Tshirt Designs - Will they sell?

[biophase]

Ok, I just came upon this thread today and have missed it since it started so I just read the whole thing. Here is my main thought. You have no direction and are just going where people pull you. You started out wanting to do a T-shirt business. I presume that you were going to design stuff that you liked. I mean why else would you start a T-shirt business?

Then you realized your designs were bad. Solution should have been, learn to make better designs, not hire designers. You had time, but no money.

Then it felt like you became a t-shirt printing company. You are making shirts for people, which is not a T-shirt company. You are doing business shirts, socks and now trophies? What you are now is basically one of those custom business logo companies that can make custom mugs and shirts for people. Is this what you want?

Just say NO to all that stuff and do the shirts you want to do. This is why you are where you are at today.

BTW, I recently added t-shirts to my shopify store. I use Printful to fulfill, I make $0 on the shirts since I use the Bella/Next Level shirts and print front and back. My shirts are priced at $19.99. The purpose of the shirts is just for marketing of my company. Surprisingly they are selling very well. But there is a brand and meaning behind the shirt. This is what I think your shirts are missing. You need a reason for someone to want to wear your brand.

 

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[ExcelGuy]

I was inspired by @AgainstAllOdds 's process thread, although now in mid-August I'm not sure if he's still doing it, his site seems to be down.
It was about tshirt selling or creating a clothing line.

I've had an idea for creating shirts for a while now and took some time today to finally get something done.

• Created 4 - 5 t-shirt mockups using the Threadless template
• Set up a new Instagram account for the business
  
• Set up a new Twitter account for the business
• Can utilize my existing Twitter/IG accounts to help drive traffic. I have good quality followers and can sometimes gain a good amount of impressions for the target demographic, though we're talking dozens here, but 3K+ impressions from 350+followers.

TODO:

• Get on-demand printing set up
• Buy a domain
• Possibly buy some ad-traffic
• Future: find alternate hosting

Lessons Learned in 5 hours:

• I've improved my Photoshop skills
• I learned how to use the Threadless template
• I created my own logo from scratch in 2 varieties
  
• Learned more about Shopify and what it can do

My question is: How do I know these shirts will sell? Should I put a few designs out my IG accounts and see what people think?

Actually as soon I asked it I found out how silly that sounds. Of course I should!

Though so far: $0 spent.

I may have to spend a few days gathering followers before I direct any traffic to the site. Besides which I should probably have product to ship before getting any buyers.

My 14 day trial at Shopify starts today. We'll see what happens in the next two weeks.

Even if this fails, I've done something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I can potentially learn quite a bit, and maybe even get some good tips from you good people.

 

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[RahKnee]

In my admittedly limited experience with the t-shirt industry, I've noticed one thing:

You will never go broke appealing to stupid people.

Yeah, a cool design or clever shirt will sell. But the ones that turn into real money makers tend to have one thing in common.

Only a moron would wear them.

Far too many words on them, and universally a theme that a normal, thinking person wouldn't ever consider wearing on a shirt. Think rap lyrics with an image of a joint covering the back of the shirt and a dollar sign on the front. I wouldn't wear anything like that unless I was being paid, but I know someone who sells boat loads of them.

Condensed version of my ramblings? In t shirts, appeal to the lowest common denominator.

 

[LifeTransformer]

Best of luck to you! I Sold my first Tee the other day (think you liked my post), got this tweet tonight:


Get something put out there and the buyers will follow for sure! I might even buy one of your's

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Great job starting @ExcelGuy. And I still have a couple sites up (that I won't post on this forum), that make ok passive income.

My advice: if you're going to sell t-shirts, then make sure you have time to scale it. If you don't have time, then hire a foreign virtual assistant to manage it all, and take a couple hundred in a week for sitting back.

 

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[ZCP]

We get our line of Tees up hopefully next week. Will do preorders, then first print run. Used combo of fiverr and local printing shop and in house help for graphics. Have a local print shop doing the first batch. Picked nicer shirts, including women's cuts, and plan to list at higher prices. Will drive a little traffic, do a little instagram, and see what happens.

