Quality POD products with an
eye on the environment
and human rights.
Other Universe merch is finally out, and damn it looks and feels good. Thanks to the work of Valerie Jaccod, the lead designer for the company, you can now go around your daily life sharing your love and support for our project.
Right now, as you can see, the only line available is the Brand one, but soon the characters and ideas from our universes will shine on some merch as well; and it won’t be strictly clothing, that’s for sure.
All this wouldn’t be possible without the services of Printful: a White Label, POD (Print On Demand) company that delivers worldwide. In this article we will explain how the process works so that you, our customers, are a bit more consciously informed when buying our merchandise.
First of all, White Label means that Printful doesn’t put on its own logo or touches on the products, leaving us the opportunity to fully express our brand, without having to go through all the difficulties of manufacturing, storage, delivery etc. so it looks like Other Universe has made the final product. This allows small companies like ours, to make available much higher quality products in an efficient and more cost-effective way.
Print On Demand is quite self-explanatory: it means that whatever you buy from us, it’s made expressly for you and then sent to you. This is a good environmentally friendly solution since: it exempts us from producing and storing a lot of products that might or might not be sold; and it doesn’t increase pollution or waste since, ideally, every single product made, is then used, and therefore serves a purpose.
The other very nifty advantage of POD, for us creative types is that, since there are no storage impediments you can really experiment with a wide array of designs and ideas, knowing that there’s really no real physical loss if we don’t sell a particular design. So really this first merch line, even though very cool, is just a fine little aperitif to whet your appetite.
The delivery process might take a little longer than you usually experience, since the goods have to be made in the first place; so it adds a bit of extra time between, when you place the order and when you receive the merch.
The manufacturing process usually takes a week, and the delivery time depends where in the world you live. Our base is currently in Norway and so, we have prioritized the European (territory and EU) market, and will generally use the Latvian Printful Branch to fulfill basically all of our orders.
For now, the rest of the world is left outside in the cold, so just in case you live in America and you find it difficult to order our merch at the moment. We are growing a small company and want to initially restrict production and delivery, but we will tune it correctly as time goes on and we’ll “open up” to the rest of the globe soon, for sure. [This only applies to our merch made by Printful. Our digital comics are available worldwide already, but that is a much simpler process to set up.]
All this comes with a price, however. The conscious decision of Printful (that we support) to only buy from ethical suppliers, which offers proper working conditions in their factories, as well as using recycled and ecofriendly products; will make the final merch price higher than expected. Yet we know that quality, design, and ethical values are in place, so we will stick to this system.
Inour learning process we miscalculated the merch expenses in production, taxes and delivery, so we actually ended up, going into minus figures with our very first order…all part of the business process...and prices have now stabilized.
To finish this article, a little note: Printful will take care of production, delivery and returns as well, so if you have any problem with your order you can write to us at info@other-universe.com but be aware that they will handle any problems which arise.
Since we sell merch through them, we have (of course) implemented their return policies, which you can read here Delivery (other-universe.com) You can mostly expect that returning a product is almost non-existent unless there are quality issues or flaws. But since this is a product made just for you, be aware there is no returns based on “size change” or “buyers regret” so be sure to have a good look at the size guide in the description section of every product.