Akil Kurji Is Disrupting The Print On Demand Industry

Akil Kurji is known to many as the American who took over and brought customized silicone wristband craze to the country back in 2012 with his former company PMGOA. 

Since 2012, Akil has exited that company and turned his sights on innovating and disrupting the Print On Demand industry, which some would say is a very smart move considering the industry globally is forecast to reach $821 billion by 2022.

With COVID-19 hitting storefront retailers worldwide, and especially here in America hard, the digital on-demand space has seen a massive increase in consumers, and therefore more and more people and companies have turned to Print On Demand as an excellent way to monetize their audience.

Whether you have a witty t-shirt idea, have a band, or want to create your own fashion line of products, Print On Demand sites and platforms allow you to create your designs online, set up a shop and get a link to share and sell without ever owning inventory or managing a shipment; It’s basically passive income. For example, let’s say I pay $10 for a t-shirt with my custom design on it. In my digital store, I list that same t-shirt for $25. When a customer buys this t-shirt, the order is sent to the On-Demand printing partner who then prints the t-shirt and ships it to your customer, earning you a $15 profit to keep.

Well, now enter in Akil’s new Print On Demand platform, Swagify, which is literally the first of its kind to allow users to choose their vendors after an order is placed. For example, with other platforms, when a user receives an order from a consumer and their vendor is out of inventory, then they’re stuck in a situation where they have to wait for inventory to arrive – risking the customer backing out of the order or creating negative feedback/reviews… a customer service nightmare. However, with Swagify, users can choose a secondary or tertiary vendor in case prices to go up, items are out of stock, or the location of the product isn’t close enough to their customers. 

On this ground-breaking platform idea, Akil tells Disrupt Magazine exclusively, “I come from the promotional product industry so I understand the frustration distributors go through when trying to fulfill and source products. It isn’t the easiest task having to manually search for vendors, call to check stock, and then follow up to make sure orders are being fulfilled on time. With Swagify, we enable distributors as well as individuals to sell products online and choose their vendors through our technology. The technology in Swagify allows users to check stock, choose the lowest price, and track their consumers’ orders up until delivery. It’s a revolutionary system that hasn’t been tapped into, and Swagify will be the world’s first application that allows these services. With the infrastructure I built doing promotional products, I knew I’d be able to leverage my knowledge and facility to rapidly grow a print on demand business. “

With Swagify.com set to launch shortly, Akil is getting things ready with his production facility in Texas and has actually been hiring and giving more jobs to those in need during the pandemic. “We already have 3,000+ people ready to begin using the software upon ‘Go Live.’ For 2021, we’re forecasting a massive shift in the industry of fulfillment as Swagify is going to offer one of a kind features that users won’t be able to find anywhere else.”

The Print On Demand industry is only growing, and we are sure more distributions, innovations and new businesses will emerge in the coming months and years.