 

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[ExcelGuy]

New update. My Instagram account is at 106 followers and only 56 posts. I compared Redbubble.com and Shopify (via Gooten shipping from California) and since I'm in Canada, it's still cheaper for me to sell through shopify based on a per shirt basis. RB may have a wider product line though if your looking to move outside of shirts.

Food for thought: the custom tshirt market is saturated unless you have a specific style.

Serving a need: I'm starting to partner with local artists to bring their art to market.

Diversifying: I came out with another product line serving authors or mystery writers and or the pen and paper geeks. Then again I think everything I come up with can be it's own line.

Looking at affiliates with Under Armour and Old Navy since graphic tees are popular with people who shop at old Navy. Target audience for FB ads.

Side note: my 5yo son and I have 42 million studs in Lego Marvel Super Heroes.

I walked down the block in the sun in my tshirt and jeans carrying a sample kit. Waited at the wrong Williams on the same street for an old buddy and made my first pre order with cash in hand! My first order is now in Canada but with yesterday being a holiday it didn't get delivered today

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[Sanj Modha]

I started ecommerce by selling t-shirts off Teespring.com back in Jan 2014. The biggest challenge was finding designs that *might* sell. There are a few ways to tackle this:

1) if you have a social media presence - ask your audience: "would you buy this?" I've done it on FB with with a square made up of 4 designs. Ask them: "which design do you like the most from A, B, C or D?" and watch for the engagement. You can also run competitions and quizzes to generate a buzz.

2) look at the competition to see what's selling and take ideas from it. I'm not advocating 'copycatting' but what you can do is expand on the design, slogan or target market. For example, if the competition is selling a "This dog mom loves..." shirts - you can expand by adding "This Pug Mom loves..." and so on.

3) hang out with niche audiences in forums, FB groups, signup to newsletters etc and learn what they're talking about it. I did this with one of my best sellers when I saw a forum post that said: "I'd love a shirt that said...". I took the slogan, sent it to my designer who made it for $25 and it went on to sell $1000s. I even sent the lady a shirt for coming up with the idea and she was thrilled.

Creating a shirt brand is a bigger beast to tackle and not something I have experience with.

Good luck.

 

[biophase]

What's wrong with being a promotional company if the market is there?

If that's what you want that is fine. The market is there for everything. That's just a chasing money excuse. There's a market for t-shirts too. You just aren't selling to it, or you can't sell to it because your skills aren't there yet. But they aren't get any better. How does making trophies help your t-shirt business?

Don't kid yourself into thinking you are running a t-shirt business.

Just think of where you would be today if you just kept grinding on your shirts.

I bet you would be an expert on PS and Illustrator. I bet you would know what current trends are and what designs sell. I bet you would have partnered with a good local printing company. I bet you would have created 40-50 designs and using print on demand to test, found at least 4-5 good designs that sell.

The point is that you need to stick to something and work on it to make progress. You can't just jump from one thing to another and expect any progress in any one thing.

 

[nradam123]

Just a doubt.

Are your designs generic or are they niche?
I know someone (not personal relationship) who runs a hoodie business and his niche was "college hoodies". Now he expanded the niche to a real big business with Tshirts, hoodies and what not.

Here is the website - http://www.almamaterstore.in/

I think niching down first and then scaling to other verticals later would be smart.

 

[ExcelGuy]

I've posted more on my Instagram and I've opened the store and posted links to my Facebook page last night. Site has had 24 visitors today. I have lots of design friends so I'm going to see if any want to do designs/commissions. My friend does personal training and wants to buy a tee with my logo but I'll be also giving her one with her logo on it from my set of 3 samples.

Customers buy from the site and order is processed by Shopify and fulfilled and drop shipped by Gooten.

I'll never hold inventory, and I'll never be stuck with with shirts I can't sell.

I know most of the current designs are shite and will never sell. Solution: get better designs.

Other income revenues: friends who own businesses who want custom products. Vendor has over 100 different products.

