Merchandise · how we launch

The launch,
in detail.

How it ships, what we hold ourselves to, and where the responsibility sits.

01 Fulfilment
Who prints it, and how it’s built
02 Standards
The numbers we’re held to
03 Accountability
Who carries each scenario
04 Continuity
If we’re not here
01
Where it’s printed

One printer. Owned facilities. No brokers.

In-house fulfilment centres across the US, Canada, the UK and the EU — not a routed network of third-party shops. The same operator and the same quality control on every order, wherever it prints.

Quality
Every new design is sample-printed and approved on the real garment before it can be bought. Nothing goes on sale from a mockup.
The blanks
A standard soft-cotton blank by default, with organic and premium tiers available on any line. The blank is your call, on every product.
At volume
Once a design has proved itself in the store it moves to bulk production — a better print, a better hand-feel and a materially better margin.

Nothing is printed until a fan has paid for it.

02
What’s already built

Built first. Terms after.

Built at our cost, not yours. You see the real store, not a description of one.

The storefront
Built on a private link: collections, product pages, checkout and shipping bands. It moves to your domain, or one we register for you, the day you open it.
The range
Designs across collections, each tied to a line your audience already quotes back at you.
Mockups
Every design on every garment and colourway, ready to publish or discard.
Retention
Welcome, abandoned checkout, post-purchase and win-back flows, written and wired.
The calendar
Set against your year as it already runs: your upload cadence, your releases, and your tour dates if you have them.
The costings
Every product, blank tier and shipping band, priced to the cent.

None of it goes live until you say so — and it is yours whether or not you continue.

03
Building the store

Three ways to build it.

A separate decision from whether it lives inside the store you already run or a dedicated one. Either way your existing range, and 100% of the profit on it, stays yours.

1–2 wks

Your existing theme

The range is built on the theme you already run. Carries the brand, within the theme’s limits.

3–5 wks

A custom theme

Built to the design; your team keeps the platform’s own editor. Close, within its theme structure.

2–4 wks

Headless storefront

Our own page design; the platform runs cart, checkout and payments. Exactly the concept.

Build times are estimates until the design is signed off. If you want a different direction — new concepts, a rebuilt storefront — we do it again, at our cost, until it is right.

Whichever route, the store does not open on a picture. The lead designs are printed, quality-checked and posted to you on the real blank — chapter 01 says nothing goes on sale from a mockup, and this is the step that makes that yours as well as ours.

The store opens when you have approved a garment you are holding.

04
The standards

And what you can hold us to.

Printed and dispatched within five business days
Delivered in five to nine business days to most US addresses
Support addressed within 12 hours, resolved within 24

Anyone can print three numbers. What makes these ones worth reading is that the last one is backed by our share of the profit, not by a promise to try harder. Chapter 05 is what stands behind it.

Delivery outside the US is quoted per market at checkout. Made-to-order knitwear and footwear print to their own longer schedule, stated on the product page.

05
Backed, not promised

Every number above is backed by our share.

The threshold sits below where we operate, not at it — the credit is what we are prepared to put behind the number, not what we expect to pay. And the split in your agreement never moves: a credit is a rebate on our share of a single month, taken on the statement before you are paid, and the month after it the terms are the ones you signed again.

Every missThe fan is put right the same day — refunded, reprinted or replaced — and the miss goes on the month’s count. Nothing for you to claim and nothing for you to chase.
A month under 97%Below 97% of support tickets resolved inside 24 hours, our share of that month’s profit is credited back to you — a tenth of it between 95 and 97%, a quarter below 95%, half of it below 90%.

Both sit in the agreement, not in a promise — along with the terms for a bad month that becomes a habit.

Priced on a month where the store cleared $40,000 of profit, and your share of it — under whichever band you have reached by then — was $28,000.

The month came in atCredited back to youYour share of $40,000 becomes
95–97%A tenth of our share — $1,200$29,200
90–95%A quarter of our share — $3,000$31,000
Below 90%Half of our share — $6,000$34,000
On the same statement
A line on the month’s statement, deducted before you are paid. Not an invoice to chase and not something that waits for the end of the term. It comes out of our share: never off the top, and never out of what a fan is owed.
Measured by us, published to you
The figure is our own measurement, published monthly whether it flatters us or not, and the credit applies itself. There is no claim to file and no window to miss.
The same profit figure
Worked out on the number your split is worked out on — after fulfilment, shipping, payment fees and chargebacks. Never on gross revenue, and never on a figure invented for this clause.
Your bands still move
A credited month still counts toward the thresholds that tilt the split further your way. Our failure cannot slow down your own terms improving — which is the one thing a rebate must never quietly do.
Under thirty tickets, we count misses
In a month with fewer than thirty support tickets a percentage is noise: one late reply out of twelve reads as 92%, a punitive band triggered by a single ticket. So a quiet month is judged on the number of misses instead — one miss credits a tenth of our share, two or three a quarter, four or more a half.

