Why sell T-shirts?
Before starting a T-shirt business, there is an important question to be answered: why sell T-shirts? Indeed, the apparel market is huge and keep renewing every moment, and the success stories about T-shirt business are emerging and those successful startups are encouraging people to step into this creative market. The T-shirt market is competitive, dynamic and changing rapidly in both retail and e-commerce, it is necessary to have a brief knowledge of the market through data. Get the most out the some databases, such as google trends, startus insights and statista, read the most recent reports about apparel market and discover the trends in the industry.
1.Choose a Niche
Individual and home-based e-commerce is developing rapidly, everyone is equal to make the most of their talent and obtain a portion in the market. People are looking for distinctive designs, to make your product unique and competitive, you should identify your own market, finding a specific audience to make T-shirts for. For example, with the growing awareness of environment protection and energy saving, there is an increasing demand on sustainable and eco-friendly t-shirts.
2.Considerations for starting a T-shirt business
The first thing you need to consider is how to find the right production method for your t-shirts. There are many techniques that can apply in t-shirt design, such as screen printing, embroidery, sublimation, DTG printing, DTF printing and so on. You should take times to learn different techniques from official introduction or video showcases and decide how you want to product your t-shirts. These techniques have different learning curves and require diverse investments. DTF printing is a newly-developed technology that starts from 2018. It can produce colorful and durable design on garments. Compared with other techniques, DTF printing has a relatively flat learning curve. What you need is a DTF printer, a curing oven and a heat press, printing out your design, curing inks with adhesive powder and heat press it onto a T-shirt.
So the next thing you want to know is how much investment is needed to start a T-shirt business. If you decide to set up a home-based business and produce customized t-shirts on your own, the machines required will determine the most of your overhead. In addition to the fixed costs of materials, there are other investments, such as inventory and rent. You need to spend your time to do some research, decide what kind of machine to purchase, how to handle inventory, and calculate all the costs.
3.Draft a Business Plan
To make sure the investment don’t exceed your capability financially, you should write a strategic plan. If you can not afford purchasing machines, it will be a good choice to find a print provider with quality products and sell one-offs. Place some sample order from different sources and check out whether the quality is satisfying. Or build up your home-based studio to print T-shirt one by one and ship out packages the same day as you receive some orders. This is helpful for increasing customers’ satisfaction by shorten the fulfill time of your orders.
And after the plan is all set, don’t forget to register your T-shirt business, create a brand and make your business legal.
4.Create Your Unique Design
Before creating your t-shirt designs, you need to spend some time thinking about the goals of your brands, whether it is to convey some ideas and concepts or it is to bring out your own painting creation. If you get stuck in creation, you can reach out for outsourcing service. There are some specific websites that you can hire artists to create designs for you. And you can look for inspiration from various sources, such as art exhibitions, fashion shows and top sellers in e-commerce websites. Additionally, there are some useful tools that can help you create unique and interesting designs, like Photoshop, Canvas and Midjourney.
5.Create an Online Store
After everything is prepared and ready, it’s time to choose your sales channels, you can sell your products on Ebay, Etsy and Amazon, or set up your online store. It would be more convenient for you to arrange and customize the marketing content, and test the purchase experience if you can create an easy-to-use website by yourself. You can search for some website builders to help you finish the job.
6.Validate your t-shirt designs
Before putting your t-shirt design into production, you mock up your t-shirts in pictures. People want to see how it looks when the t-shirt is worn by real people. And it is an economical strategy to validate your t-shirt designs starting from a small group of people. Set a sweet price and create a preorder landing page for your target audience. It is important for you to make sure that the design is accepted by your chosen niche. During the course of marketing your products, you are having a good opportunity to continuously analyze the performance and figure out a better way to fine tune your marketing plans and strategies.