Sales goal: break even with hosting costs within 3 months to get my wife from worrying about money. Though she likes the idea and wants a custom tote bag!

Starting niche.

Check out Cleveland Clothing for a guy that sells on shopify doing the same thing and scaled up. Different niche but I like his idea. 44K followers on Instagram for that guy!

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[ExcelGuy]

I'm now up to 46 followers on Instagram organically but I may look in to Jeremy Groovers idea. I paid $7 USD to boost a Facebook post and it reached 23 people and gained 13 interactions in one day. Target was people aged 18-65 in Canada but if I do it again it will be more targeted to a single product though this one was as well.

Also not sure if it was Google optimizing for my location and history, but searching for my brand name puts my site and Instagram feed in positions 1 and 3 respectively. Position 2 was a cafepress account who is probably using an Algorithm to appear for a range of generic keywords.

I don't want to risk being seen as spamming this post so someone PM me and I'll tell you my keywords. Not sure if I can place my URL in my signature yet or not.

VERY happy with the Spotify option. They have so much information available!

Also found a different POD supplier thru shopify who can get me shirts $0.80 USD than the first one I chose. Even responded to my emails quickly personally!

Almost 2 weeks. Total sales: 0. Local friends want samples to see and I'm arranging to give one away free and a couple to a buddy (he is a designer / artist) but decided on a total profit of $1.40 CDN. Hey he's a starving artist and I'm going for the sale! Besides if I order it myself I can bundle orders together for cheap I hope.

Going with flat rate shipping. Free shipping on orders over $75 seems pretty common and a markup if 30% is recommended.

Also posted a couple of designs on tee shirt voting sites. Got that from seeing Transhumantees in action

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[ExcelGuy]

Congrats! I'll definitely have to look at your shirts and your setup!

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[ExcelGuy]

So my current plan is build up a rep and base of designs that people are actually buying before I spend money on hosting and advertising. Using tshirt sites as a testing marketplace for 0 cost until I get enough funds to go into ad marketing and hosting my own ecommerce store.

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[LifeTransformer]

That T-shirt I posted above was done through Threadless. Just so everyone knows.

I've just shipped a Tank Top from a different manufacturer, will post the result of that when I can.

 

[ExcelGuy]

In my admittedly limited experience with the t-shirt industry, I've noticed one thing:

You will never go broke appealing to stupid people.

Yeah, a cool design or clever shirt will sell. But the ones that turn into real money makers tend to have one thing in common.

Only a moron would wear them.

Far too many words on them, and universally a theme that a normal, thinking person wouldn't ever consider wearing on a shirt. Think rap lyrics with an image of a joint covering the back of the shirt and a dollar sign on the front. I wouldn't wear anything like that unless I was being paid, but I know someone who sells boat loads of them.

Condensed version of my ramblings? In t shirts, appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I was going to post about something along these lines. Have a cash cow or bread and butter product to pay the bills so you can afford to do riskier design/endeavors. [emoji106] [emoji111]

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[Jeremy Groover]

Let me start by saying, fantastic job at taking a step! On demand printing is a great thing because it allows you to test the market on your design. One thing to remember. Unless you have a large following, don't discredit a design. Take it off the market for a little and test it later.

As for instagram, I strongly suggest one of those companies that get you followers. I used to have one on one of my pages and it was really worth every penny. Make sure you select a reputable one. They allow you to pick certain pages that your targeted market follows and works on converting them to your page. I paid $30.00 a month and gained almost 3000 followers the first month and didn't change any of my techniques. I could have done more if I posted more and hashtagged more, but it was more of a test then anything. I only post about 5 times a week and the big pages post 5 times a day.

Once you get to a certain level, I think you should get some stock and travel to different events where your target market is at. Even if your just passing out stickers, it would help get your name out there. Don't forget to add your Instagram and Twitter handle on the stickers!

 

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[LifeTransformer]

Thought I'd give your thread a bump and post a little update on my own progress:

Good NEWS! Sold my second shirt. BAD NEWS: No idea where from though. This is the problem I currently have with doing it through someone else's site.

