Small Business Ideas: How to Start an Online T-Shirt Business

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not only are they a classic piece of casual wear but t-shirts are blank canvas for artists and entrepreneurs alike because of this selling t-shirts online has become a very popular business choice the good news is that online t-shirt stores are relatively inexpensive and quick and easy to set up the bad news is competition will be stiff and margins can be small so in order to be successful with your new t-shirt business you need to make the right decisions from the get-go in this video we’ll go through the entire process of starting an online t-shirt business will go over strategy t-shirt and print quality as well as creating and mocking up your designs and then we’re going to show you step by step the easiest most cost effective way to get your online t-shirt business up and running without having to deal with any setup costs minimum orders or even shipping and fulfillment now I’ll be starting a store from scratch so I can show you just how easy it is to get up and running here’s a sneak peak of what the final product will look like so follow along and by the end of this video you two will have created a beautiful online store even if you have no design or coding experience okay there’s a lot to cover in this video so if you’ve already thought about strategy t-shirt quality and design you may want to skip ahead to one of the following sections and for those of you just starting out we’ll get started with strategy and some of the key areas you’ll want to focus on to ensure you build a solid brand that sticks out from the competition alright let’s get started nitch you hear this term get tossed around a lot but nowhere is it more important to choose your niche than in the graphic t-shirt industry in general broad categories like t-shirts with funny slogans on them are gonna be very hard to gain traction in because there’s so much competition online you’re gonna want to tighten it up a little bit an example of a more specific niche would be t-shirts with funny slogans on them that relate specifically to fitness design the majority of people purchasing graphic tees are looking for designs graphics and slogans that connect with them and reflect their opinions and personality your designs don’t necessarily need to be complex in fact many of the best-selling graphic tees are very simple however they do need to connect with your audience and standout quality another extremely important factor in the success and sustainability of an online t-shirt business is quality you can fool someone once but you can’t fool them twice the quality of the shirts you use and the prints need to be good quality a pattern that fades or cracks or a t-shirt that shrinks and rips won’t create raving fans that come back and repurchase let’s dig a little deeper into t-shirt and print quality so t-shirt quality not all t-shirts are the same and not all print jobs are the same so it’s important to educate yourself and choose your blank shirts wisely it will always be tempting to sacrifice quality for higher profit margins but you need to consider how quality will affect your customers decisions to share your brand or repurchase in the long run now a quality t-shirt encompasses several factors including fit sizing material softness and weight a great starting point for determining which blank t-shirts to use is to check out t-shirt magazine on lines review of some of the most popular blank t-shirts for printing we’ve linked to this in the description of this video once you narrow down your choices we suggest you order each of the t-shirts yourself so you can make an informed final decision t-shirt printing quality in this day and age there are three popular methods for printing designs onto t-shirts each of them have their pros and cons and will partially depend on how much time you want to put into product creation as well as the printing partner you choose one of your options is screen printing which is an all technique that has stood the test of time as one of the most popular methods for printing onto t-shirts screen printing can produce durable and long lasting results however a labor-intensive initial setup means screen printing is most cost effective when printing in bulk screen printing also poses issues when it comes to comp flex design sir designs with more than four to five colors as each color increases costs and production time another method is heat transfers and heat transfers have also been around for a long time and exist in several forms you may have even seen basic heat transfer paper at your local office supply store although these make it easy to print your designs from your home computer and transfer them with an iron these won’t cut it when it comes to running a business the more advanced form of heat transfers are called plastisol transfers and are printed by professional printers on special high quality heat transfer paper the advantage of this is being able to order a stack of prints from your local printer and transfer them to your t-shirts as you receive orders with a commercial heat press machine heat transfers can produce full-color images onto t-shirts quickly and easily the final technique for printing is the direct to garment printing process which operates a lot like an inkjet printer you would have at home the printer prints ink directly onto the t-shirts and can produce full-color images with accuracy direct-to-garment printing produces quality printing on par with screen printing and better than heat transfers because it operates just like an inkjet printer there are no setup costs this means that it’s easy and cost effective to print small orders the major disadvantage however is a lack of volume discounts for large orders as it takes the same amount of time to print each shirt so which option is best for your business well like we said before this all depends on