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How To Start A Coffee Mug Business Online: Everything You Need To Know To Succeed
The coffee mug market thrives, driven by demand for personalized, eco-friendly drinkware. Additionally, soaring coffee and tea consumption make mugs essential for daily use and gifting. Therefore, launching a coffee mug business today potentially brings lots of profits in the future.
This blog will explore market trends, trending mug designs, and a full guide to starting an online coffee mug business successfully. Right now, let’s dive into the opportunities awaiting startups!
Is the coffee mug business profitable?
According to the Data Bridge Market Research, the global mug value is projected to reach USD 53.02 billion by 2031. While North America leads the market due to its strong coffee culture, Europe and South America are booming markets driven by cafe trends and tea consumption. Notably, custom coffee mugs are increasingly common, offering emotional and aesthetic value.
The market of global mug market is expected to reach 53.02 USD billion in 2031
On the other hand, Print-On-Demand (POD) is highly evaluated for its ability to transform the coffee mug business. POD can enable low-risk, scalable ventures by eliminating inventory costs and allowing businesses to offer personalized designs without huge upfront investment. Surprisingly, the U.S. remains the largest POD market, accounting for up to 75.8% of the stores. This indicates the potential market and audience to start your own coffee mug POD business.
Apparently, startups and SMEs can take advantage of these to kick-start their sales effectively. Instead of competing directly with mass-produced products like Yeti coffee mugs or high-end designs like Ember coffee mugs, it’s better to look at customization, trends, and user emotion. From quirky quotes to pet portraits, the possibilities are endless for businesses to stand out.
5 top trending coffee mugs to consider in 2025
Below are the best-selling types of coffee mugs that eCommerce merchants should sell in 2025. We extensively researched market trends, customer preferences, and top-performing products.
#1. Enamel & Ceramic coffee mugs
These days, classic and versatile enamel and ceramic mugs continue to be crowd favorites. While ceramic mugs are famous for superior heat retention, enamel mugs offer rugged charm. Both are highly evaluated for eco-friendly materials, attracting sustainability-focused buyers. This makes these coffee mugs the go-to choice for many POD stores to boost sales potential.
Coffee mugs made from ceramics are still a go-to choice of consumers over time
Recently, mineral crystal coffee mugs have been attracting a lot of attention from art lovers. Compared to enamel or ceramic ones, they stand out with stunning color combinations, intricate glazing techniques, and eye-catching textures, making each piece feel like a work of art.
#2. Coffee mugs for gifting
Giftable coffee mugs especially thrive on birthdays or in holiday seasons such as Mother’s Day, Christmas, or Valentine's. Personalized coffee mugs with names, quotes, or custom artwork make meaningful, low-cost presents that resonate with emotional values. In fact, these mugs often lead to high conversion rates thanks to their suitability for every age group and occasion.
#3. Coffee mugs for hosting
While hosting mugs are common at offices or coffee shops, it is still strange to invest at home. However, with our modern lifestyle, more people find enjoying coffee at home as a relaxation. These coffee mugs are usually sold in sets with coordinated designs or chic finishes like embossed patterns, speckled ceramic, and matte black. You can completely use them for brunches, gatherings, or dinner parties, which can offer both form and function professionally.
#4. Travel coffee mugs
If you are an on-the-go worker or prefer traveling, why not think about selling travel mugs?
Their convenience makes them an essential pick for our daily lives and hobbies. Although Stanley Coffee Mugs are leaders in this niche with durability and high performance, consumers now want more. They truly crave personalized, aesthetic, and stylish coffee mugs. That’s when you should jump in with POD offerings—combine functionality and customization.
Stanley stands out in manufacturing travel coffee mugs in the world
#5. Handleless coffee mugs
The last name on our list today is handleless coffee mugs. These mugs are inspired by Japanese and Scandinavian design aesthetics, tailored to suit modern, minimalist lifestyles. Made from double-walled glass or premium ceramics, they can retain heat effectively while being comfortable to hold. Beyond their function, handleless mugs double as stylish décor items.
How to start a coffee mug business with POD
Step 1 - Identify the niche market
The first step in starting a successful POD coffee mug store is determining your target market.
Where and who are you selling for?
North America, South America, or Europe might offer promising chances for coffee mug brands. Depending on business goals and in-depth research, choose from 1 or 2 destinations to start.
After that, let’s think about your target audience! Coffee lovers can include busy professionals, students, travelers, stay-at-home parents, and more. This demands narrowing down your focus to create product designs that truly resonate with their lifestyle, demands, humor, and values. Also, a well-defined audience helps guide your product messaging and marketing branding.
Remember to categorize the coffee mugs to create a clear product range in your online store. Normally, focusing on 3 to 4 types helps simplify management and customer decision-making.
Step 2 - Find a reliable POD service
POD providers will handle your production process, from printing and packaging to shipping directly to customers, allowing you to focus on design and marketing. You should seek partners with solid reputations, positive reviews, and integration capabilities with various sales channels.
Here are some tips and tricks to select well-performing POD services for your POD business:
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Check the product catalog to ensure they can offer desirable coffee mugs;
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Evaluate the quality of print through previous customers’ reviews;
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Consider available customization options on their websites;
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Require pricing terms, fulfillment times, and return policies;
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Confirm their global shipping networks for your orders.
Printify is a renowned platform delivering POD services with a global network
Besides that, leading POD platforms like Printify, Printful, or Gelato can offer branding options, such as custom packaging, branded inserts, or logo stickers, to give a more professional feel. This also creates a memorable unboxing experience and impresses customers for the first time.
Step 3 - Design your coffee mugs
Let’s focus on promoting eye-catching design examples first to capture your niche’s personality. Many visitors find it meaningful to kickstart their trust in a new brand before officially ordering. And the POD model also gives you the freedom to experience creativity and test mug designs.
