Essential Items for Starting a Sticker Shop

Lisa shares essential items for starting a successful sticker shop based on her six years of experience.

### Essential Supplies for Starting a Successful Sticker Shop
* 🎨 Lisa shares her experience of starting a sticker shop at 17 and emphasizes the **importance of finding quality items at low costs**.
* 📝 The first essential item is sticker paper; she started with **inexpensive labels costing around $15 for 100 sheets**, but later upgraded to **weatherproof matte sticker paper**, which is favored in the sticker community.
* 🖨 For printing, Lisa recommends the Canon Pro 100 printer, although it’s discontinued, and suggests the Canon Pixma line for color accuracy, stating that "**inkjet prints color a lot better than a laser printer**."
* ✂ A sticker cutter is also necessary, with Lisa advocating for the Silhouette Portrait as a **cost-effective option**, highlighting that it requires some learning but is **easy to use once mastered**.
* 📦 Packaging is crucial, and she recommends using **cellophane bags with adhesive seals** to protect stickers during shipping, along with business cards from Vistaprint that **double as thank-you cards**.
* 📬 For mailing, Lisa discusses options like rigid cardboard mailers and bubble mailers, noting that while **custom packaging can be fun and on-brand**, it can also be **quite expensive for beginners**.
* 🔗 Lisa encourages viewers to check the video description for links to the **recommended products** and invites questions about running a sticker shop in the comments.

hey everyone, it's Lisa. Welcome back to our channel. Today, I'm going to be sharing with you the five must-have items you need to start a sticker shop. I started my sticker shop when I was 17 in high school, and I remember spending hours searching and googling the internet trying to find all the items to start a sticker business for the lowest cost possible. So, hopefully, with my knowledge of running a sticker shop for the past six years, I can share with you where to find the highest quality items for the lowest cost possible. So, let's go ahead and get into this video. So, you can't start a sticker shop without sticker paper. I originally started my sticker shop using the cheapest labels from online labels. I believe it was around $15 for a pack of 100 sheets of sticker paper, and that's what I used my whole first year of running a sticker business. And while it was really inexpensive, the quality was not the best. So, after a year, I decided to upgrade, and I switched over to sheet labels, spectacle matte sticker.

paper, which was really good for printing colored stickers, but it wasn't great for making foiled stickers. So, once we got into foiled stickers, we switched over to what we currently use, and that is the online labels weatherproof matte sticker paper. It's a little pricey, but it's so worth it in my opinion. It is our customer's favorite sticker paper, my personal favorite sticker paper to work with, and it's a pretty common paper used in the sticker community. You might have heard it being called buttery premium matte or also unicorn sticker paper. We personally call it premium matte sticker paper, but it does have a whole bunch of names. If you're just starting out and you have no idea which sticker paper you want to use, you can actually order free samples from both online labels and sheet labels, and you can try for yourself to see which sticker paper you like the best and what works well with your printer. Speaking of printers, we get this question all the time, and that is what printer do you use. A lot of shops don't like disclosing what

printer they use, and I totally understand and respect that. Um, it is sort of a trade secret, your secret sauce, so I totally get why um, some shops don't like to share which printer they use. We personally use the Canon Pro 100. We use a few of them, and unfortunately, I do think they are discontinued, the exact model. But if we were forced to pick a new printer to use today, I would still stick with the Canon Pixma line. I feel like they have the best inkjet printers, and in my opinion, the color payoff is always really good and pretty accurate to what shows up on the computer monitor. Another question we get all the time is whether we recommend using an inkjet or a laser printer. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of the two of them, if you're printing a lot of color, definitely go with an inkjet, in my opinion. I think an inkjet prints color a lot better than a laser printer does, and ink cartridges, which you can buy a third party or off-brand, is a lot

cheaper than buying genuine, authentic toner. So, that is definitely something to keep in mind. But if you are making foiled stickers, you will definitely need a laser printer. And if you want to learn how to make foiled stickers, you can actually sign up for our Flawless Foiling course. I'll have it linked in the description. And we basically cover how to make foiled stickers from start to finish, with troubleshooting tips at every single step of the way. Like I said earlier, ink cartridges are pretty inexpensive. You can buy them third-party or off-brand from Amazon for a lot cheaper than the genuine, authentic ink cartridges. You can even go a step further and refill your own ink tanks, and that is what we currently do. It's our little trade secret, so I won't go into too much detail about where we get our inks from, but I'm sure you can find plenty of tutorials on YouTube on how to refill your own inks. Next up, you'll need a sticker cutter, and we use the

