Selling Your Print on Demand Products at Burning Man Festival

Kateryna Tytarenko, SEO specialts in Multi-Programming Solutions • 6 mins 56 secs read 

Burners will always be burners: they will no longer allow the Burning Man festival 2022 to be canceled this time. Instead, they took matters into their own hands by ongoing a long tradition of meeting in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. As a result, the seven days long celebration of art and creativity is soon, which means that the print on demand industry today is in its true heyday. And here's why.

The fest is characterized as awe-instilling and expressing ways that raise the mind and spirit, solve social issues, and stimulate a culture perception, commune, and civilian attracting.” The persistent matrix is reflected in the most unusual Burning Man festival outfits in which the action participants come. The more unique it is, the more chances you will be remembered and written about, and in the press, you will discover notes about yourself as a visitor in the unusual and extravagant images. But how to make a custom print that is sure to engage the audience's awareness?

Table of Contents

What is the Burning Man festival?

Why can the festival be a runway for your POD goods?

But Burning Man does not allow the sale of goods or services!

Conclusion

What is the Burning Man festival?

Have you ever heard of a city that exists for only a few days a year? It's called Black Rock City, made in the desert around Nevada. The city has about 60,000 dwellers and is mostly artists, partygoers, as well as eccentricities. Male and female walk around in unusual costumes and accessories with elements of steampunk, rock, and dystopia. These people are also great engineers because every year, they build incredible machines, sculptures, and in general, art objects that you may not find anywhere else on the planet Earth. 

This festival is distinguished by its adherence to sustainability and environmentalism. The city lives nine days, adhering to the principle declared many years ago: “We are promised to leave no trash wherever we gather.” 

Burning Man does not book any amusement for the celebration but supports no payment approach. So all the locals here live in the atmosphere of noisy parties and festivities. Here you may do anything you want: taste wine, get a massage, cook delicious food together, dance, and even find the right fashion looks. And all this is without payment because the festival is commercial-free and pursues anti-consumerism ideas and self-expression. The entire event is not-for-profit. In that case, how can the print on demand biz increase sales if potential customers will not have an opportunity to buy any item? Thus, you have two mutually complementary options:

1. You find a person who will sell you a ticket;
2. You start now to advertise Burning Man festival clothes designed for this segment of the audience. 

How to perform it - you will find the answers below.

Why can the festival be a runway for your POD goods?

The 2022 Waking Dreams topic will discover the literal and figurative dreams' power. So one of the fest attendees, Zhuang Zi, announced her unusual costume-butterfly, which she imagined. That association of dreaming and waking minds that feeds art of surrealism will be the basis for future fashion bows and art object at the festical. Visitors prepare in advance for the event: they stock up on products, household items, and clothes. On stage is customized POD merch aimed at stunning the audience. Applause!

Selling print on demand for Burning Man needs to be done in advance - it's about time to take care of the promotion. First, start selling things on different channels - this will expand your scalability and increase conversions. Next, target a specific audience segment: for example, begin studying the portrait of the potential customer, their interests, and online behavior. This will help you quickly build your sales funnel and launch unique print on demand products. 

Also, take inspiration from famous fashion designers: for instance, in 2015, a men's and women's clothing line called Skingraft released a collection of clothes for Burning Man. Many were skeptical of the concept at first. But to the public's surprise, the models were very successful, so the leather jackets and tunics, white transparent shirt dresses, and swimsuits received special attention. White, gray, and black dominated this collection and perfectly represented the event's topic - Carnival of Mirrors.

Among the 60,000 participants of the festival, there will always be those who are lazy or have no time, no desire to create from scratch the complex architecture of a festive costume. 

They wonder where to shop for Burning Man clothes or accessories. And most often, they turn to the giants of world trade - Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Shopify. After all, they can discover anything on these sites.

Top Profitable Holidays to Boost Print on Demand Business

If you own a print on demand biz, you should think about the possibilities of its development. If your competitors do not think of varying the range or adding new collections connected with the festival, you will remain a sought-after link among the market leaders. In addition, high-margin print on demand products have every chance to become the latest fashion breakthrough and go from festival mode to real life. Just think about it: people wear their suits once a year, which may not seem like a sustainable practice. That's why a young brand should declare its values, which will be the winning combination. 

In addition, you should analyze the best-selling print on demand products in 2022 - understand the interests of your audience and target them as a starting point in the sales funnel. You can create a set of Burning Man stickers for sale, which will remind you of the upcoming or past event. However, do not confine yourself to this: produce cases for phones, fridge magnets, flyers, mugs, and t-shirts with the symbolism of the festival. Suppose you specialize in home and lifestyle products. In that case, there are countless options: you can sell towels, tablecloths, kitchen utensils - in general, all that will be stocked with burners in anticipation of the meeting. How well this idea is, and can it blow up the market - share your thoughts in the comments.

But Burning Man does not allow the sale of goods or services!

Yes, that's right. As we mentioned earlier, the fest is not-for-profit, so you can't set up your mini-mall in the city and sell Burning Man merch there. But no, you can still do it if you clothe people for free or give them utensils without demanding anything in return. By the way, even this option can be pretty profitable in the long term: having received from you a free thing, the potential buyer will still be interested in your store and visit it. Of course, the main thing is that it should be optimized. If your biz has not yet accumulated many assets, you should apparently turn your trading differently. 

Utilize the intranet to push your products. Why not! After all, in the last two years, when the pandemic ate almost all of the physical presence of fitting rooms, commerce has been transformed into e-commerce. Yes, we're all used to it now, and shopping online is even more convenient than in person. That's why to focus on applying several effective sales strategies. Let's look at them in more detail. 

• Develop your sales with Instagram

Since the platform's running, its client base has soared to 1 billion. Most of them can also attend the festival - with your presence, you can increase brand awareness and engage more customers through Instagram. To do so, create your content strategy considering demographics, visitor behavior, demand, and purchase motivators. From these critical elements, we should start and then move on to branding and aesthetics. Your messages must be of high quality. For example, the shoe brand Allbirds knows that their potential customers love nature, so each photo contains some elements. 

In addition, you may get all the valuable information from your rivals - after getting acquainted with their offers, analyzing their accounts on social networks, and testing their sales, you can study a lot. 

• Explore Amazon

Amazon is the largest online sales channel for the e-commerce industry, with more than 1.9 million active sellers in highly competitive niches. But in most cases, they stick to the omnichannel trade. Since Shopify and Amazon are official partners, both marketplaces can be synchronized and work through the same software. If you have decided to dropship, you are apparently to go with DropZa. If you like printing on demand, you should choose PodZa. Both frameworks automate all business operations and centralize the administration of all popular channels.

By the way, Burning Man clothes on Amazon can become a popular destination. While there are hundreds of millions of items, there’s still room for niches like yours to earn more.

• Implement the best approaches on Shopify

One of the best strategies to attract a large number of customers is email marketing. The mailing list is still alive, so you shouldn't avoid hitting the target directly. You may also interact with Influencers, who can feed your audience the products they want and thereby scale your biz. Affiliate marketing, which we previously mentioned, helps keep afloat amidst the storm of changes.

Before the festival, you should actively develop social media and promote demand through targeted tactics. This will contribute to the scaling and its popularity among the residents of the temporary city. Then, all you have to do is try it.

Conclusion

This article introduced the reader to incredible freedom of thought and expression festivals. And although it's not profitable, your POD business has every chance of making money from this event. We broke down the main strategies for interacting with users and told them practical ways to attract them. This article has read how to pump up sales and become a top Burning Man shop.