Contrado is an aspirational fashion, home, and lifestyle brand; together with talented designers we've been turning their creative visions into high quality products, since 2002. All our products are handmade to order. Our facility encompasses all our printing, garment sewing and product manufacturing teams; this makes us a unique resource for makers and means your orders are produced to an excellent standard, usually within a couple of days. Our design, product development, customer service, marketing and production teams are all under one roof, so it’s quick and easy for us to communicate and keep you informed about what’s going on.
Our online platform showcases our product range of well over 200 products and this is where shoppers and collectors will discover your brand and artwork. You have complete control over the store build and product design process, whilst receiving advice and instruction from our team.
We already distribute internationally, reach a global market, and have nine language territories to sell your work. We curate our marketplace to ensure visitors get the best designs and artwork and so you don’t feel like a drop in the ocean.
You design your products online and build your own branded online store. We help you market your collections and we handle payments through our checkout. We then produce and ship your designs; most products are ready to ship directly to your customers within 48 hours.
Fill out the form on this page to create your account. You’ll get a verification email and once you verify your account, you’re ready to go!
We pay our artists through PayPal, within 14 days of successful delivery of an order.
The copyright to your intellectual property remains yours. You must be the originator of any image you upload to Contrado. If you use an image you do not own the copyright of, Contrado reserves the right to remove your products & stores.
When you make a sale through your Contrado store,
you'll earn at least 20% of the ex VAT sale price. You set the price,
so if you charge a little more, you'll earn a higher percentage of
the sale price. You
will also earn another 1% commission for every 25 products with
descriptions that achieve a green score in overall content quality,
up to a maximum of 25%.
How
you can increase your commission:
If
you use our content quality checker you will be able to receive
rewards. To determine if you have a good score, you must ensure that
the metre graphic points to green. Once you achieve a green score you
will unlock the following benefits. Firstly, you will receive 1%
extra commission for every 25 product descriptions with a green
score, up to 25%. You also get 1 more product to design. And lastly,
your products will be indexed on Google and other search engines,
which would not be the case normally.
In short, yes. We do run promotions either temporarily or permanently on a product so it's sold for a lower price, which usually results in a higher amount of sales. This will result in a slightly lower commission, but should also increase your sales, so it won't massively impact your total profit.
Yes of course, if you prefer to drive traffic and sales through an alternative store front, we'd love to help. We can ship in bulk to you or directly to your customer.
Yes, as a seller you get exclusive access to our wholesale discounts. If you want to sell at an event or want to get the best price per unit and carry stock; our wholesale system will help.
Yes, we have a non-exclusive licence agreement with our creatives, which means you’re free to use your work elsewhere.
We offer a broad range of support to our creatives. We understand every artist and each brand is different; we have many experts on hands to offer advice tailored to your approach. Whether you want to drive sales online, take your products to markets and exhibitions, or offer one-off bespoke pieces for your client base: we’re here to help you maximise your success.
Of course! Our creatives receive between 20% and 40% discount on most of their orders, depending on which products they are ordering and how many.
One of the great assets you get with us is our ability to work quickly and efficiently. All our manufacturing is in one place and that means no sending of your work to 3rd parties, no supply chain delays, and a far higher ability to maintain QC standards. It also means we can manage our own workflow well. Generally, our products are made and dispatched within a couple of days.
Creatives of all levels can sign up for a seller account and start a store with Contrado, we want to support you no matter where you are on your journey. If your store is public, you can share and sell through your storefront.
Our marketplace is curated, and we review and add new stores regularly based on the quality of designs and content. As we have so many new stores and stores under development, you must have 20 products or more in your store for your products to appear in our marketplace.
Here you can add and edit your personal and business details.
‘Fix Design’ will tell you what you need to do to make a design ready for sale. If you aren’t sure why your design has been stopped by our automatic checks, this is the first place to look.
For further personalisation, our 'Branding' tab offers the opportunity to change your brand name and logo, as well as add a thank you message.
We make over 200 products, so you’re spoilt for choice. These choices need careful consideration.
Our online design interface gives you a huge amount of control over the product design, which means you can design more freely.
Head to 'my stores' to create edit your store front.
The product page is a very important page, it is often where customers decide to make a purchase. You can control the price, title, description and product options here.
Initially you will be limited to just 20 products in your store. If you reach your product limit and want to add more products, make sure you add descriptions which hit the content quality requirements.