Violating the "C" is just to get me started though. I don't feel comfortable enough to start paying for shopify yet. I may have also found a way to get more products and shopify for cheaper too, so need to look into that also.

I've now got 12 designs published. People seem to be liking them, but small followers at the moment on both Twitter (heading toward 300) and Instagram (up to about 70 atm).

 

[ExcelGuy]

Oh did I mention I love this? I'm in a very good mood these days.

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[ExcelGuy]

I found a great artist last night willing to sell me 3 vector images for $30 in Canada, and today I met this 10 yo girl who seems to be a pretty good artist and I spoke with her folks about getting he art out there and on products.

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[Jphiladeng]

This is a really awesome thread! Glad you are still plugging along. The t-shirt game is hard but it can be done. I have been running a line for a bit now and have learned so much!

I am about to start another more focused brand to run along side with the gig I got going now. I love to see the progress in the clothing industry and can't wait for more updates!

Also as a fellow Canadian it's pretty awesome to make American money!

PS. If you have any questions about screen-printing let me know I've been doing it for 6 years now.

 

[ExcelGuy]

On Twitter I sometimes use the hashtag [HASHTAG]#tshirtbiz[/HASHTAG] and put up some charts for marketing ideas etc. Here is a latest one comparing redbubble vs. Teespring.

So Redbubble is the winner by sheer volume. But looking at geographic results in interesting as well. I have a number of other niche lines but I am scaling back a bit to treat it more as a hobby. But my first major goal has been accomplished: I now have a number of designs on redbubble and a few other sites so I just hope they sell.

Also, redbubble has no quota, and a large community group of niche designers.

I have started using Adwords to direct people to a redbubble page, but still need to read all of @Andy Black 's posts. But limited it to $20 and got a 4.5% clickthru but no purchases. I know that that specific design is too artsy for mainstream people. Will try again next month with a simpler design.

I bought a mini-button maker and started an Etsy store. For selling on Etsy you have to produce the items yourself or have the vendor (printer) approved. So I can sell buttons I make but not tshirts printed by Gooten. So I bought some iron on transfers and the quality is actually quite nice. My sense of ethics is limiting me here. I can probably sell dozens of Dr. Who / Scifi geek buttons and shirts, but it's copyright infringement unless I design my own "fan art" and sell them.

I was going to buy heat press last month, then decided against it, and now it might be a good idea. Will keep it on hold for a while.

Instead of working on designs late at night (which is the only time I have available mostly) I read a chapter or two of the Fastlane book. So I'll soon have a better grasp of what I'm doing right, and what I'm doing wrong.

I'm also taking a free icon/symbol drawing course on Skillshare, and a person I took a class from last year just offered me 3months for $0.99 so I might take a few more courses and up my design skills. Plus, Skillshare has an affiliate program, and I like their courses.

So I'm basically running a one man design studio as a hobby and hope I can use the profit to put back into the business as I try and find a winner.

I was looking for another domain name for my personal design studio and a domain I used a few years ago is being held by a company in China. I could take my business site and add a blog aimed a beginner graphic designers with tutorials and a few quality affiliate programs. I can develop very good tutorials (and I was planning on a Udemy course anyway) which is actually my primary career field essentially.

I'll try and do some more reading on the forum and see what people are up to. But I have at least 1 "commission" to work on, my chiro wants a shirt with my logo on it (deciding on which one is best) but he wants "a white, v-neck, longsleeve tshirt" and I have to look into different long sleeve options

Plus an ex-gf has a 13yo son who is very sick with severe Crohn's disease and he's raising money for a charity he started called "Jacob's Healing Rooms" at Sick Kids Hospital and his mom wants some shirts done and I think a logo would be good. He has a birthday celebration coming up in December I should be attending in Oshawa and will be getting a couple of shirts together and maybe put a line together on Design By Humans to raise money for him.

So given that kind of work load, trying to figure out how to develop and market a tshirt line or lifestyle brand will be put on the back burner.