silhouette portraits. It's probably the cheapest on the market, in my opinion. There is definitely a learning curve, which I'm sure with any cutting machine, there's going to be a little bit of a learning curve. But once you get the hang of it, it's really easy to use. And I'd say the biggest trick is to have good lighting. Our cutting station is stacked with eight of these silhouette portraits, and we like sharing our cutting station going on Instagram. And sometimes, it'll end up on the wrong side of reels, and a lot of people will come for our next saying, Why don't you just get a plotter or a wide format printer and cutter? Because it kind of seems like a waste of time to use so many machines. And first of all, if we could, we would. But we make foiled stickers, which require printing from both an inkjet and a laser printer. So, a plotter doesn't necessarily work for us. But if you are making unfoiled stickers, a plotter is definitely something to look into if you are.

making a high volume amount of stickers, but if you're just starting out, a silhouette portrait works just fine. Lastly, you'll need to consider packaging, and there are quite a few things under packaging that I wanted to talk about. The first one being cellophane bags. Since you are shipping paper, you want to make sure your stickers get to your customer safely and that there isn't any water damage. So, a great way to prevent that is using cellophane bags, particularly the ones that have an adhesive seal so you can close the bag. We get our cello bags from Paper Mart because they have a pretty good discount if you order in bulk. But I also really like these bags from Clear Bags because they have the adhesive on the bag rather than the flap. So, it offers kind of a better user experience because the adhesive is not going to accidentally stick on the stickers when they are taking the stickers out of the bag. But I will say that the bags with the adhesive on the bag are a little bit more expensive than

say just the normal bags that we get from Paper Mart. The next item you want to consider buying is some business cards. I'm sure you all know how a business card works. It basically just helps your customer find you on social media. We order ours from Vistaprint and actually doubles as a thank-you card, and it helps keep our stickers flat while in transit. Lastly, for packaging, is what you're going to mail your stickers in. You can pick between a rigid cardboard mailer, which prevents your stickers from accidentally bending, a bubble mailer. These are extremely lightweight, so it could actually save you some shipping costs, but they are bendier, which is why we have those thank-you cards to help keep the package flat. We still use bubble mailers for larger orders, but for the most part, we use a custom-made pink foldable envelope. These are really fun to make because we got to mock up the shape and the design of them, and they turned out so cute and they were so on-brand, but they were really expensive too.

make and we had them shipped from overseas, so shipping alone cost over a grand for 10,000 of these. So, I really wouldn't recommend this level of custom packaging when you're just starting out. We only just recently switched over to these a few months ago. So, those are the five must-have items you need for starting a sticker shop. I'll have everything that I mentioned in this video linked in the description for you to go and check out. And if you found this video helpful, make sure to hit that like button so we know to make more sticker shop content. And if you have any questions regarding running a sticker shop, feel free to leave it in the comments below. I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.

WHAT YOU NEED TO START A STICKER BUSINESS • How I Started My Sticker Shop On A Budget 2022

Sticker Guru

Sticker paper is essential for a sticker shop, with the speaker starting with inexpensive labels and eventually upgrading to weatherproof matte sticker paper.

The weatherproof matte sticker paper, also known as buttery premium matte or unicorn sticker paper, is the speaker's and customers' favorite.

Free samples from online labels and sheet labels are available for those unsure about which sticker paper to use.

The speaker understands the reluctance of shops to share their printer secrets and personally uses the Canon Pro 100, despite its discontinuation.

They recommend the Canon Pixma line for its excellent color payoff and accuracy.

For color printing, they advise using an inkjet printer, while a laser printer is necessary for foiled stickers.

Starting a Sticker Business: Tools and Packaging

Silhouette portraits are an affordable cutting machine with a learning curve, ideal for beginners making stickers.

The need for both an inkjet and laser printer for foiled stickers makes a plotter less suitable for high-volume production.

Packaging is crucial, and cellophane bags with adhesive seals are recommended for safe shipping, with bulk discounts available from suppliers like Paper Mart and Clear Bags.

Essential Packaging Items for Your Business

Normal bags from Paper Mart are a practical choice for packaging.

Business cards from Vistaprint serve dual purposes as thank-you cards and keeping stickers flat during transit.

For mailing stickers, a rigid cardboard mailer prevents bending, while bubble mailers save on shipping costs but are bendier; custom-made pink foldable envelopes offer a fun and on-brand packaging option, though they are expensive.

Custom packaging for a sticker shop can be expensive, with shipping costs exceeding a grand for 10,000 units.

The speaker recently switched to custom packaging and recommends against it for those just starting out.

The video offers a list of five essential items for starting a sticker shop, with links provided in the description.