your unique situation however for many new online t-shirt brands will be hard to sell a large volume immediately which makes screen printing a little bit too pricey and although heat transfers allow you to print on demand they’re time consuming and generally of lower quality so direct-to-garment may be your best bet alright let’s talk about t-shirt design now if you already have a design feel free to skip ahead creating your designs once you have some ideas for t-shirts you’ll actually have to design them now if you have Photoshop or any similar programs you can try and produce some simple designs yourself however if you’re like most of us you may need to enlist some further help now a great place you can find a design community with loads of unique talent is on dribble search for the style you’re looking for and message to the designers you like to see if they’re available for freelance projects additionally if you can’t find a designer there are also options to purchase pre-made designs we suggest taking a look at the t-shirt marketplaces design ewis and t-shirt factory which we’ve linked to below this video although you’ll want to keep in mind that if you choose to go this route there’s a high likelihood that other people are already selling the design making it harder for you and your brand to stand out you may also want to check out general graphic design marketplaces like creative market and graphic river but keep in mind if you plan to sell your t-shirts you’ll need to purchase a commercial license mocking up your designs once you have your final designs your next step will be to get some mock-up images of them on actual t-shirts the easiest way to do this is to use a free web-based t-shirt mock-up tool these tools allow you to quickly preview how your designs will look like printed on a t-shirt head over to shirt mock-up com or the printful comm slash generator to give it a try and for those are you comfortable with Adobe Photoshop you can make use of the abundance of Photoshop t-shirt templates available online most Photoshop templates come with multiple layers that allow you to change the color of the shirt and apply your own design that will blend with the creases and folds of the shirt I’ve linked to a few of these in the description of this video validating your designs before you spend a lot of money on your new business idea you should first verify that there’s a market for your designs there are a number of ways you can do this the first thing you can do is post some of your designs to Facebook Twitter or any other social network that your friends and potential customers might be a part of to see if there’s any interest be careful asking friends however their opinions will usually be biased because they want to support you now a great place to get some unbiased feedback on your designs is rebbit the unique thing about reddit is that there are thousands of category specific subreddits so it’s easy to find a highly targeted niche of potential customers to find relevant subreddits simply use reddit search feature and type in your keywords of choice from there you can ask some first-hand their thoughts on your designs before launching Kickstarter and other crowdfunding websites have also made it much easier to test validate and collect money upfront for your new business idea launching a crowdfunding campaign can be time consuming and requires a good deal of preparation however the benefits can be huge which include fully funding your project before you have spent a dime those are just a few methods you can try to validate your t-shirt idea however with e-commerce platforms like Shopify it has never been easier to set up a fully functional online store in a matter of minutes to validate your new business idea additionally we think the easiest and most practical way to get your online t-shirt business started is by integrating with an online on-demand printing and fulfillment service these services are incredibly convenient and allow you to set up your online t-shirt business without any risk there a wide variety of t-shirts you can print on no setup cost no minimum orders and you don’t even need to hold inventory you simply upload your t-shirt artwork and the type of shirt you want them to print on and when you receive an order the t-shirt is created and sent directly to your customer the great thing is the customer has no idea you’ve used this type of service because you can customize the return address and include your branding in the packaging also if you’re using Shopify there are several of these services in our app store that connect directly with your ecommerce store this means that once a shirt is ordered from your online store it will be automatically created and shipped directly to your customer ID link to a few of these providers in the description of this video but for now let’s head over to Shopify comm and sign up for a free trial so we can show you just how easy it is to get your t-shirt business up and running with one of these services so for those of you don’t know Shopify is a fully hosted turnkey e-commerce solution that allows you to easily set up and run your own beautiful store on your own domain I’m gonna quickly start a new store from scratch so I can walk you through the setup process the first thing I will cover is how to sync your store with an on-demand printing and fulfillment service and then I’m going to show you how to add products and customize the look and feel of your store to start we’ll type our email into the box there and hit get started then we’ll create our password in the name of our store if you’re following along and haven’t decided on a name for your store yet don’t worry you can easily change your store name later okay so it just takes a few moments to create your store great so Shopify wants to know where we would like to sell let’s focus on an online store for now let’s quickly add our address to set up our shops currency