Our Product Mockup Generator streamlines designing for you. After you’ve designed a product to add to your store, you’ll get to a page where you can set pricing, write product descriptions and add your design to any of our other 450+ products. Simply click ‘Add’ for the products you’d like to add and they will instantly be generated with the same design.
After you add a product, click ‘Review’ to edit the design. Here, you can select or change the background colour, pattern repeat style, and change the size of your design. You can also view each panel of the product if it has multiple panels. When you’re finished, just click ‘Confirm Design’ and it will be added to your store.
By using our Product Mockup Generator, you can design hundreds of products at once and add them to a collection in your store.
To start, head to the 'Limited Edition' tab in your account. You can start by customising the Certificate of Authenticity with your signature. A rendering of the limited edition product will automatically add to the left side of the certificate.
Then click 'Product Pricing' to access your bulk product price editor. Here, you can activate or deactivate the limited edition feature for any products in your Contrado store. As you activate it, you'll be able to set the limited edition price and quantity. Then, you can review the Certificate and finish activating your product. In 'Product Pricing' you'll be able to monitor the quantity of your limited edition products, and it will automatically update every time you make a sale.
Initially, the number of products you can design is limited. This is due to our standard of quality not quantity. You will receive an extra product for every product description with a green score.
Before posting some products for sale, you’ll need to check, tweak and confirm designs for each size option.
Yes,
with most of our products you can choose whether you want to upload
your own label or have no label at all, rather than have the Contrado
label. To set up your brand name and logo, visit our branding
section.
You can even create a personalised thank you message for further
branding.
Please
be aware that the image you upload for your label will apply to the
whole product and all of its options. Due to this we would advise not
including information like sizing on your label image.
Our system checks your products' designs when you add them to your store. If it’s not ready for sale, check the ‘Fix Design’ tab to find out why. Below are a few common issues:
If your design doesn’t fully cover the print template, then you will need to correct this. If you want to leave the background of a section white, set the background colour to #ffffff
If you haven’t designed a section, your will need to complete the design, again, set the background colour to #ffffff if you want a blank white section.
If any of the images you upload are not high enough quality to print at the size you’ve specified, then you’ll need to resize the image or upload a larger file.
Find all the details on design errors here.
Our pattern design system makes it easy for you to upload a single tile and create seamless patterns across fabrics and other products. Your customers can then choose the fabric type, set the size and purchase from you.
1%
extra commission for every 25 product descriptions with a green
score on the meter, up to 25%. 1
more product to design Products
indexed on Google and other search engines.(They
are not indexed automatically.) The
titles and descriptions throughout your Contrado store are really
important, as they are read, not just by potential customers but also
by the search engines. Please note: Your products will require a
green score in the descriptions to be indexed and will not be indexed
in search engines automatically. The search engines 'robots' will
crawl and read your pages to work out if the content is worthy of
listing in their search results. You need to help your store be
discovered by customers searching to buy products. You do that by
writing good titles and copy.
This
section will help you be a copywriting wizard. Content quality Look for a green light next to your product. Our traffic light system
analyses your content for grammar, spelling, readability, active voice,
duplicate content, title, and description quality. If you’ve got a red
or yellow light, review these elements of your content. Once you get a
green light, keep going! Use keywords in your product title Organize your titles with the product name first, then the description. This is the best way to optimise your sales. For example: Silk Cushion Geometric Lines. Have a bit of fun with the description and let your customers know how unique your product is. Search engines, like Google, look for keywords and key phrases on web-pages. If you want customers to find your bomber jacket you need to include a keyword like ‘bomber jacket’ in the product title and description. Key phrases are better than keywords. Using strings of descriptive keywords will help your product be found. In the above example, ‘silk cushion’ will get your page higher up the results than ‘cushion’ and ‘silk cushion floral’ is even better. Different products need different copy It sounds obvious but don’t copy and paste. Search engines will
ignore sites which have many pages with the same words duplicated. This
means any descriptions that have been borrowed from other product pages
(even your own) will flag up as duplicated copy. The simple solution is
to write unique descriptions for each product, while this seems
time-consuming, it can really help sales. Copywriting can be a joy -
find your creative urge, it's your baby, so tell people how the product
is worthy with your design. Take it in stages you’ll quickly get it.
