If you hate risk, but love the idea of starting a semi-automated
business from anywhere in the world than starting an online
T-shirt business could be for you.
T-shirts have universal appeal, are affordable to source
and are easily customizable.
I'm Michelle Valley and I'm a creative strategist.
I've helped fashion startups take their sales from zero to thousands.
So, if you clicked on this video, you're probably wanting to start
your own online t-shirt business.
And today I'm going to show you how.
In this video we'll cover seven key steps.
Finding your audience, creating your designs, sourcing quality
materials, printing options, validating your business idea
before investing a lot of money, opening your online store and
managing inventory and fulfillment.
Step number one, pick a niche in order to find your audience.
There's quite a bit of competition in the online
t-shirt business, because there's such a low barrier to entry.
In order to cut through the noise.
You're going to want to specialize so that you stand
out against your competition.
Picking a niche ensures that you're catering to a
specific group or audience.
So if you decide to go with funny slogans on your Tee's,
that's going to be too broad.
But if you choose funny slogans that appeal to
neurologists, for example, then you're on the right track.
A good niche is going to be an inch wide and a mile deep.
Whenever someone asks me how to choose a niche, I always
recommend they choose something that's of actual interest to them.
If you're genuinely interested and passionate about it,
that will drive your success.
If that's not an option, here's some ways to find a niche.
Check out a niche subreddit and take a look at the engagement
and subscriber counts.
You can also use Facebook's audience insights tool.
It's a tool that marketers use to get more information
about their target audience.
It'll bring up information like geography, demographics,
purchase behavior, and more.
Now it's time to choose your design.
In this business, you have to make a real effort to stand out.
So going with a design that already exists is probably
not going to cut it.
That doesn't mean you have to go with a super complex design,
sometimes simpler designs do best.
But what that does mean is that you have to go with a design that
resonates with your audience.
So do research.
What is the cultural language that only your audience understands?
Are there any industry inside jokes?
Once you have some ideas rolling around in your
head, then you're going to want to make a design file.
If you're uncomfortable with making the actual design file
yourself, check out dribble, freelancer Upwork, or be
hand to hire somebody out.
If you are comfortable creating the designs Adobe illustrator for
any flat designs, otherwise use Photoshop for any complex designs,
like the use of photography.
Make sure your images are 300 pixels per inch, are using CMYK
and have a transparent background.
Measure out the actual design so that it's taking
up enough of the shirt.
Quality is so important.
You don't want your patterns to fade or crack, and you don't want
the actual shirt to shrink or rip.
That's not going to create raving fans that are going
to come back to repurchase.
The final quality of your shirt will depend on the
material that you choose.
And the printing technique.
Here are five things you're going to want to keep in mind when
you're choosing the actual shirt.
Fit, material, sizing, softness, and weight.
I've left a link in the description box with the top six, most
popular t-shirts to choose from.
So that's the actual t-shirt covered.
Now you have to think about our printing options.
There's three popular ways of doing this.
There's screen printing, direct to garment and heat transfer.
All of them have their pros and cons.
Screen printing is effective for larger batches.
However, it's not cost effective for multiple colors.
And you can only really print simple images and designs.
Then there's heat transfer.
With heat transfer, you can produce full color images
relatively quickly and easily.
All you do is order the prints from your local printer and press
each shirt on demand yourself.
On the flip side, this method doesn't produce
as high quality results.
It can be a large investment up front because a heat press
costs anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
And taking the Do-It-Yourself approach does require you
to invest a lot of time, so that can be harder to scale.
Direct to garment has unlimited color options and your
designs can be very detailed.
It's great for smaller orders and there are no setup costs.
However, this won't be cost effective for larger runs because
there are no volume discounts.
Before you invest a lot of money in your new business idea.
Make sure that you verify that there's a market and
interest in your designs.
Get feedback using your social networks.
Post your designs to Facebook, niche Facebook
groups, and Instagram.
But be careful when you're asking your friends and
family, because their opinions are prone to kindness.
Despite the community's general aversion to marketing,
Reddit is still a great place to get honest feedback.
It's easy to tap into a niche with the amount of
subreddits there are out there.
Just post your design and ask for some honest feedback.
And who knows that interaction might turn into
a sale later down the line.
Crowd funding sites have made it much easier to validate
and collect money up front for your new business idea.
Crowd funding campaigns can be extremely time consuming, but
the benefits, this can be huge.
You may be able to fully fund your project before you even launch it.
And if you have a particularly novel idea, like matching shirts
for dogs and their owners, then crowdfunding might be for you.
Check out Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
By integrating your Shopify store with a print on demand service,
you can validate your idea without investing in inventory.
Check out the description box below for list of 10 companies
for print on demand services.
Of course is the part where we mentioned Shopify.
How could we not.
Shopify is a quick and easy way to get started.
And luckily Shopify has a free trial, so you can get
your business set up before even having to spend a dime.
Here are a couple of things to note, to make your Shopify store
easy to use and nice to look at.
Make sure your homepage has clear images of your T-shirts
and people wearing them.
Include strategically placed shop now buttons to encourage purchases.
New shoppers will want to find out more about your business.
So include an about us page with your brand story and
what makes you different.
Include a shipping and returns policy.
This will make your customers feel confident
when buying your products.
Also include a contact page to instill trust.
Good customer service is key when gaining new customers and
encouraging repeat customers.
Your product pages should have a description of the fit materials
and other important information.
Make sure you're including multiple photos of the tee shirts,
all shown at different angles.
We have an entire video dedicated just to increasing conversions.
So if you want to learn more about how you can do that, click this
link up here and open it in a new tab so you can watch it later.
But if you're more in the market for a quick setup,
go with the print on demand service that integrates directly
with your Shopify store.
You'll be able to take orders right away.
These services will print and ship your tee shirts to your
customers, on your behalf, every time you receive an order.
It's a great way to get started because there's no need to
purchase or hold any inventory.
Best of all if you want to use your design on other principal
products like totes or mugs, you have the option to do that as well.
If you plan on holding inventory, you're going to have
to have a strategy for this.
Too much inventory, you're going to tie up all your funds
in product, but if you don't hold enough inventory and your
lead times are too long, your customers might get upset when
they have to wait for their orders.
My recommendation would be to start lean.
Start with 20 T-shirts.
If it ends up being too much, you can just send it to friends
and influencers and chalk it up to a marketing expense.
If it's too little, you can always order more.
Just make sure you're clear with your customers about lead
times, take into account how long it takes to produce and
to ship to your customers.
I actually want to reiterate how important it is not to tie up
all your funds and inventory.
You're still going to want to have some leftover money for
Facebook ads, your website, photo shoots, and the list goes on.
So that about wraps it up.
In this video we learned how to find your audience,
create your designs and source quality material.
We also covered printing options, how to validate your business
idea and managing inventory.
Those are all the tools that you need in order to start a
successful T-shirt business today.
As always, if you have any questions, make sure to leave
them in the comment section below and I will get back to each
and every single one of them.
Thank you so much for watching.
Do not forget to subscribe and I will see you in the next one.