okay so Shopify wants to know a bit more about our plans our you’re already selling and we haven’t started selling product yet so I’ll take that off and how much revenue does your business currently make in a year we’re starting from scratch so I’ll click $0 okay so now that we’ve created our online store we’ll find ourselves within the Shopify admin dashboard and it’s best to think of the dashboard as the control center for all the operations we’ll perform on our Shopify store now I want to get right into showing you how to integrate with an on-demand printing and fulfillment service so let’s jump right into it but if you’re looking to go into more detail with starting your Shopify store we have another great tutorial video that shows you how to get up and running in more detail I’d link to that video in the description of this video ok let’s get started the first thing we’ll do is head to the Shopify app store to do this we’ll click on the apps tab on the Left panel and then we’ll select visit the App Store so the Shopify app store has hundreds of apps that can extend the functionality of your Shopify store in categories ranging from marketing shipping sales and customer service now we’re looking for a pretty specific type of app so let’s narrow our results by searching for the word t-shirt as you can see there are currently six available apps that appear in the search results for t-shirt you can take a look at each of them and read what they have to offer as well as look at customer reviews for this tutorial we’re gonna take a look at printful okay so like we said no upfront cost they offer personal branding so it looks like you sent it no manual orders everything is automatically sent to printful if we scroll down we can see they offer a wide variety of t-shirts American Apparel Gildan and anvil they also offer sweatshirts posters mugs and a whole bunch of other products if you’d like to branch out they also offer 20% off and free shipping if you’d like to order samples of your t-shirts and they conveniently provide you with mock-up images that you can use in your Shopify store they even have some pre-written product descriptions you can use although we suggest creating your own all right let’s go ahead and add the app now I’ve already created an account so I’ll be brought directly to my Shopify page where I’ll install full once you’ve created an account you will be directed here as well and we’ll just take a few seconds to sync to our store okay so our store is sync with printful and we haven’t added any products to our store so we won’t see anything here quite yet in the blue box we can see that printful wants to make sure we follow their print guidelines let’s click on that link here we can see more information on the t-shirts and pricing they offer if we scroll down we can see the variety of shirts and sweaters they offer and if we click on the image we can see all the colors that are offered as well as a description and sizing information if we click on the retail prices tab we can see how much each shirt will cost and these prices are what you pay for the t-shirt and the print the american apparel 2001 t-shirt cost you sixteen dollars and if you sell your t-shirt at $26 you will profit $10 of course you decide how you want to price your t-shirt so you determine your own profit margins if we click on the shipping tab we can see the rates for the USA Canada and the rest of the world just like pricing it’s up to you to decide if you want to offer free shipping on your products or if you want to adjust your shipping rates according to the printful ones we’ll dig into this in more detail shortly if we click on the mock ups tab we can download some apparel mock-ups and they also point you in the direction of some other mock-up tools that we mentioned earlier like shirt mock-up comm and if we click on the guidelines tab we can get some instruction on the details of the print file we need to include we can very easily download these files and work along with them but if we want to get started quickly we can click on the mock-up generator from the top menu so this feature allows you to generate a t-shirt mock-up and print file very easily the first thing we can do is pick our t-shirt brand we’re going to print on American Apparel tees so I’ll select that the next thing we’ll do is pick our t-shirt color and then we can upload our artwork once it’s uploaded we can adjust where we want it to appear on our teacher we can Center the file by clicking the center button or adjust the size of our graphic by using the slider bar when we’re ready we can click to proceed to the file generator and click to generate the mock-up and print file and it will just take a few moments and we can now download these files great now let’s quickly set up our billing information so we can get all synced up with Shopify there are a few options but we’ll go with the default payment method now if your print full account is connected with your Shopify store all you have to do is add a credit card and any new Shopify orders will automatically be added to printful and your credit card will be automatically charged for them no manual order submission required let’s head over to our Shopify admin and add our first product to our store to do this we’ll click the products tab and select add product the first thing we’ll do is name our shirt just below that we can add our product description you’ll want to take some time to craft a proper product description but we can always change this later type t-shirt vendor Shopify let’s also make sure we add this to the front page collection which means the product will be featured on our homepage and images this is where we can upload our t-shirt mock-ups or if we have any other shots of our products on models or anything like that for now let’s just add the mock-up file that printful created for us okay price let’s say $30 since we plan to print on demand we don’t need to track