Merch store

We have a merch store where our community can purchase high quality PostHog-branded merch. As we have a limited number of Shopify admins on our current plan, message Charles in the #team-people-and-ops channel if you need any help sending out merch or gift cards, as you probably won't be able to do it yourself.

How do we think about merch?

We care about:

• Quality - our merch must be something you would personally want to wear or use
• Sustainability - our merch shouldn't be something that's never used or made in an unsustainable way
• Shippability - we should do our best to ensure anyone in our community anywhere in the world can receive merch easily

How do we manufacture merch?

We use Printfection to manufacture and store our merch - request access from the Marketing team if required. Anyone can suggest a product for us to sell or give away.

1. The Marketing team ultimately decide on what items we wish to sell or give away (including how many and sizes)
2. Lottie provide assets to produce and order these items in to stock

How do we ship merch?

Shipping is also done through Printfection - they can ship to over 200 territories worldwide:

• When orders come in from our Shopify store they will automatically be shipped to the people who order them via Printfection
• If you want to ship merch for an event or as part of a giveaway, create a one-off campaign

How do we sell merch?

We sell it through our merch store store on Shopify - request access to our admin portal from Marketing team if required.

How do we give away merch for free?

Individuals

Create a gift card in Shopify admin. You can either copy the code, or create a 'new customer' and send them the code directly. For contributions we tend to do $50, with no expiration date.

Alternatively, if you want to send them a specific product via Printfection, you can create a 'New Order' under this campaign.

YC Deal

You can find instructions for this on the dedicated YC Deal page.

Events

Follow Printfection's instructions on creating a giveaway campaign for this.

How are Prinfection and Shopify connected?

This uses a custom Shopify app using these instructions. It leverages product metafields to send product/variant info to Printfection.

Here's the Printfection collection (login requried) linked to our Shopify store where available products can be managed.

How do I add a new product to Shopify?

If you have created a new product in Printfection, adding it to Shopify is quite straightforward but a little nuanced - and very important to get right.

If the product has variants (like sizing, color options):

1. On Printfection in the Merch store collection, click Items and make sure the item is added to the campaign.
2. Once added, click to the details and copy the Item ID.
3. In Shopify, add the product (Products -→ Add product) and add product details
4. Add the Item ID from Printfection to the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) field in Shopify (under Inventory)
5. Scroll to the bottom and look for Product metafields and Variant metafields.
6. In Product subtitle, add a short description. This will appear on the merch store collection page with the title and price. (The full product description only appears when viewing product details.)
7. For CampaignID, enter 301365 which is the ID of the Merch store collection campaign ID in Printfection.
8. If the item has variants (eg: multiple sizes, color options)...
9. Add the relevant variant (eg: Size)
10. In Printfection, when viewing the item details, look for Size breakdown which will have a list of sizes and a Size ID field for each.
11. In Shopify, click into a variant.
12. Make sure the SKU is entered same as above
13. Scroll to bottom and make sure the CampaignID is set to 301365
14. Copy/paste the SizeID from Printfection for the applicable size`
15. Set the variant's inventory to match
16. Make sure the product is set to Active

Note: Because of how PostHog.com is built, product changes will only appear the next time the site is built. (Merging any PR will do this, but will take up to 45 minutes to be live.)

Troubleshooting customer orders

Sometimes customers get in touch with us because their order hasn't arrived. There are a couple of things you can do:

1. Log into Shopify and check that an order was actually created for them. If it was, and it has shown as dispatched, use your judgement to determine whether it is probably lost in the post. Cancel that order and issue them a new gift card for the value of that order so they can place it again.
2. Sometimes the Zap connecting Printfection to Shopify fails, usually because the customer hasn't entered their address details completely (e.g. no postal/zip code). In this case, cancel their order in Shopify and ask them to place it again with full address details.

If for some reason their second order attempt doesn't make it through, refund their money and apologetically let them know that unfortunately our supplier is having issues shipping to their address. It's better to stop the back-and-forth at that point, rather than having a frustrated customer placing multiple orders that don't work. We aren't an e-commerce business, so ensuring a flawless merch store experience for a handful of edge case orders is not a priority!

If the customer was given a merch code to thank them for submitting a PR, you can offer to make a donation on their behalf for the equivalent amount to a company of their choice on Open Collective instead.

Legacy setups

We have integrations with many other providers from Printify to Printful and Gelato. For the most part you can ignore anything that references these as these are legacy settings from previous fulfillment channels that are no longer used.