[YellowMan]

Hello all!
I've helped develop a complex line of tattoo shirts (and other clothing as well) for a client, and have rolled over a few different site designs so far to help promote the product. Since it is an unusual product, and the price-point is high, it has been difficult to inject the shot of adrenaline to reach the online sales my client has expected, even though the sales have not been bad. At first, I thought the unusual nature of the products would give us an edge online. In some ways it does, in other ways it doesn't.

Anyway, I am currently completing a new site design which uses a content/product management system rather than static pages (as I had before). That brings on a whole new set of challenges, design-wise and optimizing for search engines.

I'm interested to engage in discussions about tactics to get the maximum online impact.
You can see my current site design here: http://www.yellowman.com. The magazine/information portion of the site will be up very soon.

 

[Rodney]

Hi there, as you know I'm a fan of your site and products

Welcome to the T-Shirt Forums!

I think if you continue marketing to the right niche, you'll find the buyers for your products.

I think the static pages will help you more with search engines, but they should be made so it's still easy to buy a product.

 

[ShadowDragon]

Hey

Welcome to the tshirt forums and I've seen the site by the way, very freaking cool

Id have to agree with Rodney though, while the search engines will help the static pages don't over look simplicity.

Customers are likely to spend on average 2-8 seconds on a website before deciding to ditch it and move on or stay on the site and keep looking.

Thats where marketing to that niche is so damn important.
Take me for instance, Im in the process of setting up a tshirt store in a few months time that caters for the dungeon and dragon geek type niche, very specific, but ive done my research and because its a passion of my own I know where potential customers congregate online.

But despite all this, I know that it will take time.
It would be way cool if I got a sudden surger of customers right away, but I think like wine the site needs to mature and ripen and providing you dont lax at builing that traffic month by month I think in the long run it'll really turn out.

Best of luck! Those shirts are awesome!

 

[YellowMan]

Hi there, as you know I'm a fan of your site and products

Yes, you're tops.

 

[YellowMan]

I think if you continue marketing to the right niche, you'll find the buyers for your products.

I think the static pages will help you more with search engines, but they should be made so it's still easy to buy a product.

Finding the right niche for us is tough. As I mentioned before, we have a higher price point than most other places. The cost IS justified as we pay the artists what they are worth, and the products are printed on premium technical fabric materials. Not to mention the garments are really custom made, in the sense that the front, back and arms of the shirts have to be constructed so the art falls in the right way.

So our problem is that we are still trying to work out what our product is. Is it fashion or athletic clothing (the garments are made with lightweight moisture-wicking fabrics)? In reality, they are both, but it's very difficult to market to both areas at the same time.

Our products have been picked up by select Saks Fifth Ave, Nieman Marcus, and Bloomingdale stores - which represent more high-end fashion stores. But now Macy's will be doing a test order for us on our lower price-point items.

Anyway, the wholesale market is accelerating for us, and now I'm just trying to spark the online market for us, but I think the price is the biggest challenge to work with there as online shoppers tend to look for bargains.

 

[YellowMan]

I think the static pages will help you more with search engines, but they should be made so it's still easy to buy a product.

I'm using Miva Merchant 5 for the shopping cart system, and apparently there are ways to optimize the dynamic pages for search engines in the same way static pages would produce results. I'm trying to work that out now.

 

[Annushka]

The cost IS justified as we pay the artists what they are worth, and the products are printed on premium technical fabric materials. Not to mention the garments are really custom made, in the sense that the front, back and arms of the shirts have to be constructed so the art falls in the right way.

.

Hi YellowMan, welcome. The desings are very attractive. Could you tell us a little more about the overall process of creating these shirts - printing techniques, garment assemply steps etc? How much time does it take you to complete each pieace? And how much of this do you outsource to contractors? Very interested in hearing about it.

Thank you

 

[identityburn]

crazy shirts, haven't seen those before.

 

[YellowMan]

Hi YellowMan, welcome. The desings are very attractive. Could you tell us a little more about the overall process of creating these shirts - printing techniques, garment assemply steps etc? How much time does it take you to complete each pieace? And how much of this do you outsource to contractors? Very interested in hearing about it.

Thank you

Sure. The most complicated designs are the long sleeve shirts. For each shirt, a front, back, right sleeve, and left sleeve is printed. Artwork is done on a pattern template, so each piece of artwork is cut out of the fabric once it has been printed. There is a lot of yardage waste in this process, which contributes to the overall cost - not to mention the custom attention to each piece. Most of the garments are printed on rolls of pre-treated fabric using a reactive dye heat transfer process. The blend of technical fabrics used for the garments recieves the color brilliantly and permanently. After the heat transfer, fabrics are post-treated to bring out the color and preserve the quality. After this, the pieces are cut out and sewn together.
Making one-off samples is VERY expensive, but once we commit to bulk orders the cost comes down considerably.

We have a big advantage in that the owner of the company has a family business in textile manufacturing. Nevertheless, the expenses can still be quite high.

 

[Rodney]

So our problem is that we are still trying to work out what our product is. Is it fashion or athletic clothing (the garments are made with lightweight moisture-wicking fabrics)?

If it's athletic clothing, then sponsoring an X Games athlete or getting some cool extreme sports/snowboarder type athlete to wear your products could be a big boost of the right kind of traffic.

I think offline advertising that drives traffic to your website could be a good draw. If you know of competitors in the high end fashion line, you could see where they advertise (Rolling Stone? Fashion Mags?) and try to get some exposure there.

You're right though, defining what your products are about, and what your niche is can be the challenging first step to successfully marketing your site.