You can start by brainstorming design ideas that reflect your target audience’s preferences. After that, take advantage of tools like Canva, Adobe Illustrator, or Procreate to create designs. Additionally, most POD services also offer mockup generators, so you can easily visualize how your finalized designs look on actual coffee mugs and provide a more interactive product preview.
If you are not a professional designer or do not own a design team, hiring freelancers from Upwork or Fiverr is great. However, always check their previous performance and their rate.
Step 4 - Choose a proper sales channel
Depending on their coffee mug business goals, skill level, and budget, they can select from established marketplaces (e-markets and social markets), eCommerce platforms, or both.
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eCommerce platforms (e.g., Shopify and Magento)
eCommerce platforms give you comprehensive management over coffee mug branding, customer service, fulfillment tracking, and pricing. Shopify is the most common choice and stands out with its user-friendly interface, which beginners can easily use in the first setup. Additionally, Shopify allows seamless integration with reliable POD apps, making product syncing and order management effortless. This helps reduce sales cycles and saves resources.
Shopify is the most common eCommerce platform to sell coffee mugs online
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E-marketplaces (e.g., Etsy and Amazon)
If you are new and want immediate traffic, consider building your store on these sales channels. They have built-in audiences who are ready to search for unique and personalized products. Especially, Etsy is a famous choice for POD SMEs and startups in the gift and lifestyle niches.
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Social marketplaces (e.g., Meta and TikTok Shop)
These channels are perfect for driving impulse buys via viral content and influencer marketing. In case you are targeting Gen Z or millennials, social commerce channels might offer powerful exposure and ad tools. From that, you can drive sales growth and establish your brand identity.
Step 5 - Kickstart your online coffee mug store
In this step, we will focus on optimizing an online coffee mug store on the Commerce platform. Below is a summary of what sellers should do to ensure the highest sales conversion rates.
Build your online store presence
A professional storefront website is key to ensuring a smooth customer shopping journey and boosting conversions. You can perform this task yourself, hire site experts, or use design apps. GemPages is one of the leading Shopify landing page builders, where you can reach 200+ CRO templates and use a drag-and-drop interface to customize page elements to build your identity. Also, GemPages supports A/B testing to test multiple site versions to find what performs best.
GemPages is a well-performing page builder to optimize your Shopify storefront
Read more: A Complete Guide to Shopify A/B Testing
List out coffee mugs in your store
From your determined product range, start listing product options on your eCommerce store. You can group coffee mugs by trends, themes, occasions, or user types. However, you need to ensure clear product descriptions, high-quality images/videos, sizing details, and POD options. Remember, shoppers can not touch products online, so visuals and copywriting help you sell.
Consider pricing and store policies
Buyers do not care about designs; they also compare prices to competitors before deciding. That’s why you need to set your pricing strategically. Production costs typically come from your POD partner, shipping fees, marketplace/eCommerce subscription fees, and your profit margin. Although the low cost can keep you competitive, focusing on profit sustainability is more important now.
You can also offer cross-selling or up-selling to encourage larger cart sizes and higher sales. Remember to outline store policies regarding shipping times, return/refund processes, and customer support. Because POD orders are custom-made, returns may be wasted and limited.
Step 6 - Market coffee mugs
Marketing is where your coffee mug business really gains traction. You could have the best products in the world, but without the right and targeted visibility, you could not create revenues.
Run promotional campaigns
You can kick off your strategy with a launch discount or limited-time offer to create urgency. “20% off all coffee mugs—this weekend or in 3 days only!” can help drive first-time customers. Also, you should offer free shipping thresholds based on the value or region to increase orders. These promotional campaigns especially work well during Black Friday or the holiday season.
Leverage the role of social media and influencers
Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are ideal for lifestyle products like coffee mugs. You can freely share engaging content like BTS design processes, funny mug quotes, customer reviews, and mug visuals in daily settings. And reels, stories, and UGC are highly recommended formats.
Instagram is a great social media channel to promote your coffee mugs
Don’t forget to partner with influencers. For example, a cozy lifestyle influencer or a travel vlogger sipping from coffee mugs on camera can provide powerful social proof and drive sales. You can even collaborate with small-sized, local coffee brands to enhance your product identity.
Invest in Ads & SEO
Paid ads on Facebook, Instagram, or Google can help you target highly specific audiences. You should start with a small budget, test different creatives, and double down on what converts. Usually, sellers divide their ad budget based on each phase of their customers' shopping journey. Therefore, we can not conclude any specific number here; you need to do this on your own.
Regarding website SEO, coffee mug blogs are optimized using SEO principles and naturally integrated keywords to improve your store’s search visibility. Additionally, your blog list should include different categories, such as care tips, gifting ideas, lifestyle trends, or the coffee market.
Optimize email marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective ways to nurture leads and drive repeat purchases. Shopify apps like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or Omnisend can help create targeted email flows such as welcome series, cart abandonment reminders, and post-purchase follow-ups.
Moreover, you should segment your list based on customer behavior, like buyers vs. browsers, and personalize content accordingly. Last but not least, A/B test subject lines and content layouts to improve open and click-through rates and reshape email strategies if needed.
Conclusion
Our blog has guided you through starting an online coffee mug business focusing on POD. Thanks to the potential growth of the global coffee mug market and the flexibility of POD, you can tap into this niche with a relatively low upfront investment. Each step in our guide can help contribute to your success, from identifying the niche market to building an intuitive storefront. Therefore, having a strict follow-up is essential to ensure consistency and long-term growth.
Visit GemPages blogs to discover more useful tips and tricks on eCommerce and POD!
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