Do you Believe You does Make It Printing Tshirts
Josh: Traditionally Warped Tour has been thought of as more the punk and rock. What has it been like for you guys as one of the few hip hop acts out there?
A t-shirt business has unique challenges, primarily because it is a saturated market. But challenges can be overcome by conducting thorough primary and secondary market research; clearly defining profit margin targets; and developing operational plans to quickly and efficiently move inventory.
In some ways, I'm glad all that happened, as McDonald's and Wal-mart learned early on, business is not done in a vacuum. They are watching you and you are watching them. Treating your customers and vendors and others with the same kind of respect you want back, may sound simple, but it is a major key to success. I may have unusual copyrighted products that nobody else has or can have because they are based on my cartoons, my intellectual property, but buyers are savvy and feel a sense of entitlement today, and they should. They want customer service and a real person with which to talk if there is a question or concern. Doesn't matter how talented or wonderful we think we are.
Do some test market research for your T-shirt store. Do some easy test market research with your T shirt business before you start designing your T-shirt shop. Check out some popular spots where your target market shops and check out the designs on T shirts and other apparel. You might be surprised at some of the T shirts that people are buying. Designs such as fantasy images and retro artwork from the seventies's and eighties's are popular with many young people. Also evaluate the quality of the T shirts you are going to be selling by getting honest opinions from others, preferably people that are within your target market .You can do this by creating a couple of test T shirts and wearing them around or getting your friends and family to wear your designs.
It may not be the fun part of opening up a business, but you do need a plan. I remember seeing a figure on how many business failed in the first year, it is most of them, but those without a solid plan were destined to fail, particularly because there was no set direction to move forward in. You plan should reflect the area you are in. If https://teezland.com/pcat/belgium/ live on the beach, and there is tourism, you should approach the local shops and plan to sell shirts with a beach theme to the tourists. You need to think things out and determine what your local market is. It very well may be your local University, local schools or even local clubs. The smaller markets can be camps, teams, leagues (especially in some areas bowling leagues), dart leagues and many other of these niche markets.
OK, so you have the t-shirts and the designs, what about getting them printed? Well if you are just starting out you may want to go down the route of printing them yourself on your home printer and ironing them on to your plain t-shirts via a simple kit you can buy. While this is appropriate when you are getting small numbers of sales, as you can imagine you would soon run out of time in the day if you were getting high volumes of orders.
If you are in the clothing industry (t-shirt business) for instance think of the two ways you are likely to make money. First you could mass produce t-shirts overseas and sell them for a high mark up. Think of selling t-shirts on street corner stands in popular tourist cities and the Wal Marts across the nation. They sell for less but you can sell them in mass quantity. Or on the flip side you can sell limited edition products. Sell less shirts that market to a specific gender, race and income profile person. This is a niche.
