how to decide which designs to sell if you have hundreds of design ideas?

1266 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by chamlogos, Oct 29, 2008

chamlogos

Discussion Starter · Oct 29, 2008

Okay, so I looked through the forum under starting with how many designs. Lots of feedback but questions still not answered.
I have over 200 Funny Quote shirts, and roughly double in the making. They range from skater to Heman Woman Hater.
I'm not an artist, but I have a couple in mind; I'm on a tight budget and at times none at all. I originally started to just put my sayings on shirts but got off track with doing custom shirts. Not really a problem but it's not what I want to always be doing. SO, I'm mostly setup to do one color screen prints, which hinders my ability to do muti-color.
My question is, with all these sayings, what would be a good and quick way to find out what ones I should even bother to put on shirts?
At this moment, I have my younger brother and some of his friends going around to their friends and skateparks selling the shirts. The problem we run in to is, some people like, dislike or on the fence. Being that I'm on a tight budget, they carry pictures of the shirts and not the actual shirts (about 10 different shirts at a time). With so many designs I'm concerned that I will make the shirt and not know wheter or not it will sell; being out of more money.

Please give any or all feedback.
I feel like I'm making a Jack-A** out of myself.
Cham

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Rodney

· #2 · Oct 29, 2008

Sounds like you are on the right track. One way to tell which designs to print is with market research. Going to your potential customers to see which ones they like is one way to do that.

Another way would be to just do them ALL using a service like CafePress.com or Spreadshirt.com. You upload your designs there and they create an online storefront for you to send customers to, that way, they print them on demand, and you don't have to worry about which ones to print. They only print them when you sell a design, and you keep the commission.

Another way would be to setup a a website and offer polls to get visitors to vote on which designs are printed next.

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maXmood

· #3 · Oct 29, 2008

hey Cham,

i'd suggest you buy the t-shirt mockup pack and put ur designs on em, then print all those designs altogether on A4 papers and make from all those A4 papers a t-shirt catalog. then u can have couple of those catalogs you can send across to your customers and friends.

that's my idea, and that's what i'm working on.

good luck with it.

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stuffnthingz

· #4 · Oct 29, 2008

If you are making them yourself, stick with a subset of your best work, say no more than 20. Inventory and production will be a huge puzzle to sort out.

If you want to do the marketing research, buy a premium shop on CafePress and put up all of your designs. Make money while you watch the market and take your top sellers to make them yourself.

Its a win-win. Note that building out your shop in CP is not simple nor quick, but I think it is a great way to get started in the industry.

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Adam

· #5 · Oct 29, 2008

The best recommendation is to put them all on CafePress and use their Marketplace to do all the market research for you.

If these funny quotes aren't original it may be easy to find out which are most searched for and base which you choose on that.

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chamlogos

Discussion Starter · #6 · Oct 29, 2008

maXmood said:
hey Cham,

i'd suggest you buy the t-shirt mockup pack

What do you mean a mockup pack? Not sure what that is.

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chamlogos

Discussion Starter · #7 · Oct 29, 2008

Rodney said:
Sounds like you are on the right track. One way to tell which designs to print is with market research. Going to your potential customers to see which ones they like is one way to do that.

Another way would be to just do them ALL using a service like CafePress.com or Spreadshirt.com. You upload your designs there and they create an online storefront for you to send customers to, that way, they print them on demand, and you don't have to worry about which ones to print. They only print them when you sell a design, and you keep the commission.

Another way would be to setup a a website and offer polls to get visitors to vote on which designs are printed next.

I will definitely check those two places out. However, If I do post my ideas there, do I have to worry about losing them or will they remain mine? I should check it out before asking but sometimes it is easier to ask than to get lost.
Thanks,
Cham

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