inventory so we’ll need to add the weight of our product for when we set up our shipping rates we’ll get into this in more detail later but for now I’m gonna say that our t-shirt weighs point five kilograms variance this is where we can add our different shirt sizes and we’ll just type in the sizes we offer and separate them with a comma okay let’s hit save and our product has been successfully created so now we’ll want to sync our t-shirt with printful let’s hit this handy button on our top bar and select edit on printful and as we can see our shirt has been synced and it is showing the sizes we added what we can now do is add our print file and let printful know what type of shirt and size we would like them to print on product type t-shirt brand we’re gonna go with the American Apparel and the model will go with the popular 2001 fine jersey sleeve men’s t-shirt the size for this one will be small and the color black we can now add our print file by selecting front print and clicking upload file then we’ll locate the print file we generated and downloaded and click the image to confirm we also have the option to add a back print added an additional cost we can also add the mock up we created let’s go ahead and do that we’ll just take a few seconds to upload and again we’ll click the image to confirm then we will hit done and repeat the process for the additional sizes as you can see the info is conveniently filled out and we simply have to change the size of the shirt and I’ll just adjust our large shirt as well great so our t-shirt is all synced up with printful and ready to go now let’s take a look at adding our branding to the packages printful ships out to our customers so printable is completely white label which means you will not see their name or branding anywhere and they make it very easy to add our branding to their packages to do this we’ll head to settings from the top tab select stores from the left tab and then click Edit so here we have the option to add or branding sticker follow printful size and quality guidelines and at no extra cost you can easily add your logo to all your packages additionally you can add some custom text to your packing slips by filling out the custom packing slip message you also have the option to change your return address although printful recommends that you keep theirs okay great so now that we’re all synced up with printful let’s head back to our Shopify admin dashboard and quickly set up our payments and shipping rates to set up payments will head to settings and then select payments okay so for our users in the UK US and Canada our Shopify stores have automatically been set up with Shopify payments which allows us to start accepting payments from all major credit cards instantly all we have to do is click to complete Shopify payments account setup and fill out the relevant information and for users outside of the UK US and Canada don’t worry Shopify is integrated with over 70 different payment partners so there are plenty of hassle free options available additionally as soon as we open our Shopify store we’ll be set up with a PayPal Express Checkout account with the email we use to sign up for a Shopify store as soon as we receive our first or through PayPal Express Checkout PayPal will send us an email that contains the link and instructions to complete our PayPal account setup and claim our funds all right let’s set up our shipping rates and to do this we’ll select the shipping tab on our left panel ok so like we said before it’s entirely up to you how you want to set up your shipping rates you may decide you want to offer free shipping to your customers or even build the shipping prices into the cost of your shirt we have some great resources that can help you get a shipping strategy in place that I will link to in the description of this video but for now we’ll show you an easy and safe way to set up your shipping rates so that they match the rates that print pool will charge you let’s pull up printable shipping rates for reference so as you can see they have different rates for the USA Canada and worldwide shipping we’ll set up a Canadian rates first because that’s where we’re located so our first t-shirt will cost $8 and each additional shirt will cost $1 so we’ve already been set up with some standard shipping rates but these won’t do us much good since we want to match print fulls rates so let’s get rid of heavy goods shipping let’s open up the standard shipping rate and customize it we’ll start by setting up a shipping rate if our customer orders one t-shirt now if you remember we put the weight of our t-shirt at 0.5 kilograms so we’ll put our range zero kilograms to 0.5 kilograms and we’ll set the shipping price to $8 as per print fulls rates now we can hit save and our shipping rates for orders of a single t-shirt have been set so next we’ll want to set up a rate for customers who order two t-shirts we’ll click Add shipping rate I’ll have the same title standard shipping okay so we know we’ve waited one t-shirt at 0.5 kilograms so two t-shirts will weigh one kilogram therefore we’ll want to change the weight range of this rate to 0.6 kilograms so that it weighs more than one shirt to one kilogram and we know printful charges one extra dollar for each additional t-shirt Canada so we’ll change our rate to nine dollars instead of eight in a similar fashion you may also decide to give your customers who are ordering a bunch of shirts a deal on shipping you can achieve this by change the weight range for example to one point one to twenty kilograms with a shipping rate of ten dollars meaning if they order three shirts or more their offer the same rate of ten dollars to set up rates for the USA we can click Add country and select the United States will then follow the same method as we use to set up our Canadian rates to set up international rates select rest of the world and again follow the same process to set up your rates