If I have multiple ideas for shirts but they don't all fall under the same umbrella how should I set up my marketing and website. Would it be smart to keep all of the designs in one place or to market 1 category at a time seperately on its own site and with it's own marketing plan?
Also, which would it be smart to start with:
1. funny slogans
2. art like the kind on threadless tees
3. art on tees geared towards the urban/hip hop community
I like the idea of separating sites out to make the marketing easier, but there are sites that do well with "all encompassing" t-shirt categories (like choiceshirts.com).
I think any of those three categories have the potential for success.
You might be able to blend a site with numbers 2 and 3.
Threadless has decided to tap both markets and expanded their site to include 1 and 2. That *might* say something about the longeveity of those 2 markets.
This has been brought up both times. Basically, both are viable. If you do seperate sites/etc., then it will be a lot easier to market and you can try to become 'the best place for such-and-such'. Conversely, if you have multiple things on the same site, you can appeal to more people at once, and you will also find that sometimes people will buy seemingly unrelated shirts together.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn't have completely diametric categories side by side, or else you risk alienating one or both sides. For example, putting artistic shirts and geek shirts in the same site is probably fine, but putting offensive shirts next to Christian shirts is probably a bad idea.
I't kind of seems for starting out that I'd want to have things seperate
and not have shirts that could be considered raunchy or smartass together with shirts with an artistic focus.
Now as far as the artistic shirts it seems like that is tricky because of subject matter or sophistication level. What I mean is that an urban customer and a rock/alternative might both like a shirt with a building on it but rock guy might get a small size and urban guy a larger. At the same time they might both like a cool shirt of a cartoony submarine but that submarine shirt might not belong next to a shirt of a city building that is depicted in a serious way.
Am I right in think that the lines between urban/skater/rock fans are pretty blurred and that possibly the issue might be catagory of shirt content in some cases?
Definitely; the lines between sub-cultures are very blurred. Especially with online shopping, where it is easier for people to transgress categories (i.e. in real life someone with an interest in skatewear may not be into skatewear enough to know where the cool shops are - but online they can find them easily, so they can cross over more easily).
As said above, it's really going tocome down to your preference and the preference of your customers. If you don't know, try to find people in your target demographic and ask them - 'Would seeing these 2 designs in different categories on the same website turn you off that website?' or whatever.
mixing formats 