A standard with no price on it is just a sentence in a deck.

06
Who carries it

Sixteen scenarios, and who carries each one.

ScenarioOur responseWho carries it
Product arrives faulty or poor qualityReplaced free, the fan keeps the originalUs
Wrong item or size shippedCorrect item shipped immediately, no return requiredUs
Order arrives lateShipping refunded automatically, the fan told before they chaseUs
Order never arrivesReprinted and reshipped, or refunded — the fan choosesUs
Fan wants to return or exchange30 days, no reason, prepaid labelUs
Fan complains publiclyAnswered within two hours, publicly, then resolved in DMUs
A complaint reaches your teamForwarded to us, resolved, one line back when it is closedUs
Sizing runs wrong across a batchBatch pulled, every buyer contacted before they complainUs
Store goes down during a dropWindow extended by the downtime, buyers emailedUs
Checkout or payment failureAbandoned-checkout recovery, buyers contacted directlyUs
A design or caption causes offencePulled within the hour, refunded, correction in our name — not yoursUs
Chargebacks and fraudAbsorbed as a cost of sale, before the profit shareShared
A bulk print run doesn’t sell throughWritten off. Never deducted from your shareUs
Sales tax, nexus, filingsRegistered, collected at checkout, filedUs
A tour date moves or cancelsTour-linked items paused, buyers offered a swap or a refundUs
It doesn’t sellEvery drop is a free test — chapter 09Us

Sixteen rows. Fifteen of them say us.

07
At scale

A drop lands all at once. The operation is built for that.

A launch concentrates months of demand into a few hours. Printing, dispatch, comms and the inbox are all sized for that peak rather than for an average day.

Delivery is their job, at volume

Fulfilment runs through owned facilities across the US, Canada, the UK and the EU, against a published dispatch SLA — over 97% of orders ship inside five business days. When a queue extends we know before the customer does: we watch the fulfilment feed, not the inbox.

We reach them first

Every delayed order gets a reason, a revised date and shipping refunded before the fan has to ask. People post publicly when they do not know what is happening — almost nobody posts after they have been told.

On your channels, in our name

Comments, replies and DMs are monitored for merch mentions and answered within two hours by the store — never by you, never by your team. Every confirmation, packing slip and product page carries the store’s own support address.

The first drop runs to a closed list by design — known size, known ceiling, and real numbers to build the next one on.

Peak season is the one time print queues genuinely extend. We cut holiday delivery guarantees the day the printer publishes its deadline — usually the second week of December — and say so on the site before anyone can order, rather than apologising for it in January.

08
Runbook and backup

Your team could open the file without us.

Every supplier and printer contact
Print specs and approved artwork
The approval log, and its dates
Storefront, app and payment credentials
The drop calendar and its ties
Email flows and every trigger
Tax registrations and filing dates
Support macros and escalation rules
A second pair of hands
30 days

A named backup with standing access, who can hold the operation without a handover call. Named before the first drop, not after something happens.

Updated monthly, not at the end.

09
Every drop is a free test

Four things every drop tells us.

Logged from day one, and none of it costs anything to collect. We don’t commit to a bulk run until all four exist.

Design
A live test on every drop: two designs, each with its own mockup and description, shown to different visitors. The one that sells joins the range; the one that doesn’t was never printed, so being wrong costs nothing.
Size curve
A closed drop returns a real size distribution. Bulk runs are bought against that curve, not against a supplier’s default split.
City
Every order carries a postcode. By the third drop there is a map, and paid media is aimed at where your buyers actually are — as are tour drops, if you’re touring.
Repeat rate
The single number that decides whether the range widens or deepens. Generic merch rarely produces one — nobody buys the same logo tee twice.

Selling direct before we print in bulk is how we know what to make, and where to aim it.

Send us a name and a link.

We come back with a read on the catalogue, the range we would build from it and the first three drops — before anyone signs anything.

Email
hello@sparkler.agency
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