Hi Kristen,
I decided to attemp this last year, spliting up a single shop into three.
I had started with just a racing shop for go karters at
http://www.cafepress.com/gokarttees
after getting several request from teams for personal shirts i decided to split off another shop for team designs at
http://www.racer-tees.com
last year i did over fifty teams
in an attempt to get more teams in from the auto racers I started a new site at
http://www.cafeshops.com/hanksracin
Then i though I would use my main web site to bring them in all together in one place adding in extras like wallpapers and photo's. then a game room and chat and forum and so on.
this is at
http://www.gokart-tees.com
I'm thinking i will need to change to something more general to match all three of the shops, but for now i'll keep it.
It has worked out somewhat well. I found that the team design were not selling well as to the image size and pricing so i went to a minimal fee with free graphics hoping to make up the difference in the sales bonus but that didn't help with the image size. So i started up an account at zazzle. This worked out real well. I sell more team designs there than in the cafepress. I defaulted all the designs into cafepress because they have a larger product base. I started adding in other designs into zazzle a few weeks ago to see if they would sell any better than the cafepress shirts. No answers as to that yet. At least now i feel i can test new ideas in one shop and see if it works there then bring it in in the other shops and see if it works there. So that I think can be one advantage with having several shops. I also feel it gives me a larger playing field in a highly competiteve racing design market.
I've gotton and missed out on several request by dealers and companies wanting designs and shirts to sell at the tracks because the cafepress and the zazzle shirts simply cost to much even at thier bulk. I had start an account at 99 dogs in hopes to remidy this but simply felll flat with them.
there image size is just way to small and hardly ever answered emails, i also could not find a phne number to call them anywhere on thier site.
I checked out some local shirt makers, but they all wanted my to purchase blank shirts and ship them in ... to much work i thought.
So.. i've been looking at mojo and i seen a new string come up with another company called spread shirts and now, Rodney has come up with this forum, thankfully, and just in time also. So hopefully i can get some more information here as to the best place to take yet another shop for dealers and companies.
anyway, I hope this helps or is somewhat an answer to your question. It's all been a massive amount of work on my end trying to keep up with it all. many long long nights and weekends. I guess it's just what you want to accomplish with a design field you want to work in and how far you want to take it. Maybe I'm being to extreme in it, but one thing is for sure. I'll find out one way or another.
Jock
oh.. i also have another one
http://www.blueridgepictures.com
