In 2016, print on-demand, ecommerce platform, Spreadshirt, increased its global sales globally by around 9% to a total of £77.7m (€93 million), driven largely by mobile.
Mobile has become a key driver of growth for the company, which enables everyone to spread ideas on something tangible. Almost 50% of platform visitors use mobile devices. Increasingly they are visiting and designing via their phones.
Smartphone traffic is up 22%, whilst visits from tablets is down by 14%. Globally Spreadshirt experienced over 40% growth in orders via smartphone in 2016. In the UK and Europe this was up 73% year-on-year.
Spreadshirt is the market leader in Europe and has been growing continuously since its inception. Building on its success in Europe, the company launched a US offensive at the beginning of 2017 with the aim of winning business from competitors, such as Red Bubble and CustomInk.
“In 2016, our focus was clearly on mobile optimisation and the removal of technical difficulties in order to be able to further develop the platform,” says Spreadshirt CEO Philip Rooke. “We no longer have a mobile-first strategy; mobile is the strategy. Organisationally, we have repositioned ourselves with the three business areas of personalisation, marketplaces and merchandising. The figures for the past financial year confirm this course. In 2017, we will break the revenue limit of 100 million euros by attacking the US market and expanding the areas of merchandising and marketplaces.”
Last year Spreadshirt sent over 4 million products from around 2 million orders to more than 150 countries including some new destinations like Burkina Faso or Papua New Guinea. More than 70,000 Spreadshirt partners sold their motifs and products via white-label shops, marketplaces or the design tools.
