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When starting a t-shirt business, you may have a lot of questions about how things work,what the costs will be, and how will you handle the various aspects of running your own t-shirt operation.
This page will help you understand some of the basic aspects of starting a company selling custom t-shirt designs
Coming Up With Ideas
One of the first steps when deciding to start a business selling t-shirts, hats, totebags, or any other item, is deciding what designs will be printed.
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Do you have a design idea or catchy phrase that you are sure will sell?
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Have you already had some success selling your designs in a one-off setting and you want to take the next step?
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Are you looking to be the next FUBU®, or Ed Hardy®, or the next Famous Stars and Stripes®? Create your own brand!
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* Will you make new line of funny t-shirt sayings?
* Do you have an idea for a new line of hooded sweatshirts? Totebags?
* Will you work to create a brand that people want to wear?
* Will you capitalize on a current event (election, funny news story, etc)?
* Will you be selling t-shirts for your band, gaming club, or paintball team?
Once you have decided on what you'll be printing, the next steps are getting them printed, setting up shop (getting the products to the customers), and marketing your new products.
Getting T-Shirts Printed
The Printing:
Theres many diffrent ways you can go about getting designs printed on t-shirts, including:
Heat Press Printing
Digital Printing
"Flex" Printing
Screen Printing
Embroidery Services
The different styles of printing have their advantages and disiadvantages, depending on your desired styling of the shirt. The cost, print quality, and how many colors you can print at a time, will most likely be viatl to your decision making.
Screen Printing seems to be the most popular method of printing with t-shirts. The method has come a long way both in print quality and accuracy, while upholding a long print life on the fabric. With screen printing, there are no concerns about only printing on white or light colored shirts. Most print companies can print on dark colors, bright colors, camouflage colors, you name it!
No need to worry about multicolored printing or detailed artwork. We'll point you in the direction of the top print companies that uses a state of the art screen printing process and have a highly trained, full service, art department, that can work with you to make sure your designs can come out just as you created them. That's really what you want. You want to create the idea and have it come to life - no hiccups. (believe me, I wished I could just hold my breathe at times to stop to the sort of hiccups that drive you mad. ;))
There's also many different companies offering those services. Depending on where you leave in the world and whether you wanted to choose a local company or look for deals on the internet, it can be mind numbing to scour for the best deals for your particular size order. We go through some quality options to cut through the time and get you on your way.
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Purchasing Inventory:
Whether you open a store online and/or physical brick and mortar store, you need to purchase inventory. This is where you decide how many products you're going to carry, and in what quantities. You'll also need to decide what sizes to print.
One of the benefits of getting t-shirts screen printed or embroidered is the fact that you can now buy at true wholesale, and sell at a competitive retail price. The more you buy, the better pricing you can get!
Starting out small? Try a run of 25 t-shirts per design and see how they sell. You'll still meet most apparel companies minimum orders, and get great wholesale pricing.
One you've found that winning design, increase your inventory to 100 or 500 per design. Not only will you have to worry less about inventory running out, you'll get even better wholesale pricing since your quantities have increased for a proven product. That increases your chances of succeeding with focused product development.
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Getting The Word Out (Marketing!)
You can have the best t-shirt design in the world and never sell a single t-shirt if no one knows it exists.
That means in order to get sales, you've got to let people know how to find you. And once they find you, you have to make them want to buy from your store!
The web has the ability to level the marketing playing field in many aspects. A new startup t-shirt line has the same ability to show up in an online search right next to the biggest name brands.
Let the search engines work for you by making sure your store is search engine friendly.
Find targeted content directories like T-ShirtCountdown.com, and T-ShirtLinks.com to list your t-shirt designs on. We also have a list of some of top t-shirt brands on the net. If you think your designs are awesome, then feel free to drop us a reply to the thread in the 'top t-shirt lines' and 'links' sections.
Use targeted online advertising to reach potential buyers in your target market.
Traditional offline methods of promotion can be key as well:
Press releases, offline advertising, and putting your store URL on business cards, stationary, and all company promotion material will help get your store seen.
As we move forward and upgrade the blog, we will touch on all these vital aspects of starting a t-shirt line and making it successful. Bookmark us and visit us often!
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