Starting a brand.

Hi! You and I are in the same boat. I have about 25 designs and will debut my line of shirts at a flea market during the Memorial Day weekend. Just like you, my designs are aimed at younger people.

I want my business to grow through public appearances and word-of-mouth. I will sell online eventually on my website.

I don't want to sell my shirts on Ebay. It seems as my if shirts would get "watered down" on there as there are millions of other shirts on there to compete with. It would get lost in the shuffle on Ebay. That's just me.

I prefer to sell my shirts in person so I can talk about them to potential customers. I want to create relationships/friendships with people...even if they don't buy my shirts. They may not buy the first time, but if you make a good impression, they may buy in the future...and tell a friend!

Good luck with your shirt business. We're in this together!

My opinion is that you need to think about building a BRAND.

It is tough to say whether or not ebay would benefit or hurt your brand without a full description of your market. My guess is that, being your marketing to young adults, that ebay is not the route to go. You want to be innovative and fresh, creating your own unique ways to sell your product.

Then again, Johnny Cupcakes started his company selling individual shirts out of his trunk. I guess it all depends on what your "bigger picture" is.

One site I think may help you is bigcartel.com. They are a great user friendly site geared towards selling shirts and stuff. Here is an example of my brand which I have been running: 88 LFTIES — Home

10 designs is more than enough to start your clothing line. Pick your 4-5 strongest and launch them as your starting "collection". Name your collection. Are the designs consistent? What is your mission? Decide this and use your domain name to forward to your Big Cartel shop. Make your shop look good. Do not use a free template, buy one and customize it if you need to. it will be worth it. eBay is a backup plan. Do not use it if you want to launch a line, it's worthless to sell on eBay if you don't already have all these shirts in stock. Quality is always top priority and if you sell and make something cheap, your profit will be minimal. Get some strong real shirts with great design first then market them twitter/tshirts blogs and forums/Facebook . If you don't know if they are good enough to sell, post them here or on Mintees. You will find out real fast.

Abe Schmidt
Chief designer and founder
HandsinApparel.com

The above post is right on track
But I do want to add... I was a Power Seller on eBay for 7 years feedback over 8000 100%. I will not call eBay cheap. I made my living off eBay until just recently when I closed out my business account with them. The fees are out of hand. Social marketing besides your site will be the best. Good luck

Depends on you who you are targeting. Generally speaking Ebay isn't going to do wonders for your brand image.