As a business that relies heavily on artwork, our terms are meant to protect the interests of ourselves and our clients on one hand, but are also meant to be fair to our artist partners since we do want to maintain a good reputation.
Overall, we can be flexible when necessary, but these are the main factors that will make it easy for us to choose to work with you:

Time: We’d often find ourselves wanting to get merch up for sale as soon as possible, and this largely depends on how quickly we can get the artwork. Being able to offer quick delivery dates without compromising quality makes it easy for us to choose to work with you.
If we start a commission together and you can’t deliver it on time, we’ll be likely to have to cancel it – but it’s better to let us know ahead of time.

Communication: The purpose of our staff member joining the communication is to bridge any misunderstandings, by making sure that our partner’s brand guidelines are being followed, and that you are getting instructions that are clear enough for an artist to follow (no more vague descriptions). As such, we expect the instructions to be followed, and questions to be asked if anything (really, anything) is unclear.

Revisions: In case something still doesn’t come across perfectly in the communication, we do expect to have it fixed to match our vision. However, we won’t change the concept after you already started, as that would be unfair to you.
If we feel like a change of concept is need, we might ask to book a subsequent slot in your schedule, and depending urgency may ask to prioritize the second one, but you will be paid for both.

References: We like to give a lot of references to save all parties involved the time and guesswork. If we don’t have perfect references, we generate them using AI to better explain what we’re looking for at the concept stage only.
While we absolutely don’t accept it as the final work, and expect the created work to be significantly different from the reference (you can’t just trace an AI generation and call it your own), being open to working with AI references can make it easier for us, but this isn’t a requirement.

Price: This one is a bit of a given, but we’re looking to get the most out of our budget.
You can choose to offer us a lower price for your services which won’t be publicly visible. In many cases the artist choice will be made by our partner brand so it’s certainly not the only factor, but it would certainly allow us to send more work your way.

Lastly, we do expect you to respect your terms and update them if you increase your fees before we reach out to you, as transparency & honesty is key for cooperation.

Thanks for reading this!