Kin Custom Fashion Dropshipper

I've been using Kin Custom for just over a year, and I waited until now to write a review because I wanted to give time for COVID-related issues to be ironed out. They are the perfect example of a company being so close to the best in their industry but stumbling right as they get to the finish line. To start, my ENTIRE company was built around Kin Custom products for all of 2020. However, in 2021, we migrated to a different supplier for clothing because we desired to produce products with polyester & cotton blends, which Kin Custom doesn't offer. That's actually part of the reason for the 3 stars instead of 5, but I'll speak on that in a moment. When it comes to the quality of their products, Kin Custom really does a stellar job. Stitching and construction are very consistent, I can count on one hand how many times we've had a customer complaint about quality, and that's out of over 500 orders over the past year. Additionally, colors are vibrant and VERY accurate to their source artwork, which is a godsend in POD. I don't have to wait for samples typically, I can push products to our store with confidence which saves us a lot of money in production costs for new products. While we don't use them for clothing anymore, we still use Kin Custom for shoes as they remain the BEST place for shoes on-demand. No one even comes close in terms of quality, cost, presentation (the shoe box really does make it an amazingly well-branded product). Those last two are actually Kin Custom's biggest selling points: Cost & Presentation. Because they offer discounts based on order value, it means we can let orders build-up for a few days, then order in chunks to get a 20-30% discount on products. NO ONE else in the POD industry operates this way, and honestly, I wish more of them would. It's lead to major savings for big sales like Black Friday, where we got a 45% (!!!) discount on all our Black Friday orders, which led to us making even more money than usual, despite our entire store being on sale. This does mean it's more hands-on, and we have to place orders every few days manually. But in my opinion, that's well worth it for the savings. The added feature of full white-label branding for only $1.99 per product is also incredible. Not just that, but all the packaging is 100% recyclable *and* made of recycled materials. Major kudos to them for coming right out the gate with environmentally friendly packaging. Now on to the negatives and why I did not rate them 5 stars. It mainly comes down to 3 main issues: 1. Inconsistent & inaccurate size charts In my opinion, this is the biggest reason why Kin Custom is and will remain under 4 stars on the app store (with point number 2 below being a close second), despite their product quality being so outstanding. Their sizing makes no goddamn sense. A small t-shirt fits like a small, but the moment you get to a medium, their sizes are a mess. Mediums fit like a large, but 3XLs fit like a 2XL. It makes it near impossible to give customers an accurate idea of how their shirts will fit. And while the shirts run big, the pants run true-to-size/slightly small. So when we released track pants, we had many customers who were upset because they were used to our shirts being oversized, and therefore they ordered a size down. Only for them to arrive and be too small. Until this is fixed, Kin Custom will NEVER get a good rating on the app store or be able to truly contend with companies like Printful. We can't rely on our sizes being accurate and therefore provide customers with the right expectations. 2. Lack of product templates This, combined with the previous issue, is why I had to stop using them for clothing entirely. The fact they've been in operation for nearly 3 years at this point and STILL, TO THIS DAY, have no templates is beyond me. If you want to design products with a specific vision in mind (like, for example, placing your logo on the shoes in a similar manner to Converse), you have to play this back and forth with the mockup generator to make sure it looks right. And even then, it can be hard to know if you set things up how you wanted. Without templates, it's hard to ensure your artwork will show in the right places or what even the safe print area is when building out a design. The lack of PSD templates, or even just flat PNG transparent templates, as a POD company is unacceptable in the year 2021. With so much competition in POD, it's like Kin Custom said "fuck it" to actual functionality and focused entirely on their product quality. Which is a mistake. At the end of the day, POD apps are a SaaS solution mixed with manufacturing. If your software platform lacks core features, it doesn't matter how great the end product is because the experience of producing that product isn't worth it. 3. Exclusively polyester product catalog This is the final nail in the coffin of why we moved away from Kin Custom for clothing. As our customer base grew, we heard the same complaint more and more: "This looks amazing, but I wish it felt more like cotton and less synthetic." Kin Custom's clothing is 100% polyester across the board. Their shirts and hoodies feel closer to an athletic water-resistant fabric than cotton. Over the past year, they've introduced some more options, like the heavyweight sleeveless hoodies, which are a knitted polyester. Or their belted tapered pants, which are lightweight and closer to chiffon. But at the end of the day, it's still all 100& polyester, which does not meet the feel and comfort of cotton. As a result, we were forced to find a different supplier since our customers wanted hoodies that felt like regular hoodies, not track jackets or workout sweats. Now that we have found a supplier who does polyester jersey for tees (which feels closer to cotton) and 80% polyester/20% cotton for hoodies and joggers (which feels nearly exactly like 100% cotton), I can't make any excuses for producing clothing with Kin Custom, despite their amazing quality and white label branding. Ultimately the product has to be liked by customers, and ours don't like how Kin Custom clothing feels. If they improve these issues, I will be first in line to come back. But as it stands, I feel the only products someone should use Kin Custom for are shoes and accessories. I would not recommend them for clothing. I hope others find this review helpful, and I will be sure to update this if Kin Custom makes any major updates in the future to fix the issues I outlined. Show more

