customer experience when doing customization that also helps in making my ideas sold."

Reaping The Very First Benefit

Thanh Dang got his first sales after a month and he said it was the luck that Giftymize got. But being with him from his first stage of setting up his store and launching his very first personalized products, we were impressed by his patience and passion for Giftymize. We all agreed that he just got what he deserved.

“Seeing how much they cared about my business and my goals really indicated this was a partner I wanted to work with. After about 2 years with Teeinblue, I see Teeinblue as a partner behind the scenes that silently helps me "shine” “

Teeinblue is proud to be a close companion of Giftymize. His feedback has inspired the Teeinblue team on some really good improvements and new features.

From that day, Thanh Dang started to dream even bigger for his brand - Giftymize.

How Did He Bring Giftymize Up?

Learn the market from his Customer

Initially, he was only involved in the task related to his Photoshop strength - Design while having other team members help him with the ads and support.

After the store had a stable number of visitors and recurring sales, he directly took care of his customer services, and he continues until now. That's when he learned a lot more about the print-on-demand market, and customer insights to promote and bring Giftymize up.

“I found that customer service is exciting, and I really enjoy the feeling of being able to help people. Talking with customers helps me to understand them and broadens my knowledge on their culture and interest."

Brand-building from the human psychological perspective

Personalized products make people feel great and spike some emotions. When someone connects to something (because it has been tailored to them), the gateway in the brain allows them to reflect positively on where they received the item.

“The products that Giftymize created tend to remind, to keep, to bring emotions of happy and sad memories. Many customers who order mugs to remember their lost dogs/cats, friends, or people who live far away from home, even those who have passed away, long-distance relationships... they all have really touching stories"

Personalized print on demand store of Giftymize

He realized that he was not only selling a product, but he was also sharing meaningful stories behind it.

"And the important thing is that I'm happy with what I'm doing, happy that I'm not just making money, but I'm spreading something that makes others feel a little happier because of what I'm giving them", he shared

Deliver The Best Customer Services

He always has a real sharing conversation with his customers. It touches him when hears stories behind every sale.

“In my opinion, it is crucial on how we talk with customers. It is not just about simply replying to an email. The message you deliver to the customer doesn’t need to be long as a whole paragraph, but it must make you customer understand your willingness to support them”

A streamlined workflow, optimized for hypergrowth

Giftymize has grown so much since its inception. What was once a simple idea now is known as a beloved personalized gift brand. The team can now create new campaigns and live on their store seamlessly with a solid foundation of creative assets, selling experiences, and an effective personalization tool.

Because of his special care for his customers, most of the reviews from his customers over the last 2 years are positive. If one day he receives a negative one, it is usually a delivery issue - that is out of his scope.

By the middle of 2022, Giftymize has successfully launched over 3600 campaigns, with the Sale/ATC rate being 43.7%. Now 100% Giftymize products are created by Teeinblue.

While the creative team continues to explore more ideas in personalizing designs, the customer support team is excited about the possibilities Teeinblue can have for their order fulfillment process.

💡 You may concern: Top Print On Demand Services for Shopify Stores

And for his fellow small business owners who may struggle to find ways to scale up and are still hesitant to embrace the no-code movement, Thanh has a few words of advice:

keys to build a successful personalized pod business

From the Teeinblue team.

Running an online business can be time-consuming, especially when you plan on going solo. However, Thanh has been able to do - by himself - what a lot of big teams are doing or even can't do. It is his kindness and sincere attitude with great customer support when doing business that moves Gitymize forward.

So big applause for Giftymize 👏 👏 

💡 You may concern: Get Keys to Success in Personalized Print-on-demand with e-Commerce Expertise - Tortli