For years my wife encouraged me to commercialise my art and designs, starting with the car drawings on this site. A few years back I printed a couple of them on T-shirts and I was quietly impressed with the result. Nobody stopped me in the street to comment. That felt telling, but it didn’t stop her from chipping away. I’d rather began to think that this was a method of making me an employee of hers and generate a bit more dosh.
My resistance came down to two things: the work involved and pride. Connecting a garment site to a print‑on‑demand service used to be fiddly. Many print‑on‑demand products felt low quality and, to get something decent, the final price became uncompetitive once you added shipping and taxes. That put me off.
Everything changed while I procrastinated. Platforms like Shopify have simplified getting an online retail presence. Print‑on‑demand has matured. Integrations are straightforward and product quality has improved. Subscriptions and volume pricing now make it possible to offer competitive price points and still earn a modest margin.
Designs are no longer limited to shirts. You can print on mugs, pens, large framed prints, and more. AI tools make branding and mock-ups fast and surprisingly effective. My AI collaborator helped me mock up a virtual photoshoot for garments on models. Yes, the word “orange” was misspelled on a ‘Clockwork Orange’ and the AI reinterpreted some of my designs, but hey, we didn’t exists 48 hours ago. The mood shots were brilliant. A fox walking past a “Dissident” poster and a mock up of a bohemian Mayfair apartment felt exactly like the world I wanted to make, maybe minus the leopard on the sofa.
Yesterday I stopped dragging my heels. Praesentia Limited was born. Our tagline is defy routine, define presence. It needs polishing but it’s real now.
Visit the shop: https://praesentialimited.myshopify.com/
If anything sells I will be motivated to create more products. Until then I’m enjoying the strange satisfaction of having joined the ranks of retail mogul.
