T-Shirts
I live in T-shirts, whether it be at the gym, socially, or just hanging around the house it is pretty much all I wear, unless I have to go to the office. Many website owners have found that a nice T-shirt design may outsell their core products and with the viral nature of the internet a particularly funny or topical T-shirt can earn the website owner a healthy profit.
Offline as well, T-shirts can be a winner. If you can source good quality blanks cheaply enough and provide a reliable printing service then you can supply T-shirts to other companies, fund raisers, and even as a novel way to commemorate private parties, bachelor nights etc.
If you are creative and want to be involved primarily on the design side then sites like www.printmojo.com and www.cafepress.com allow you to design and market your own T-shirts, you take care of the marketing and they will take care of the printing and distribution.
Even if you are not a creative type, there are possible ways to get into this business, either by partnering with someone who is creative, or by working with people who have their own designs, but are struggling to market them.
Assuming that you have your first design (or someone else’s) the key, as with most businesses is to market them. I cannot stress strongly enough here that price is not the issue that everyone thinks it is. If you want to sell a lot of T-shirts then you need to make sure that the quality is good enough, and that they are affordable but you do not need to be the cheapest T-shirt provider in town. If you are aiming at a niche market, or only looking to produce limited numbers of your designs then you can afford to charge more.
The reason this is important is that many people look at this business and say, I can’t do that because I can’t get my blank T-shirts cheaply enough. Cheaply enough for what? If you have a unique design and people like your design you are no longer competing against the cost of blank T-shirts you are into the realm of what is a reasonable price for a unique design that appeals to people like X. Football and Basketball T-shirts sell for crazy prices but are just T-shirts, I bet if you could command those prices you wouldn’t even look at the cost of blanks initially? So how do you get to a position where you can command higher prices, or create enough volume that thin margins don’t matter?
Possible approaches might include: -
Rock Festival, e.g. Reading Festival, Glastonbury
Cult websites
Political References
Team/Tour T-shirts
Charity fundraisers
If you are intending to attend a major rock festival, it may be worth finding out in advance what it would cost to have a stall officially. If this is out of your reach then a couple of bags full of shirts can easily be moved over the course of a weekend, and whilst you shouldn’t infringe any trademarks, references can be made to the event, and the year along with a funny design. Price will be flexible, with some revellers happy to pay above normal for a commemorative T-shirt whilst others will be broke and will try to beat your price down because they are “unofficial”. Even if you can’t get in, you can stand outside before or afterwards and sell your wares and there is little that the organisers can do about it. This also works for major sporting events, although be careful with the Beijing Olympics as you may get arrested.
There are some “cult” websites that are crying out for T-shirts, official or unofficial. I pitched an idea to Google a couple of years ago for a shirt with your search results printed on and they didn’t even bother to reply. The problem with the big corporate sites is that they will sue you if they find out you are infringing their trademarks, but there are plenty of blogs and privately owned websites where this is not the case. Try emailing the webmaster and asking if they are interested in working with you and sharing the profits.
Political rallies, major political events, and even daily cartoon satire can all be the genesis for major runs of T-shirts. In Taiwan last year the Premier’s son in law was jailed and thousands of shirts were sold showing his face behind bars. Some smart entrepreneur was probably not worried about the cost of his blanks on that one. You still need to get your shirts out there, and that might mean selling through student unions, or out of a box on a street corner but with the right event this can be very lucrative.
If you have a local team going on tour, or even doing particularly well on a cup, or league run then you may want to sell some supporters “unofficial” T-shirts. The best approach is to go through the supporters clubs (there are usually several unofficial ones for big teams) and offer to share the profits if they will support you with a mention on their web pages and in their current literature. When Korea was doing well in the 2002 soccer world cup they could not produce enough of the official T-shirts and the unofficial ones were everywhere. Someone must have made a killing.
All of these ideas revolve around you being ready to go at the right time. The more you execute, the more you will learn. The cost of starting up is not that high, but start to think about marketing offline more than online, and targeting your audience if you want to make some real money. Printing your own T-shirt for your website, or to satisfy your creative desires, is akin to paying someone to publish your memoirs, you will be lucky to sell any and that is why there are so many sob stories about people losing their shirts in this game.
As mentioned above sites like www.printmojo.com can do everything for you, but you can find suppliers easily using Google and your city name. A suggestion that makes sense to me is to find a local printer that you can work with and ask them to recommend suppliers.
If you get to a certain size and start wanting to get into the more competitive business of printing T-shirts for companies, schools, clubs etc. then you will be able to buy on a larger scale. When this happens you can buy your T-shirt blanks from overseas but remember to get samples first and check the quality.
This can be a real Guerrilla business, seize the moment and you will make money.
Be prepared to share your profits to get the sanction of individuals or organisations that can help spread the word.
You have a chance to be creative here, providing it fits the group you are targeting. Look for opportunities constantly and then let your creative juices flow.