[das_king]

Hi guys,

My t-shirt website and everything will be ready to go in 3 weeks. I was wondering how many t-shirts can I expect to sell monthly?
I got the website professionally designed and is going to offer about 50 designs on 8 different types of products, plus doing some orders for custom designing. And the new designs will be added weekly.

I will be doing a lot of advertising in local newspapers and through flyers. As well as a whole lot of marketing online through forums and websites. Basically I will do everything I can to advertise.

I am going to stock the inventory soon and I would like just to get a general idea. I dont want to run out of stock in the middle of the operation. I am thinking about 200 shirts a month? Is that too little or too much?

Thanks a lot guys

~Ben

 

[Rodney]

Without knowing how much traffic you have (or will have) to your site, it's almost impossible to guage how many sales you will have.

Also, factors like design quality and more imporantly, website quality (easy to navigate, no broken links, good marketing copy) will have a direct impact on sales.

The question is really to general to get a meaningful answer.

Once you actually have targeted traffic, I think a good number to shoot for would be at least 1 sale per 100 visitors. Some sites will have a higher ratio than that and some will have a lower ratio (depending on quality of traffic, t-shirts, site design, etc), but I've found that 1:100 is a nice general sales barometer.

I would be surprised if you sold 200 shirts a month starting out unless you have a very large marketing budget (and expertise).

 

[CoolHandLuke]

Once you sell a few, find out where they came from and why they bought the shirt they did. Just send them an email w/ a discount off their next purchase for letting you pick their brain.Was it the design, color of shirt, style/type, price, etc.

 

[honeyflip]

Speaking of this topic, are there any hard facts floating around on monthly sales figures for some of the larger sites like Busted Tees, Threadless, etc?

 

[jdr8271]

T-Shirt Hell says they sell over 5,000 shirts a week...thats more than I sell a year.

http://www.tshirthell.com/questions.htm#shipping

 

[Solmu]

This article (or press release?) claims that Threadless sell 60,000 shirts per month. I'd take that with a grain of salt though, as it also states "each design is voted on by 15,000 unique visitors" which is completely untrue (each design is voted on by, typically, 1,000-2,000 visitors - perhaps from a pool of 15,000 people who vote, but certainly not on each design).

 

[Rodney]

Speaking of this topic, are there any hard facts floating around on monthly sales figures for some of the larger sites like Busted Tees, Threadless, etc?

There are a few articles and press releases (even some from major news outlets), but I wouldn't take any figure at face value. You can't believe everything you read and people aren't usually eager to give out that info to possible competitors (and if they do give it out, it's likely that they may use a bit of hyperbole )

 

[das_king]

Hmm, how do these large websites get established?

60,000 shirts a year! Wow, if only I can 1/10 of that, I be vey very happy.

 

[honeyflip]

5,000 a week... 60,000 a month! Sheesh. Even if you adjust by 1/2 for inflation, those are staggering figures. Still, I have yet to see someone walking around wearing a Threadless t-shirt.
Rodney, how did you arrive at the "1 sale per 100 visitors" figure?

 

[Solmu]

60,000 shirts a year! Wow, if only I can 1/10 of that, I be vey very happy.

Err... no. That was 720,000 a year for Threadless and 260,000 for T-Shirt Hell.

 

[monkeylantern]

There are also many. many smaller tshirt stores on eBay with the 10,000/year mark.

 

[Rodney]

Hmm, how do these large websites get established?

Advertising, marketing, search engine promotion, word of mouth, links from other websites, quality of designs, customer service, more advertising, etc. You know, the usual

Rodney, how did you arrive at the "1 sale per 100 visitors" figure?

By reading various articles on online conversion ratios and feedback from other online merchants.

 

[honeyflip]

Speaking of feedback from other online merchants, I just read an interview with Phil Broadbent of T-Shirt King. In it, he speaks disparagingly of advertising via banners, but is very enthusiastic about off-line ads and e-zine ads. It's an oldish interview - 1999 - but still kinda interesting in terms of what he thought worthwhile to establish his site (I'm guessing it's linked somewhere from the forum already, but... http://sellitontheweb.com/ezine/mystore008.shtml).

Have any of you folks had any luck with blogads?