Creator Studio is the global, on-demand printing service for the modern merchandising industry, making merch more responsible, cost-effective, and frictionless.
Creator Studio is a part of H&M Group and was launched in late 2021. Our platform offers creators, artists, labels, and licensees an end-to-end solution for merchandise printing and fulfilment. We take care of our customers’ merchandise from fibre to end-consumer and once integrated with a creator’s ecommerce, the platform handles everything from sourcing to printing to global last-mile delivery – meaning users can create and sell bespoke items with minimal fuss.
Printing merch on demand means a reduced risk of overproduction compared to traditional bulk purchases. All our garments are made with 100% organic cotton or with recycled polyester, whilst we also use water-based inks which are less harmful to the environment than conventional screen printing inks.
How did you come up with the idea for Creator Studio?
Merch has become fashion and fashion is culture. The H&M Group sees massive potential to expand into the merch space as print-on-demand and direct-to-garment printing is a relatively young but fast-evolving industry. Yet whilst the global merch industry is worth 350 bn pounds per year, less than 1% of that is print on demand.
The technology for digital printing is advancing rapidly and, by combining the latest tech with H&M Group’s 75 years of fashion expertise, we see that we can create on demand merch with all its benefits without compromising on quality and global consistency and challenge the traditional merch industry.
What makes Creator Studio unique is that we offer the integrated tech solution, work with a thoroughly vetted selection of printing hubs across the globe and have our own dedicated clothing range, True Blanks, that is optimised for digital printing.
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How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
We are effectively a startup within the H&M Group and in the last two and a half years, we have gone from an initial idea in a powerpoint presentation to a fully functioning company with customers such as Disney and Difuzed – some of the biggest merch-sellers in the world.
What can we hope to see from Creator Studio in the future?
We are only getting started and the merch universe is huge. We want to drive change in the industry, and to be the company that others look to as the benchmark for creativity and responsibility.
We want Creator Studio to not only keep up with change, but be the very reason for it. We need to adapt to changing technology advancements, and we want to ensure that we keep innovating and responding to these developments. We are already working with AR technology to help our customers create engaging experiences where their fans can create original pieces of clothing using AR and there is so much more to be done in the hybrid space between the real and digital world.
For example, an increasing number of artists are performing shows in the digital space, and this brings massive possibilities both to further connect with the online audience through merchandise but also to explore digital merchandise for avatars and online characters.
As everyone is a creator today, ultimately our dream is to create a global platform that can be used by anyone looking to personalise merchandise for themselves or customers and fans alike. This is just the beginning!
