The GigTag franchise
Your printer is idle. Ours cannot keep up.
We make a QR tag that live musicians clamp to a mic stand, and every one of them is a 3D print. Become a GigTag franchisee, print and post them where you live, and we pay you £9.99 a tag in the United Kingdom for each one that goes out. Nothing to pay us, at any point — no fee, no kit, no territory to buy.
- £9.99 a tag in the UK
- No fee, ever
- One part, learned once
What this is
A franchise with one product and nothing to pay
The thing you would be printing
A GigTag is the QR tag a live musician clamps to a mic stand. Somebody in the audience scans it with their camera and lands on that act's page, where they can request a song, leave a tip, follow the act or send a booking enquiry. No app, nothing to install. The tag is 150 × 190 × 3 mm, printed face-down so the face comes off the plate flat, with the artwork inlaid into it in colour.
Why we are not printing them ourselves
Every tag so far has come off our own printer in Dubai and gone out by hand. That is fine for the first few hundred and hopeless after that: a 190 mm plastic plate is slow and expensive to post across the world, and it arrives weeks after a musician wanted it. The machines that could make it are already in the countries we sell to, sitting idle most of the day.
What we pay, and what you pay
£9.99 for every tag you print and post in the United Kingdom, agreed with you in writing before you start. It is a price per tag, not a cut of a sale, so it does not move about with what we charge. You never pay us anything: no joining fee, no kit to buy, no minimum order and no territory to license. Whatever a franchise has cost you to look at before, this one costs nothing.
Where this is open
The United Kingdom, now, which is where the tag already sells with delivery included. The euro area is open too, in its own money and language: Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands each have their own page. Everywhere else, put your name down anyway. We open a country when GigTag starts selling there, and the printer we already know about is the one we ask first.
The numbers
One UK tag, all the way through
Our own arithmetic, at UK prices, so you can check it rather than take a claim. Filament at 1.6p a gram, power at 120 W and Ofgem's capped 26.32p a unit, bolts bought in tens, boxes in fifties, and postage as a second-class Royal Mail large letter.
| What we pay you, per tag | £9.99 |
|---|---|
| 94 g of PLA, tag and clamp | −£1.50 |
| Power, about 3 h 51 m on the plate | −£0.12 |
| M6 bolt and nut | −£0.12 |
| A4 large-letter box, and the A5 card inside it | −£0.30 |
| Postage, second-class large letter | −£1.90 |
| Failure allowance, 7% | −£0.12 |
| Left with you, per tag | about £5.95 |
What it takes from you: a plate change, 3 filament swaps at the colour pauses, a few minutes of assembly and a trip to post it. Twenty minutes a tag to begin with, under ten once you have the rhythm. The 3 h 51 m on the plate is unattended.
Batching is what moves it. Two or three tags in a row share the setup, the swaps and the walk to the postbox, which is all a large letter needs. The margin per tag does not change; your minutes per tag fall by more than half.
We would rather you saw that figure now than discovered it in month two. It pays for machine hours that were going to waste. It is not a wage, and we are not going to dress it up as one. If the sum works for you, the rest of this page is the job.
What we need
What you need to be able to do
- An FDM printer with a bed of at least 160 × 200 mm. A 220 × 220 machine is plenty; an A1 Mini is too small.
- A willingness to swap filament at 3 colour pauses. That is how the face gets its colours, so no multi-material system is needed.
- Prints that come out right every time. We will send you a test plate first, and we would rather you ran it before either of us commits.
- Somewhere to post from. A tag, its clamp and the A5 card go in an A4 large-letter box, under 25 mm thick, so it travels as a Royal Mail large letter for £1.90 and goes in any postbox.
- An M6 bolt (45 or 50 mm long, never 40) and a nut per clamp, bought locally. No glue: the clamp pushes, snaps and screws together.
How it goes
From the form to the first order
- 1You applyThe form below: where you are, what you do, what machine you have and how long you have been printing. Five minutes, and a person reads it.
- 2We send the files and a test plateThe print profile, the colours, and one tag to print at your own pace. 67 g, about 2 h 35 m. You post it to us or photograph it; we look at the face, the fit and whether the code scans.