Boil it down, polish it, and go back and revise again. The best person
to tell the world about your designs is you, so make the effort here -
it is worth it. Content volume matters Not too much, not too little. You have about 70-150 words to sell your product. Search engines will skip your page if there isn’t enough copy to satisfy it so utilise all your space. Make sure to describe the product features, your design, the look & feel of the product if you’ve sampled it, and why a customer should buy your product over another. Don’t sell yourself short; you’ve got a quality product with a quality design. All you have to do is tell the world! Use your own voice These are your products and your store: you are the best person to
speak about your work. Use your natural tone of voice but don’t use
slang or nonsense words. Sentences with less than 20 words are
considered the most readable. Be confident, descriptive, and
informative. Utilise active voice instead of passive. Don’t mention any
contact information or website links. Triple check your spelling and
grammar. Mistakes are the easiest way to lose a sale. Try some role-play Imagine you are a customer searching for your product. What would you
search in Google to find it? This role playing is the best way to think
of appropriate key terms. Don’t go too crazy You only need two to tango. Only use two key terms per product page,
make sure they are relevant to the product. Key terms should appear in
the descriptions as well as the title. They only need to appear once or
twice, so don’t stuff the descriptions with the same terms, and take
care to write as naturally as you can. One key term is too lonely and
three’s a crowd.
For full information about wholesale accounts see here.
As a Contrado Creative you get access to our exclusive wholesale pricing. It’s all automated and means you can order you own pieces for discounted prices, whether you’re looking for a few samples to take to a photoshoot; supplying a client or retailer; or taking your products to sell at a market, pop up or exhibition.
Items such as large furniture and suitcases do not count towards the above tiers, they are discounted at a flat rate due to the cost of shipping. You’ll receive 20% discount on an order of single and multiple items. You can contact us for a full list of these.
The best person to tell the world about your artwork is you. We promote our artists through many digital marketing channels, SEO, PPC, social, influencers and PR. There are many channels available through which you can spread the word about your store and sell your products:
Integrating your Contrado store with your Facebook and Instagram accounts enables you to create a section on your profile where customers can shop your products and be directed to your Contrado store. You will also be able to tag products in photos so that your followers can shop right from your posts.
To get started, you will need to have a Facebook Business Page with a shop created, which you can do from your personal Facebook account. If you do not already have a Facebook Business Page set up, you can easily create one by clicking the plus button at the top of the home page. Then click "Page". This will bring you to your new page where you can enter information about your business.
To integrate your Contrado store, follow these steps on desktop:
In your Contrado account, navigate to the "My Stores" section and click "Design Product"
Click "Facebook & Instagram Integration" on the right side of the screen. This will generate a pop-up with an XML file link, which you can copy to your clipboard.
On your Facebook Business Page, click "Go to Business Suite." Alternatively, you can use the go to business.facebook.com to enter the Business Suite.
Click the "Commerce" button on the left to open the Commerce Manager.
In the Commerce Manager on Facebook, click on your store’s catalogue. If you don’t already have a catalogue, you can click on “Add Catalogue” and follow the instructions on screen to create one.
In the "Catalogue" box, click on "Items", then "Add Items".
On the next page, click "Data feed" and the next button.
Then click "Scheduled feed" and next. On this page, you will be able to paste the XML file link under where it says "Enter URL". Follow the rest of the on-screen instructions to integrate your account.
The digital preview in the design interface is a fantastic tool to get an impression of how your product will come out. However, they are not exact representations of the finished piece and the product may vary slightly.
Please ensure the artwork you upload is as you want it to print. Any glitches or errors in your file may not but picked up when you print your product or a customer orders it. Designers are responsible for checking the artwork they upload to the products they design.
We try our best to reflect these variations in our product preview so that customers have the best idea of how the finished product will look and we always strive to achieve colours most true to your artwork. Materials of particular note that will affect the colours of your print are:
Please also read important information on colour variations here.
If you’re unsure which fabrics to choose, or offer for a product, it’s highly recommended that before ordering any full products that you order samples of your artwork on these fabrics.
Many exciting and beautiful things. We're planning to maintain our recent, rapid growth and broaden our range of services and products. The best is yet to come!
If you have any further questions, which aren't answered by this guide, then please don't hesitate to get in touch with Artist Relations:
You can also speak with our customer service team on live chat on this website. Find our opening times through the contact page.