If you have a print on demand store, you almost certainly have t-shirts in it. That is the right call — custom t-shirts are the highest-volume product in POD for a reason. But summer creates a specific set of demand spikes in other categories that most sellers leave entirely untouched, simply because they are focused on expanding their apparel range and not looking sideways at what else buyers are actively searching for.
These are not replacements. They are additions — product categories that have a natural summer tailwind, buyers actively seeking them out, and far fewer POD sellers competing for that traffic. Adding two or three of them to your catalogue now means capturing a layer of summer revenue that is sitting there waiting.
- Drinkware peaks in summer in a way apparel doesn't — buyers have a specific functional need (festival, camping, beach) and purchase with intent rather than browsing.
- Canvas tote bags have a summer use case that drives active search: the beach bag, the market bag, the holiday bag. Buyers look for these specifically in June to August.
- Custom hats are the most under-indexed POD product relative to actual summer demand — and they attract group purchases (stag dos, sports teams) that apparel listings rarely capture.
- The summer gifting calendar — graduation, weddings, birthdays — drives higher average order values than everyday self-purchase and rewards personalised products.
- Phone cases see a real summer spike because people are outside more, their phones are more visible, and the POD competition in this category is thin.
- Summer's lower ad competition means organic content and new listings rank faster — the best time to add a new product category is now, before Q4 demand picks up.
Drinkware: buyers come looking for it
Custom mugs and insulated tumblers are year-round sellers, but summer creates a demand spike that most apparel-focused stores miss. People are actively looking for water bottles for festivals, tumblers for the beach, travel mugs for camping trips. The purchase intent is specific and functional — they know they want one, they are searching for one they like, and they buy when they find it. That is a fundamentally different conversion dynamic from a buyer who browses a t-shirt and maybe adds to cart.
The graduation window amplifies this further. May to July is peak gifting season for people finishing school or university, and custom mugs are one of the most consistently gifted products in that context. A buyer shopping for a graduation gift is not comparing twelve options — they are finding something that feels right and completing the purchase. If drinkware is not in your catalogue, you are invisible to all of that intent.
Canvas tote bags: actively searched in summer
A canvas tote bag has a specific summer use case — the beach bag, the farmers market bag, the holiday carry-all — that drives active search in June to August. Buyers are not stumbling across tote bags while browsing; they are going somewhere and searching for one they want to take.
The discovery dynamic also works in your favour. Tote bags are visible products — someone at a market with a well-designed bag is a walking advertisement. The search that follows is high-intent and lands on well-optimised listings. In summer, these bags are out in the world more than at any other time of year, which means your SEO investment in tote listings pays higher dividends between June and August than it does in January. This is a category where ranking now has immediate commercial value.
Hats: the group purchase most sellers never capture
Custom hats — caps, bucket hats, visors — are consistently underrepresented in most POD catalogues, despite clear summer demand. Part of this is habit: sellers default to expanding their apparel range rather than branching into accessories. Part of it is a perception that hats are harder to design for. Neither is accurate. A single embroidered logo or minimal front-panel design is exactly what buyers want, and it is less complex to produce than a full t-shirt graphic.
The more important miss is the purchase dynamic. Hats attract group orders in a way individual apparel listings rarely do: a stag party buying ten matching caps, a sports team ordering for a tournament, a company buying event merchandise. Ten hats in a single order is worth more than ten individual t-shirt sales, with less marketing effort to get there. Summer is when these group occasions peak — adding hats to your catalogue now means you are available when those buyers come looking.
Custom tote bags and mugs — two of summer's strongest additions
Design custom tote bags and mugs with Gelato — no minimum order, fast delivery worldwide, and a product range built for the summer gifting season. Connect your store and both are live in minutes.
Shop now →The summer gifting calendar: three occasions that reward personalisation
Summer is the peak season for three of the year's highest-value gifting moments: graduation (May to July), weddings (June to August), and the dense cluster of summer birthdays that most sellers ignore as a distinct category.
What makes these occasions commercially distinct is that the buyer has already decided to spend. They are not browsing to see if something catches their eye — they have a person, an occasion, and a budget. Personalised products — a mug with a graduation year, a custom print for a wedding gift, a photo-personalised item for a birthday — outperform generic designs in this context because they complete the brief in a way a standard design cannot.
If your listings have no products explicitly positioned for these occasions — 'graduation gift,' 'wedding gift,' 'summer birthday' in your titles and tags — you are invisible in the searches that drive summer's highest-converting traffic. This is one of the lowest-effort catalogue additions available: take an existing design, reframe the listing for a gifting occasion, and add personalisation options.
Phone cases: high summer demand, thin competition
People are outside more in summer — at festivals, on holidays, at outdoor events. Their phones are more visible, more frequently seen by other people, and more likely to need replacing after a beach or a field. Custom phone cases see a genuine demand spike in summer that most apparel-focused stores miss entirely.
The competitive landscape is also thinner than in t-shirts. A well-optimised listing for a custom phone case can rank faster and hold longer than an equivalent t-shirt listing in the same niche — simply because fewer POD sellers have built out the category. If you have designs that already resonate with your audience, applying them to a phone case and listing it now is one of the lower-effort ways to add a new revenue stream before summer peaks.
The right time to add a new product category is now
New product listings need time to build organic traction — search engines index them, buyers discover them, early reviews accumulate. Summer's lower ad competition means that process moves faster: organic content gets more visibility when fewer brands are paying to push it down the results page.
A drinkware listing you add in late June can be ranking by August. A tote bag listing optimised for summer search terms gets indexed during peak season rather than after it. The sellers who expand their catalogues now are the ones capturing both the summer tail and the early Q4 ramp, rather than waiting until September when everyone is trying to do the same thing simultaneously.
Expand your catalogue with Gelato
Add mugs, tote bags, hats, and phone cases to your store — no minimum order, no inventory, automatic fulfilment worldwide. Your next summer bestseller is a few clicks away.
