[brasilsoon]

Hi,

It's been a minute since I've been here, so this question may have already been posted. I wanted to get a sense of folks experience selling their shirts to stores and/or online. At first, I was considering only selling my shirts in stores, but, for some reason (can't remember), I'm seriously thinking of only selling online. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm feeling like exclusively selling online will allow me to earn more profit (without having to pay a percentage to a store) and expose me to a wider market. Well, any info would be greatly appreciated.

BTW, in regards to selling in stores, what is net30?

And Rodney, thanks for the email regarding the contest. Between motherhood and other stuff, I can barely blick my eyes.

Take care ya'll and thanks in advance

 

[Solmu]

It should allow you to make more profit per sale, and in theory it allows you to reach a wider market.

On the other hand you have to reach that market yourself, do all the advertising, etc. If your shirts are placed into a pre-existing retail environment, that store is (hopefully) already advertising and setup to engage with customers. Your product should sell from there with less effort than running your own website. It also means you are (partially) outsourcing sales and can concentrate on selling to a few distributors or retail stores instead of having to convince every customer who comes along to buy your shirt.

The fact is there are strong pros and cons to both approaches (or to combining them).

 

[RAHchills]

I think a mix of retail and online sales can only help your brand, depending on what market you're going after. In my market, some people will look to the online resellers for "what's cool to wear." I can't provide that to potential customers as a brand new start up. Obviously the trade-off is that I make less per sale, but theoretically I'm still making something, plus I'm getting the brand out there. More to come, I guess.

I also did some research on establishing my brand in foreign markets by getting into foreign online retail websites within my target market. I definitely plan to persue that once things get rolling. Its been said before on these boards, but its really all about getting your product in front of potential customers, wherever they may be located.

 

[badalou]

You don't give a percentage to a store. You sell them wholesale pricing. You offer terms as I do, usually 30 days. You make the sale. You wait for reorders. The money is in your pocket. I truly believe you sell more to retail than you do on the web. Instead of selling one shirt a week and making $15 you can sell 36 shirts a week and make maybe $4 to 6$ each. However many you sell I doubt you could sell as many on line as you could to retail stores. It just takes getting out and seeing who's buying.. Oh and the product has to be worthy.

 

[Solmu]

You don't give a percentage to a store. You sell them wholesale pricing.

It's just different ways of looking at things though - you are still "giving" the store a percentage of your potential profits (I'm not saying it's not worth it, just that thinking in those terms isn't particularly inaccurate).

 

[brasilsoon]

Thanks again for the insight.

From reading the comments, I can see myself doing both retail and online. At the moment, I've visioned my time devoted on selling online (once things pick up) and putting in the time to maintain the site, customer dealings, etc. To go into retail, I'm more inclined to have my shirts in very few places. Although I can see the benefits of both online and retail, I just like the fact that with online, I can create and have more freedom with how I can sell my shirts and, as with RAHchills, I definitely would like to reach a international audience, so selling online may benefit me in that respect.

In either case, I will need to do a ton of research, it will depend on my target market and my shirts (hopefully) will get to the point of being worthy. Thanks again.

 

[RAHchills]

Good luck.