​Rate my POD business idea

A print on demand business where there’s a website where the customer can create anime-style characters using procedural generation (imagine a slightly more complex looking Pokemon). This character will be generated from a seed that will be sent to the customer, who will be able to use this seed to generate new instances in the future.

Instead of creating a brand new artwork to sell for each SKU, I instead create new “templates” instead where the character is in the scene doing something interesting (maybe a giant cat pushing a bus off a cliff, while staring in to the camera menacingly). Each SKU would then be each customer’s character procedural generated in the scene in the correct pose + facial expression.

Once the customer buys the first, say, mug with their character on it, if they don’t opt out of the email list, I target them with new SKU ads with their character on the new scenes. This way I sell personalised products but still take advantage of automation.