I ordered 23 products to view before listing on my store. They arrived yesterday for a total of 14 days which I feel is great for international shipping. All of my white-base products came out great and I am pleased with those But I am concerned about doing garments with a black base because the color did not seem to absorb very well. I did a design with the men's black track jacket but it looks somewhat "faded". In natural and indoor light it sort of has a dark blueish-green hue to it. You can tell its not a solid dark black. Its a stark difference because the trim and cuffs ARE solid dark black and by contrast you can really tell the black jacket color is off a little. Perhaps the color did not transfer well and this is a one-time defect? If this jacket were to get washed and fade just slightly, it would look horrible. Based on the reviews of others below, it would seem frustrating to appeal this to customer service and it seems safer to just pull the item from my store. Show more

I wish I had paid more attention to the reviews here before I decided to work with this company. Worst customer service ever, cannot get a hold of anyone, have submitted multiple customer service requests for product quality issues with no response and no solution. While the print quality is good and the shipping seems to be timely, there are often product quality issues, including that the branding tags I pay extra for all fade after one wash and you can no longer see my logo, which is a HUGE problem. If I do not hear back from customer service within 3 days with the refunds that I requested as well as a solution to my issues, I will be pulling all of my designs and going back to my previous supplier, who, although they did not have as many products that I liked, at least offered good customer service. This is my livelihood, and I cannot work with a company that does not appreciate or respect that. Show more

The branding customization and production time is great but the products look nothing like the photos...they have a nice feel but it look very cheap and the packages come with a large "Made In China" sticker. If the products had a regular look we would be happy but the shine cheap look is a no go with the higher price tag per item compared to competitors. Show more

I have worked with Kin Custom for the last 18 months or so. I can state unequivocally, that the quality has been consistent and top-notch! Their packaging that they use when I select my logo makes our shop look like an established retailer. We have ordered their women's tees, 2 different bags (faux leather), totes, laptop sleeve and lots of dog shirts. Unfortunately, the dog shirts they had before were perfect for a new line we wanted to have but they discontinued them and now have just a standard 1 size shirt. Its great quality, for sure!.. but nothing like the shirts we were purchasing before. (hint, hint... :-) would be awesome for the holidays... ) I still carry the new sku with confidence that it will be right and good quality. They were the 1st to reach out when the global shutdowns started and sent weekly updates with production impacts, any information that would apply to our orders. It was impressive. Shipping has been smooth and they've processed my orders in a fair and expected time frame. I can only speak for the items I shared above but I almost hate to tell the world how wonderful they are (selfishly of course), but their team should be recognized. Thank you! - the 3 Red Rovers team Show more