Launch a Shopify phone case storefront

Find your niche

Prioritizing a specific niche – customers with shared needs and interests – is the next step. Start with eCommerce shoppers and trendy smartphone users. You will have to narrow this market into a competitive scope.

Research and develop an audience profile to align your phone case designs and brand with the most important customer needs – realistic costs, appropriate quality, relevant products, and engaging marketing content and store features.

Research factors such as age range, lifestyle, geographic location, spending habits, buying patterns, and so on – anything that can help develop a clear buyer persona. This research should give you resources and insights into linking your brand to a niche.

Create a business plan

Effective business plans should cover the following operational topics:

• Outline the main aspects of the business 
• Define the company style and image
• Develop an operational timeline
• List growth and sales objectives
• Plan production, logistics, and management
• Set up a marketing strategy
• Calculate a budget and finance plan

Depending on your business experience, education, or eCommerce knowledge, you might already have an idea of how to develop a business plan.

Create designs for your custom phone cases

You’ll want designs that stand out from the competition and engage your target audience and niche.

Develop phone case designs in three ways:

• Create Designs Yourself

You don’t need to be a skilled graphic designer to put a good idea into practice. Some experience and patience with Adobe design tools or similar free graphic design alternatives can offer all you need to create stylish designs.

• Work With Freelance Artists

Fivver, Upwork, Freelancer, and other freelance marketplaces are useful platforms for finding designers with competitive rates at multiple skill levels. In this case, you would partner for a commission which includes the rights to use the art as a product design.

• Use Your Audience

Many people who create an online store start out as content creators. Influencers can ask audience members for ideas or even encourage them to participate in the design process and commission their fan art.

Find a supplier

Selling high-quality phone cases on  Shopify will require partnering with a supplier that distributes protective and precisely designed products. You’ll need a secure, quality supplier with a reliable management system and competitive manufacturing costs.

Start a Shopify store using one of these online product fulfillment methods:

• Print-On-Demand Platforms

Print on Demand (POD) platforms specialize in managing a network of Print Providers that apply custom prints to a vast selection of high-quality merchandise, including apparel and phone cases.

POD merchants design custom products and sell them at a higher margin while the purchase covers the costs of production. Then, the Print Provider fulfills, packages, and delivers the order, limiting storage costs and overhead for the merchant.

The best print-on-demand services provide hands-on mockup generators for merchants to apply and edit unique designs on blank product templates. 

Printify has partnered with Shopify to create a print-on-demand app integration that automatically publishes products on the seller’s Shopify storefront.

• Dropshipping Suppliers

Dropshipping is organized similarly to POD – merchants sell products at a higher profit margin, the order payment covers production, and suppliers automate shipping on-demand to limit managing inventory. 

You will find a wider selection of phone cases with dropshipping, but at variable quality. Like POD, dropshipping can be operated exclusively online.

• Working With Manufacturers

For more freedom to create phone cases and take charge of the production, work with an independent manufacturer. Reaching out to suppliers without a third-party network can be harder with limited funds, but can result in loyal partnerships.

Working with manufacturers directly means that the seller is responsible for organizing logistics, managing inventory, tracking orders, and taking care of shipping and packaging. In short, independent management with higher investment costs and labor.

Open your Shopify store

Shopify is a very intuitive website builder. You don’t need to learn coding or have front-end design experience to build a modern-looking eCommerce website. Open a Shopify store by following this step-by-step guide.

Step 2 – Pick a domain name

It’s best to get a domain that matches your business name. Come up with a business name that fits your niche as a phone case brand, but also looks unique from your competitors. Find inspiration with the Shopify Business Name Generator and Printify’s Naming Guide.

Shopify provides a free domain for all websites. Merchants often prefer to purchase a tailored domain name that’s more attractive, memorable, or closer to the brand image. Buy a custom domain through Shopify or connect a purchased domain from a third party.

Step 4 – Select a store theme

Shopify offers both paid and free themes to give your store a preset layout. The platform currently has 12 free and over 100 paid themes in the Shopify Theme Store. 

We recommend that you choose a theme that matches the tech and phone case industry look and standards. Start small with free or simple themes to get to know what you need and what you can live without, and move on to advanced features as your store scales.

List and price your cases

Phone cases are a competitive market that fluctuates depending on your target audience, competitor prices, and the costs of store management and production. Balance affordable pricing with stable profit margins.

The simple way to calculate the price is by taking the production cost of each phone case plus taxes and fees per sale and combining that with a profit margin that can grow your Shopify store and cover monthly business expenses.

Market your online store

Launching a phone case business takes some patience and learning, but managing a store, in the long run, requires dedicated marketing and search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to building user-friendly web pages with responsive elements and website content with high-ranking search keywords. List high on search engines with Printify’s 8 ways to improve Shopify SEO for your online store.

Let’s briefly cover some eCommerce marketing types and strategies:

• Email marketing – create mailing subscriptions to inform customers about their orders, produce newsletters, and highlight products and marketing promotions.
• Social media – publish marketing content and interact with your customers to build brand awareness.
• Influencer marketing – partner with an online personality or influencer brand to promote your phone cases to their niche audience.

Provide excellent customer service

Encourage repeat purchases by helping the customer with transparent service and friendly return policies. Make sure to respond to inquiries and complaints, and help track customer orders.

Use aesthetically pleasing product images

Increase SEO by uploading high-quality product images. Learn how to take professional product photos or use graphic design tools to create realistic product mockups.

Stay on top of trends

Follow new trends to increase relevant keywords. Look for new designs and art movements to sell phone cases with modern styles.

Offer cases for a variety of phone models

Don’t stop at the newest iPhone and iPad cases. Cater to a larger audience by offering multiple variants for different popular phone models and options in your target audience’s price range.

Create a Printify account

Sign up to Printify for free – fill in your business details and billing information. Log in to your account and navigate to the left-hand dashboard. There, you’ll see pages for your store, product catalog, saved products, orders, payment wallet, and store settings.

Design your phone cases

Navigate to the Printify Catalog and filter all case accessories by selecting the Phone Cases tag under the Accessories category. Pick a phone case, select a Print Provider, and upload your designs using Printify’s Mockup Generator software.

Connect to Shopify

You can install Printify through the Shopify App Store or click My new store on the top of your Printify account dashboard and select Add a new store from the menu. Pick Shopify as your sales channel and connect. Follow instructions to finish the integration.

Publish and start selling

Go to your saved products in the My products menu. Select the phone cases you want displayed on your online store and click to publish them as listings. Set a price, edit any product tags and photos, and you’re ready to start selling phone cases on Shopify.