Many apparel decorators and distributors worry about how they can compete with large-scale e-commerce sites like Custom Ink. Though it’s generally a mistake to try to directly square off against online giants, there are still ways for small businesses to emulate them, such as offering easy-to-use, web-based design tools to customers.

Cory Dean created Layout Lab to do just that. With the new version coming out June 1, Wearables spoke with Dean, the founder of vector and digitizing business Ignition Drawing, about the benefit of using this online tool.

Q: What is Layout Lab?
Cory Dean: Layout Lab is a private label online designer that small shops and distributors can buy for $30 to $50 a month. LayoutLab.net integrates with our vector and digitizing business, Ignition Drawing.

Q: What prompted you to develop it?
CD: I’ve been a worrier since I started Ignition Drawing in 2003, but my anxiety is spiking recently over the growing market share of a few online companies that are gobbling up a lot of the small order business. They make it easy for a soccer parent to outfit the team without leaving the home or office. Right now, they’re taking the tedious orders that shops don’t really want, but as they become the norm, they’ll move upstream to the larger profitable company orders.

Many of our clients were sending their customers to Custom Ink to design their shirts and take a screenshot. We were seeing almost 50 screenshots a day come to Ignition Drawing. Every time that small decorator tells the softball team to design on Custom Ink and come back to me, there’s some chance they go to Custom Ink and never come back.

Layout Lab is our attempt to combat this, by giving clients the front-end features of an online decorator in a really simple, easy-to-use product for a low cost.

Q: What sets it apart from other online design tools on the market?
CD: Layout Lab takes a minute to set up. Most decorators don’t need the whole e-commerce package or have time to set it up. This is a simple service that helps them with the hardest part: figuring out what the softball team wants on their shirts. Layout Lab includes 10,000 pieces of clip art, 200 fonts and 500 design ideas. Users can upload their own images, and the decorator can either download and use them or send it along to Ignition to have a professional artist clean it up.

Q: How has the service been received so far?
CD: As of March, we had 150 paying customers. It’s not where we want to be, but it’s not a bad start. We’re only selling to our own Ignition Drawing customer base so far. We haven’t started marketing outside of our ecosystem yet. We’ve spent six months working on a new version of the service, upgrading some parts and building other from scratch. Once we release that, we’re going to start really marketing Layout Lab.