- 3We agree the money in writingWhat you get per tag, £9.99 in the UK, who pays postage, and how often you are paid. Before you print anything for a customer.
- 4Orders start arrivingA tag at a time, each with that musician's own code and name, so you make the plate per order rather than printing to stock. You print, check, pack, post, and tell us it has gone.
Apply
Apply to be a franchisee.
A person reads every application and replies by email, usually within a couple of days. If you are in the United Kingdom, the reply comes with the print files and a test plate, so you can see the part before either of us commits to anything.
We ask about your machine because the bed size decides whether the part can be printed at all, and about your week because a tag takes 3 h 51 m on the plate. Nothing here is a credit check, and there is no CV to upload: a link to anything you have made does the same job.
Not what you were looking for? The guide to making money with a 3D printer covers the other routes, honestly, including the ones that have nothing to do with us.
Questions
Printing GigTags: your questions
What do I actually earn per tag?
£9.99 a tag in the UK. Out of that come filament, around £1.30 to £1.90 for the tag and its clamp, a few pence of power, the M6 bolt and nut, the large-letter box, and postage, which is £1.90 as a second-class Royal Mail large letter. So you keep something in the region of £5.95 a tag, plus whatever batching saves you. We would rather write that down than let you work it out later: it pays for machine time that was going to waste, and it is not a wage.
Is there anything to pay, now or later?
No. Not a joining fee, not a licence, not a kit, not a minimum order, not a deposit. If anybody ever asks you to pay us to print GigTags, it is not us. You buy your own filament and bolts, as you would for anything else you print.
What kind of franchise is this?
The honest answer is: half of one. You make and post our product, under our name, to our specification, which is the part of a franchise that applies. The rest of what the word usually means does not: there is no fee to join, no kit to buy, no minimum order, no territory and no exclusivity, and either of us can stop whenever we like. If you are looking for a business handed to you with a van and a postcode, this is not that.
Do I get an exclusive area?
No. We are not selling territories, so nobody is buying the right to be the only printer in Manchester. Orders go to whoever is nearest and has capacity. The upside of that is the thing nobody says about territories: you are not paying for one.
What printer do I need?
Any reliable FDM machine with a bed of at least 160 × 200 mm, printing PLA or PLA+ at 0.20 mm on a 0.4 mm nozzle. We print on an Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2; a Bambu P1S or A1, a Prusa, an Ender 3 in good order all do this job. You do not need a multi-material system: the colours are filament swaps at a pause.
How many will I get?
We cannot promise you a number, and we will not pretend otherwise. GigTag is young and the UK is a market we are still growing. What we can say is that orders go to the nearest printer who has capacity, and that we would rather have a few people printing well than a long list printing occasionally.
Who pays if a print fails?
You reprint it; that is normal for per-unit work and it is why the figure above includes a failure allowance. If a tag arrives damaged or the code does not scan, we reprint it between us and sort it out — you will not be left arguing with a customer, because the customer is ours.
Who deals with the musician?
We do. They order from us, they pay us, and they write to us if something is wrong. You are the manufacturing end: you get an order with a file and an address. It means no listings, no photography, no customer service and no returns to handle.
Do I need to register a business or pay tax on this?
In the UK there is a trading allowance for small casual income, £1,000 a year at the time of writing, and above it you register as self-employed and declare it. Rules change and we are not accountants, so check GOV.UK. There is more in making money with a 3D printer in the UK.
Can I sell GigTags myself?
Not as GigTag, no. The design, the artwork and the name are ours, and the files we send are for the orders we send you. If you want to sell your own products, that is your business and we have no claim on it — see what actually sells when you print to order.
I am not in the UK. Is it worth applying?
Yes. If you are in the euro area, use the page for your country, which has the sum in euros and the form in your language. Anywhere else, be specific about where you are: we open a country when GigTag starts selling there, and the list of printers we already know is the first place we look. Nothing happens immediately, and we will not pester you in the meantime.
Curious what you would be making, from the musician's side? See what a GigTag does, or design one for yourself.