But then when I took time off on friday to rest my brain 10 new ideas came flooding in

 

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[Jphiladeng]

Opening an Etsy is a great idea! I think you should stay away from copyright stuff on Etsy. I've gotten dinged a couple times even though I didn't agree that I was infringing on anything. I didn't want to put up a fight even though I think I was in the right. They dish out cease and desist letters like it's going out of style.

Anyways, Etsy has a good audience for more artsy items. You can sell shirts with your own artwork and it will do well. The key is to have high quality stuff. Take great pictures. I've sold shirts with just illustrations of animals on them. Owls, otters, raccoons etc.

You have to find what works on Etsy because it's a different marketplace with a different audience.

 

[ALC]

The problem with Printful is that, if you go google for the reviews and really dig into it, you will see that a significant portion of their printed t-shirts have negative reviews, or they took too long to ship (5 - 7 working days for single t-shirt orders).
If you're running a serious brand, you need to keep the no. of returns as low as possible so that your brand is associated with *quality*. You don't want the print colors to run off after the 2nd wash, or the t-shirt came printed with the design looking very different from the original one on the screen.
With Printful, their % just isn't cutting it.

You can order samples from printful and see if it's any good, but thing is, the samples they send you might be good, but the ones your customers get will be hit-and-miss. You really should go google out and dig more into these POD stuff, there's a lot of very long detailed articles about some of the more popular ones.

For Biophase, I assume he's using Printful to sell the t-shirts to enhance his brand image and not running an actual t-shirt business like LifeIsGood, so that's not an issue for him.

For dealing with chinese suppliers, I can't give you advice on that, just make sure you know who you're dealing with.
Being a chinese and being someone familar with their style of working and their mindset (no offense to anyone here), you must ensure they don't take your designs and then print that as their own and sell it elsewhere. Chinese suppliers are hard to control especially if you're living on the other side of the world.

If I were you, I would forget about the hoodies first and just start with t-shirts to validate the designs and see if there's a market need before you go in too deep with these. There's many people on reddit wanting to start a "lifestyle t-shirt brand" with their logo on it and selling it for US$23.99, but problem is, who would want to buy a t-shirt with a random logo? LOL
You would need to really create a strong story behind the lifestyle brand and enhance it with visuals (supporting photos that enhance the message you want to carry across to your audience).

Btw, not sure if you're aware. Check out T-Shirt Forums. See if you can get any French POD contacts from there.
The China route should be your last resort. I know of a t-shirt printer in the UK that might fit what you're doing, you can PM me if you want to (nope, not affiliated with them LOL, got to know them during my research last year)

Also, for branding, check out LifeIsGood.com, OldGuysRule.com and especially, the king of t-shirt branding : JOHNNY CUPCAKES!!!!!

HINT : As I mentioned in my previous post, a lot of the better PODs don't advertise that much and their websites look crappy like they belong to the early 2000s LOL. These are the hidden gems! You have to use various multiple Google search terms to dig them out, and they're usually on the 3th, 4th or even 6th pages of the Google results.




Nope, I was referring to the sites like society6, cafepress, zazzle etc....who ship under their brand, not printful.

For POD, I think it's good for starters, but based on the CENTS model in Unscripted , once sales starts to really take off, it might be better to do it in-house so that the Control aspect can be fulfilled.

In France, the only POD who has the hoodie i want to try my design on is selling me it for 65 euros shipped, just imagine haha!
That's why i think working with chinese suppliers is more reliable and profitable, and it's even more profitable as i want to place myself in a Premium/Minimalist Brand section, because my brand name and lifestyle i want to represent is in the "rich/hustler" lifestyle.

A bit like the brand "BALR.", not the same price, but same type of business.
First of all, i'm trying to secure my brand because even if it's not working on the web, i could wear it everyday without worring if someone gonna steal it, because it would be mine ! (much loves for the royalties if someone want to steal my idea)

 

[ExcelGuy]

Great job starting @ExcelGuy. And I still have a couple sites up (that I won't post on this forum), that make ok passive income.

