Hello Everyone,
I am new to the forum and a graphic designer who wants to start a street brand tee business. I am planning to selling online... How should I start it??
Please give me some suggestions thanks alot guys
Hello Everyone,
I am new to the forum and a graphic designer who wants to start a street brand tee business. I am planning to selling online... How should I start it??
Please give me some suggestions thanks alot guys
if your designs are good, maybe don't check out CafePress? I know that their Direct On Garment printing is getting better, but it's still kind of looked down on, and I still have my doubts, personally.
what has worked for some people, depending on your market, is maybe submitting some designs to Threadless? if they get made into shirts, boom, your work is out there, you get some money, and you'll start building a fanbase. If nothing else, you'll get some honest reactions to your work.
Of course, there are plenty of ways to go about it, but that's just a thought.
__________________ SEIBEI - put a monster in your closet.
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I am new to the forum and a graphic designer who wants to start a street brand tee business. I am planning to selling online... How should I start it??
This is a great question. Sometimes it helps to know how to make that first step and where to go next.
Do you already have designs created on the computer, or are they just ideas at this point?
If you have designs created already, you can start a few ways:
First you should know who your target market is and how you plan to advertise and sell to them. Creating a business plan is one way to do that.
You can select a few of those designs and get them screen printed by a local printer.
1a) You can then take pictures of those designs and create a website that showcases the designs and allows people to buy them. Then you have to advertise that website to get people there to buy.
Getting a website includes: Get a merchant account so you can accept credit cards (and/or PayPal), find a webhost, design a website or hire someone to design one, install a shopping cart to make the shopping process easier for you and your customers.
You store the shirts in your house or place of business and pack and ship out the shirts as the orders come in.
The risk here is that you could end up with a lot of printed t-shirts that may not sell. The reward is that you'll be starting off with a top quality product and will be ready to ship your shirts when people order them. It also takes time and money to setup a website and handle customer orders.
You could invest in screen printing equipment and handle the printing of the designs yourself. Then you would need to do 1a above
Risk is the investment in equipment. Reward is learning a new skill and having equipment to print jobs for not only yourself, but for other people.
You could invest in a heat press and depending on your designs, a vinyl cutter, and invest in a few blank t-shirts. Then you could get screen printed (plastisol) transfers made of your designs and use the heat press to adhere the transfers to the shirt. If you have simple 1-2 color designs, you can also use a vinyl cutter to cut out and create the designs on demand as the t-shirt orders come in (after you do 1a above )
Risk is investment in equipment and blank shirts, and possible prejudgement by people who don't like transfers (even though they can be high quality when done right). Reward is being able to print the shirts only as needed (when people order) and also being able to print jobs for other people.
You could use a print on demand t-shirt fulillment company like CafePress, Spreadshirt, Goodstorm, PrintFection, etc. With these places you just upload your designs and they handle the store creation for you, they handle the order processing, web hosting, ecommerce, customer service, warehousing. Your focus then is to drive traffic to your products to create sales.
The risk here is minimized since you have a lower upfront cost (sometimes zero). However, you are also losing more of your profits since the fulfillment company is taking most of the risk (with the equipment investments, order processing, warehousing etc). The reward is that you get your product out in the public sooner, and you can test your designs to see which ones sell and which ones don't. Your shirts would be printed on demand by the fulfillment company using either Direct to Garment printers, Inkjet Transfers, Vinyl Transfers, or Flock Transfers (depending on where you go).
I'm sure there are other ways, hopefully more members will give their input on the different ways to start and their experiences trying the different methods.
Any other questions, feel free to ask
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i do very well on cafepress and the quailty from them is better then many of the other online print companies like printfection...and it is a much easier service to use then printfection (i have tried both)
very good question that I also askmyself.
I read a lot on this forum but I still wonder
1) what are the different type of putting a picture, design, logo onto a shirt.
(I mean: I am trying ot start a brand and i basically wnat the same quality as nike, adidas, .....t shirts)
2) once I know that, should i invest in machinen and do it myself or have it done?
3) website is not an issue. i can handle that.
4) online sales would be nice but i am targeting retailers, specialized stores...: should i do a large qty first or simply 50 to test market and show product then only make large qty if i have orders already
Here is my basic plan to start-up my brand. Please correct me if you think it might not work.
1. starting with registering my company name, federal & state ID & Sales ID
2.. I am going to threadless.com as my marketing research tool to see if my design will work or not.
3. design 3 solid tee designs.
4. find a good local screen printing shop to print those 3 designs, 20 tees per design. total of 60 tees to sell.
5. find a good webhosting, design website & shopping cart.
6. Start to advertise brand on places such as Hypebeast - Online Magazine for Fashion, Sneakers, and Culture
"Threadless.com retains exclusive rights to the submitted design, if chosen, for printing and selling on clothing. Threadless.com also retains rights to the design itself for use on the Threadless.com website, and any Threadless.com promotional material.
The participant will keep ownership of the submitted design. The participant may display or archive the design in a portfolio or personal collection, but may not sell or reproduce the design for commercial purposes for ninety (90) days after the design has completed scoring."
The best way to do market research is to get opinions from the people in your target market. Meaning, the people you think would be most interested in buying your shirts.
Try to get some unbiased opinions if possible... not just from your friends!
You can post your designs here for review, in the "design review" section, if you like.
good point about Threadless! whoops. I was just thinking of companies like GoApe and Oddica (I think?) where some of the artists had previously worked for Threadless and built a following there.
if you're just doing t-shirt designs, I don't know if HypeBeast would be the best place to advertise. I like HypeBeast, but it seems to be at the upper end of the market - they feature stuff like new Nike dunks and BBC/Ice Creams clothing, all very upper-end expensive stuff. I would maybe send a sample or two to various apparel blogs, like Hide Your Arms, Teees, Addicteed, Indie Threads, and guys like that. they're all really nice, and free publicity/endorsement is definitely awesome. Also, once you have a web presence, you can e-mail the owners of these blogs and just ask them to check out your gear, and you may get a review without sending anything, if you prefer.
__________________ SEIBEI - put a monster in your closet.
Follow me on Twitter @davidSEIBEI
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