You may already have designs published on POD sites. Or maybe you've carefully curated your designs in Airtable, Microsoft Access, or even just a big spreadsheet. We can import this into OrbitKit for you!

Note: This is different from CSV Import/Export, which offers a way of editing the metadata of your designs in bulk. This article is about doing bulk imports of everything - including your design images - to populate your design library.

Also, if you are confused by the terms Design and Exhibit, please go back and watch the Terminology video.

Things You Should Know About Importing

Reach out to OrbitKit support to start an import - there isn't a user button for it.
Imports merge designs into your library. You do not need to worry about duplicate designs as long as images are byte-for-byte identical. We can safely run the import multiple times.
Text (titles, descriptions, tags) are established the first time a design is imported. However, additional translations will be merged. If you have a common design with English text at Redbubble and German text at Spreadshirt, after importing both you will have a single design in OrbitKit with both English and German translations.
Direct imports from POD services will create exhibit records in OrbitKit, as if OrbitKit published these designs in the first place. This way OrbitKit knows what was published where and can avoid publishing duplicates to these platforms.

Importing from Redbubble and Spreadshirt

We can import directly from Redbubble and Spreadshirt (both NA and EU). The process is:

Create a venue for your RB/SS account
Create a blueprint in each of these venues to use for imported exhibits
Reach out to us in the in-app chat

All exhibits in OrbitKit are associated with a blueprint. It does not especially matter which blueprint you use because you can change it later. However, it will be more convenient to start with the "most common" blueprint - if your designs predominantly go on black fabrics, use a blueprint with black fabrics.

Special Considerations For Imported Exhibits

Exhibits imported from POD services are just like any other exhibit published by OrbitKit. However, to help prevent accidents, we put some "training wheels" on these exhibits:

Imported exhibits start out FROZEN. This means OrbitKit will not delete these listings or modify them in any way. If you change the title or add a tag to your design, it will not be synced to frozen exhibits. If you delete the exhibit, the listing will not be deleted at the POD site.
Imported exhibits have the "sync only title, tags, and descriptions" flag set. Even if you unfreeze the exhibits, OrbitKit will not change your product assortment, pricing, colors, or artwork positioning. This is an extra safety measure to avoid rearranging your carefully hand-positioned artwork.

As a beginning OrbitKit user, you are encouraged to leave these exhibits frozen. They're probably already set up the way you like! You won't have to worry about accidentally bulk editing them or deleting them when rearranging archetypes. As you become more confident, you may wish to unfreeze these exhibits to sync in new products, pricing changes, etc.

Importing From Other Sources

We can generally import from any source or service that provides original full-sized artwork. Reach out to us and ask.