You, me, and everyone around at least own one T-shirt. Even a 3-month-old baby has a T-shirt. That’s how big this industry is. But being a massive industry, it also has enormous competition, and I am not talking about the offline clothing stores but the online stores.
With so many platforms available to start and as many web-to-print services, you can start without a hassle. Starting a T-shirt business is cheap and quick, given you have some plans. Even if you don’t, do not worry, as we have you covered.
Here is how you can successfully start your own T-shirt business online.
Everything Starts With an Idea
The sole reason you are reading this blog is that you have an idea. But is that enough? If you have an idea, note it down somewhere and start researching how you are going to start. Will you purchase from manufacturers, or are you a manufacturer? Try to research your questions and possibilities of what you can do. You should be aware of who would be your target audience. Know more about them and even understand what their requirements are. What does the market demand? You can get all this information through research. Conducting surveys and asking people questions helps you plan your business even better. Once you complete your research and understand what to do, here comes your next step.
Make A Plan
Having a plan is very important when starting a business. A plan will help you rearrange your duties, define your roles and your activities, and also give you a proper idea of the order in which to perform the tasks. The plan includes all your operational activities, your investments and where and how you will implement them, your production plan, the design, and the services you would use. It could be an online T-shirt design software or even web-to-print services. We’ll know all these in detail in the below-mentioned steps. But to sum up everything, a plan should be your basic idea which you write down so that you can use it as a reference or even a guide to performing tasks.
Sourcing Your Tshirts
Now, this is where you have to choose the path for your business as it describes how you will get your T-Shirts in the first place. Now the best way to get the T-shirt you want is by going to the manufacturer. You can buy the plain T-shirts you are looking for from the manufacturers either in bulk or in the quantity you want, given the manufacturer agrees to it. You can buy plain t-shirts from retailers, but they might have a brand logo. It will also be expensive compared to buying from manufacturers. Make sure to go for the quality. So let’s say you go with the manufacturers. What’s next?
Printing The T-Shirt
Now that you have the T-Shirt, it’s time to decide how you intend to print your designs on them. For instance, you could buy or rent a T-shirt printer and print T-shirts at your home or office. But those are still expensive. Don’t forget the ink costs as well. Also, you must know how to use it properly and consider maintenance costs. Else, it would only make your costs high even though it could give you per T-shirt profit. Another and relatively better option during your initial phase is to use web services of web-to-print companies. You can also use print-on-demand services if you provide one to your consumers. Now web-to-print companies are a better option to opt for even though you would have lesser profits.
Designing
Now, this is where you make your T-shirt unique from the competitor. This will define your business and attract consumers. If you have done proper research, you might have some idea what designs you would be going for and if you are open to customization based on your consumer. Now let me mention it again. Design is everything, and you have to make unique and top-quality designs that require you to use T-shirt design software that is available in numbers. From Canva to Adobe and Graffix pro, these are some of the best and top-quality T-shirt design software you can use to design your T-shirts. Make sure that your design’s resolution is a minimum of 300ppi so that even if you wish to cover the entire T-shirt with your design, the design doesn’t blur out. Your T-shirt design software is selected. What next?
Where To Sell
Now deciding where to sell depends on what you choose, independent or marketplace. If you select marketplace, you have three good options, Amazon, Flipkart, and Meesho. You can choose to sell through all three of them or go for one. It is totally up to you.
Marketplaces also give you a good push as it has millions of customers, and with promotions and running of ads on your product, you can get the required boost. If you decide to handle it independently, your options are social media and your website. Now you can do both at the same time too.
With short videos and posts on social media, you can reach multiple audiences and direct them toward your website. That is the best way to get traffic to your website. Though it is a good step towards building your brand, the website might have low traffic and sales during its initial phase. For the social media bit, faster results can only happen if your videos or posts go viral or if you do influencer marketing. You can run both independent and marketplace together, even though the latter is a better choice during your initial phase as you can get orders and even improve. You can continue marketing on social media to build traffic toward your website, and when you feel the time is right, you can completely shift to being independent.
Conclusion
These are a few steps to start an online T-shirt business. The success, however, also depends upon your product quality and customer.