okay so we’ve taken care of the logistics our store is integrated with printful our products are synced and we’ve provided print files we’ve set up our billing information on printful and set up our Shopify store to accept payments our rates are set but you’re probably wondering what does my store actually look like well that’s really up to you let’s head back to our admin and click on the themes tab to get started customizing the look and feel of our store so the theme of Shopify store controls all the aspects of the stores appearance and layout now Shopify actually automatically sets us up with an introductory theme called Launchpad which is a great starter theme but let’s quickly head over to the theme store and explore some other options so there are lots of themes to choose from and we encourage you to take some time looking through them and seeing which one would work well with your t-shirt business for now let’s narrow our results a little bit by selecting a free theme that is in clothing and fashion so our results have narrowed significantly and I’m personally drawn to the new standard theme so I’ll click on it here we can learn more about the theme view a demo see what styles it comes in and read some reviews if we’re satisfied with what we see we can click get theme and publish it as our stores theme now we can view what our store is looking like by clicking this view on your website button or at any time by using the Handy icon in the bottom left corner so our website is pretty blank we’ve only added one product but we can easily customize our theme and start filling it out by adding our logo to the top adding a nice slider image and filling out our about Us section first things first I’m going to quickly go back to our products page and add three more t-shirts just so we can better visualize our store I’d encourage everyone to do the same if you’re following along make sure to add your new products to the front page collection so they will appear on your home page I’d also like to mention that if you’re adding shirts that you plan to sell remember to sync them with printful by using the same process we used with our first t-shirt okay great so now we have four products to fill out our store and help visualize it let’s head back to our themes and click customize theme and there are four products displayed on our front page let’s start by adding our logo to do this we’ll click on the header tab if we read the description it lets us know that our logo dimensions can be a maximum of 844 pixels wide and 200 pixels high I’ve already got a logo prepared so I’ll click Choose file locate my image and click open great let’s save those changes next up let’s add a slider image by clicking the back arrow and going down to the homepage tab we can see that our image should be 844 pixels by 490 pixels let’s click the replace button under slide 1 and select our banner image cool so that’s added I also have another one I’d like to add so that it will scroll through two different photos same idea I’ll click replace under slide two and locate my photo awesome you can very easily add captions or you may even decide you want to turn off the slider take some time to explore the storefront editor it’s extremely intuitive so you can easily customize the look of your store if we look at the footer section for example we can easily link our social icons which are located at the bottom of our page to our appropriate channels simply by changing the URL if we don’t use a particular social channel we can easily remove the icon by deleting the URL entirely and as you can see our Google+ icon is no longer there and if we’re interested we can add our contact information into the boxes below ok let’s save changes all right so our t-shirt store is starting to fill out nicely and another thing we may want to edit is our about Us section and our blog to start we’ll head back to our admin dashboard and click pages from within the pages we can very easily customize our about Us page and we can change the text on our front page by selecting the front page section and just like everything else adding blog posts is extremely easy click on the blog post tab from the panel and there’s one set up for you that is ready to edit and to add additional blog posts simply hit the add blog post button from the top right hand corner okay and the last thing we recommend you do is register a custom web address to do this we’ll click settings and then domains all new stores start with a dot my Shopify dot-com address as a way to log in and store our content safely however it will look much more professional if you get your own custom com address for example you can do this very easily by selecting the buy domain button the domains will even be offered to you at a discounted price or if you already have a domain you can easily add it to your store by selecting to add an existing domain and there you go just like that you’re all set up with your custom branded online t-shirt store and if you follow it along your t-shirts are all synced up with printful so when someone purchases a t-shirt an order is automatically sent to printful printed on your t-shirt of choice and sent directly to your customer and since you don’t have to worry about upfront inventory costs or printing and shipping you’ll have plenty of time to focus on other aspects of growing and running your online t-shirt business I’d also like to mention that your store is currently private and password protected but when you’re ready to launch you can easily remove your password by heading to settings then scrolling down to the storefront password section to remove your password and make your store live to the public if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below and if you found this video helpful please let us know by clicking the like button thanks for watching ready to put what you learned into action head over to Shopify comm to start your free trial