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ehawk · October 13th, 2007

I know there's a brand call johnny cupcakes they are doing pretty well, so I was wondering if any of you guys know any other small brands not huge but pretty successful on getting themselves a name out there?

maybe we can all study their cases?

gnarle · October 14th, 2007

They are at the smaller tradeshows.

fender967 · October 14th, 2007

Gnarle, I have a question for you actually. I clicked your link and looked at the variety of shirts you have available online. How did you start out as far as how many t-shirts you stocked up with? It seems to have a supply of all sizes and shirt colors you would need a LOT of shirts. I am trying to get started with my designs and sell them myself, but I can't spend $1000 on blanks.

gnarle · October 15th, 2007

Well, sorry to hijack a thread but I'll answer.

We don't stock very many shirts. I know it seems like a big pain to print a few dozen shirts, then do the same job again a little later. However, it minimizes initial investment, and if you do a little math you can figure out whether or not its worth it for you. It also hedges your bets with designs that no one likes or for some reason doesn't sell. In our case we started out by printing an initial number of shirts that will recover only a little bit more than the investment capital and time of labor. Doesn't seem like such a great business proposition, but we are really just trying to build our name, build a catalog, and build a brand. As more people become familiar with our brand name and our style, more people accept it and buy it. We know this to be true because we have come a long way from when we started with a one color press in our friend's garage. Using this method the biggest investor in our company is the customer, and while we don't have profits in our wallets this is also not our day job. We view our line's success as a long term goal as everyone involved is working on gnarle part time. Long story short, we do it because we like it.

fender967 · October 15th, 2007

That is helpful and was what I was wondering. I didn't want to hijack this thread but didn't know if you'd notice a PM. I have another question for you but I'll PM you.

Komoney · October 16th, 2007

if you put johnny cupcakes as a small brand that is successful then i would add to your list many streetwear brands such as The Hundreds, Mishca, Flying Coffin, Reason, 10 deep, Privileged Kid, and 3 sixteen

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Anyone knowsany small brand names that are pretty successful?