[kylec922]

I have about 20 designs now, and I'm thinking I'll be opening up shop here soon. My question is, should I brand? Should I keep it as a graphics tee store instead of a brand?

They both have their advantages and disadvantages to me. Can I hear some thoughts on why you did one or the other in case I'm missing something?

 

[ryan barker]

for a lifestyle shirt, obviously you would want to. for a five dollar flea market tee, it would be a waste. it depends on what you're selling, eh? i guess you have to determine whether or not your designs, whatever they may be, warrant what you might call recognition. i mean by that, if i grabbed five random shirts from other sites and threw yours in, would i be able to figure out which one was yours knowing that it's your style and fits in with your brand's ideals?

to me, a brand's main aesthetic purpose is to meet a stylistic obligation you establish. that style should be a reflection of you and/or your artists and stand apart from the rest. that's really the goal, right? to have someone look at your shirt in passing and even then be able to know it's a kyle original? have you created something artistically distinctive? if so, then i think you would want to make it into a brand. if it has the potential of being lost in a sea of similar designs, branding may help and it probably won't hurt. if it's pretty generic, and there's nothing wrong with that, i probably wouldn't bother.

my brain is far too eclectic to focus on just one main style that supports some overall brand philosophy. i would feel strangled by a lifestyle shirt type of thing. for some, that's not an issue. so, i guess my point with this part is, do you want to impose those limitations on yourself? what are you going to do with designs that don't fit with the brand scheme? are you dedicated to your brand philosophy? yeah, i know this is an odd reply, but i think it's something some of us might take into consideration: am i my brand? or am i going to struggle to force designs that fit with it?

so, i think there's a business aspect to the question of should someone brand, but also a personal side to it that a few people (like myself) should consider.

the answer is probably going to be yes unless you're scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of design, quality and price. i don't see branding as hurting anything even then, unless you're using copyrighted material.

 

[Namm]

branding deff
I'd hold off on the store unless you have the funds to run it through the years
but branding is always good more customers will recognize and purchase your work

 

[kylec922]

I'm kind of the same way as far as my brain works, thats why I was against the branding lol. I have some very original designs but they can be all over the board. Again I hate to reference but it would be similar to how threadless has so many different stuff. There's artsy, there's funny, serious, etc., and I really don't ever want to scrap good ideas because they aren't in my brands ideals.
Oh, and I meant web store!

 

[FestiveChicken]

I am asking myself the same question right now. My designs are all over the place and some, well just dont fit with the others. I am just going to section the web store accordingly and bring different t designs to different events. Maybe brand after we get up and running some more.

 

[ryan barker]

i was leaning towards having everything under one umbrella and having categories, but i think it would ultimately look tacky (how i would do it, at any rate). yeah, i love threadless, but they have the advantage of having many designers put things in, and, well, i guess i'm just arrogant enough to believe that i want control of every aspect of it, even doing the art (and, sadly, i'm a sucky artist). then again, i can't go around and have 57 different websites now, can i? i mean, i won't have 28 pages of mens shirts to pick from, but neither do i want to invite other people's designs in to the extent that it overshadows my own. too, since i can't compete with actual artists and designers, wouldn't i be a fool to say no to including them? then i become a threadless rip-off, and might as well go on that murderous rampage i've been procrastinating doing.

but, following the trends isn't exactly my style, so that leaves out the lifestyle junk, that stuff that's just the brand name put on a shirt in a variety of ways, or just point to a random key on the keyboard and make that a 14" image on a shirt, then hire a bunch of barely legal models to romp around on the dock, in a pile of leaves or strike a pose against a wall. actually, hiring barely legal models wouldn't be a bad idea, but the rest of the amateurish corporate-ized fake casual cool look makes me want to vomit on my puke (anyone else getting hungry besides me?). almost worse than the amateur is the professional... probably because it's so much more effective, but without the hopes and dreams involved of someone's ill-prepared and under-funded efforts. of course, if that's what you want, you have to almost sell-out in some cases. 'sometimes needs be the devil dryves,' as the saying goes.

taken as a whole, branding isn't going to hurt. and i don't even know if that's the issue as much as how to go about categorizing the mess in my head that occasionally seeps out. one umbrella corporation, or divided into many? i have ideas on how to handle it, but nothing concrete (not to mention i'm a far ways off from having to worry about it in earnest).

i think i'd go ahead and do a brand and grab a domain name and concentrate on your stuff that's likely to have the best potential, even if it's not your first love. if you wanted to add a different site or a different category, there's no stopping you. what i'm afraid of is if i put everything on one site, it's going to be such a muddy slop that it'll detract from the other stuff more than entice people to check it out.