My advice: if you're going to sell t-shirts, then make sure you have time to scale it. If you don't have time, then hire a foreign virtual assistant to manage it all, and take a couple hundred in a week for sitting back.

It's 3:30am and my 2yo has been up for over 2 hours. Finally got him calmed down to watch kids play with trucks on Youtube so I might as well make the best of it.

Thanks @AgainstAllOdds, it sounds like a good idea. But what do you mean by scale it? Do you mean find a different niche and different designs? Or selling from different shops?

Also, do you still work with Print Aura? They have a number of bad reviews including the shirts smelling when they arrive. I'm checking out Gooten because they'll give me $25 credit and will send me 3 free samples of my shirts if I run 5 shirts with them.

I'm in Canada and I'm trying to find the best option. Shopify has a webinar on starting a tshirt store and it pretty much was everything you explained.

 

[Ika]

Great to hear that, I will follow your journey along! I have played with the thought of starting a clothing line as well, simply to learn the basics of business, take action and own clothes I really enjoy ;
Your ideas sound good so far! Your newest designs look interesting as well - I'm interested to where this is going!

How will you manage products? Are you printing at home and shipping to the customer? Or does the producer ships the products?
And will you have a little storage full of products or print as you have a sale?

Good luck!

 

[fracturize]

Oh did I mention I love this? I'm in a very good mood these days.

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Keep it up,looking forward to your progress

 

[Kabylfx]

Congrats on your progress! Looking forward for your next posts. I also started selling my own T-Shirts and it's been a great experience so far!

 

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[ExcelGuy]

Also looking for a Print on Demand service in Canada. I'm worried that when my first orders get to ontario from California I'll have to pay duties...or that my customers will!

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[ExcelGuy]

Wow have things been crazy. My first POD supplier was Gooten because they offered 3 free samples when I had 5 items in the store.

It took almost 18 days to deliver them. Thanks USPS. Also, there have been no charges for duties on the product I've received so far. Shirts from Gooten are essentially stuffed in a plastic shipping bag and dropped in the mail. The problem I have is one USPS sends it across the border it is much harder to track.

The thing is the prices are REALLY affordable.
Gooten - AA2001 Men's Medium - No Underbase - $8.78 USD
Printful - AA2001 Men's Medium - No Underbase - $14.87 USD

Printed 2 mugs for a buddy with Gooten, standard shipping, and they arrived in 4 days! Still waiting on an order from Gooten to ship directly to my sister in law that was placed on Sept 6. Still not delivered.

I ordered two of my own shirts from RedBubble when they had a 20% off sale and they arrived in 10 days but cost me quite a bit more. But it came in a cool bag with stickers

So I have to figure out a shipping process for expedited and tracked shipping and / or find a new vendor. I contacted a few guys in Toronto but I'm waiting to hear back to see if they do one-off orders.

Given the shipping delays, my wife has actually suggested I buy a heat press. That way I'd be able to get shirts and other products to locals very quickly, and hey, buying shirts wholesale from Wordan's for $4 each is a great deal when you've got two young boys who love tshirts She seems pretty keen on owning a heat press.

Still growing my main instagram account organically, but I have 2 other accounts for alternate product lines and possible brands. I have way too many ideas. Below is a chart of growth of my number of followers.

I've now received about 9 shirts from either Gooten or Redbubble, with some from Printful on the way I think. I now know what tamk tops from Bella+Canvas, and shirts from American Apparel are like.

Just heard back from Gooten support (which is pretty good actually) that their international orders can take up to 21 days. I have a friend in San Francisco that I'll try sending a shirt to and see how long it takes to ship. Hopefully, it doesn't take 21 days to get from Santa Ana, CA to SF

But having customers in my own country wait so long seems to be a stumbling block, other than switching vendors and losing some profit margin or consider raising the price. But people will only pay so much for tshirts and at the moment I don't think a $29 US tshirt is a possibility. Then again I shouldn't need to focus on selling shirts to people in Canada, unless that was part of my main business idea, which it isn't.

 

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