Building a Custom T Shirt Business can be both fun and rewarding. You can actually outsource the actual printing and just focus on the branding of your company.
According to Grandview Research, the custom t shirt market is expected to grow to an astonishing 6.9-Billion-dollar market by the year 2027.
While it is expected that a significant portion of this growth will be attributed to licensed t shirts sport teams and movie t shirts. There is also a large market of consumers willing to spend on customized t shirts that help to characterize a customer’s mood, hobbies and interests, or position on a social cause.
Many entrepreneurs view the expanding T Shirt market as an opportunity to build a t shirt company that uses little startup capital, by operating with a “just in time inventory” management system. Currently there are many different marketing channels that help to promote custom designed t shirts.
We recommend that online shopping giants such as Amazon and Lazada as well as creating online t shirt shops on such platforms such as Shopify and Bonfire.
Custom Branded T-Shirts offer business savvy entrepreneurs
a golden opportunity to create your own custom t shirt brand.
Why are Printed T Shirts Popular
T Shirts are a popular choice throughout the world, they are affordable, easy to maintain and are easily customized to suit your particular preference of color, style, and customization.
T shirts are popular with both men and women and are worn by adults, seniors, and children.
The first t shirt was produced by the United States Navy back in the late 1800 and early 1900s. The shirt was standard wear for every branch of the United States military.
T Shirt popularity exploded after the Second World war and became standard apparel for movie star icons such as Marlon Brando, and James Dean.
Today, t shirts are still as popular as ever and have become available in an array of different styles, including Crew or Round Neck, V Necks, Hendley or Y neck, Polo, Scoop Neck, Raglan Sleeves, or Tank Tops,
A Few Easy Steps to Starting Your Own T-Shirt Business
I – Stay Focused, Think Small, Research Niches that Sell
The T shirt industry is huge, and you could benefit having a custom t shirt printing company! Unfortunately, for some entrepreneurs they get overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of the industry and quickly lose their focus.
If you want to success in this business, you will need to be an expert in your niche (first) before you venture into additional niches.
So, take your time and find a t shirt niche that you feel has room for your creative ideas. Also make sure that the niche has enough depth that you’ll be able to make a few sales for all your hard work.
Select a handful of t shirt niches and study them to see if there is enough of a market demand to earn an income. If your t shirt niche looks like a winner, test your marketing skills by brainstorming a few ideas for t shirts.
Then find a few people who might be interested in your target niche and discuss your custom t shirt ideas with them. Ask for their honest thoughts, and also on ideas for design and marketing improvements.
Here is a trick that we use to use when we first started out. We would print out all of the t shirt designs in our target niche including our own “mockup” ideas.
We would then schedule a “pizza” focus group with a few friends by offering a fun time with free pizza and drinks. Once everyone is comfortable, we would go through the different designs and ask everyone what they thought of each t shirt design.
After we finished discussing each t shirt design, we would ask each participant to rank the top 5 t shirts that they would personally buy.
Hopefully, your custom, t shirt idea ranks well in decision process. If not, at least you now have a lot of outside input on the types of t shirt ideas that will sell in the target niche.
If your finding it difficult to select a target niche, focus on a few general categories for hobbies, sports, cars, occupations, and political views. Then take some time to select a few areas and begin to expand on each category. Continue to narrow down each target niche until you find a niche that matches your ideas.
II – Work on a Unique, Catchy Design
When working to create a popular design and phrase, try to keep things simple. The more complicated the design is the more likely you will turn off prospective customers. Try to create t shirts in a few basic colors, so that people have a chance to buy a t shirt with their favorite color.
In general, men like the colors red, orange, and brown, while women like blues, green, and yellows. The more knowledge you obtain, the more likely your branded t shirt becomes a hit with consumers.
III – Use Quality T Shirt Blanks & Printing Inks
When your ready to start selling t shirts make sure to use top quality t shirt blanks and printing ink. While your profits may dip (just a little), your long-term profits will actually grow.
Remember that your building a custom t shirt brand that will grow a faithful following of customers. The easiest way to kill your company would be to offer your customers inferior t shirts, that fade, rip easy or have the designs peel off after a few washes.
The Teeser Apparel can help recommend several different t shirt brands and printing methods to help your grow your business, while also growing your profits and customer base.
Teeser Apparel also offers several different types of t shirt styles and fabrics.
IV – Branding Your Custom T Shirt Business
Branding is extremely important in growing your business as people trust brands and will come back to buy again if they like your brand.
How do you want your customers to view your brand? What market demographics will you target for brand association. Remember developing a brand means that people will want to identify with your company.
So, you have to take some time to understand what types of brand attributes will be most valued by your target audience. What “image” do you want your customers to associate your brand with?
Start with a brand philosophy, what unique statement do you want to tell people about your brand? Bottom line try to be honest and real when creating a brand as people are usually pretty quick to sense when a brand is not authentic or real.
V – Time to Launch Your Custom Branded T Shirts
All the hard work of finding a target niche, testing product design ideas, focus groups, branding strategies, and supply chain management should have already been completed by this stage.
Now it is time to start selling! For entrepreneurs living in Singapore and Malaysia, we recommend that you look into using platforms such as Lazada, Carousel and Amazon to begin selling your t shirt ideas.
For international selling, we recommend using online t shirt drop shipping services such as Print Aura, Merchify, and Shirt Monkey.
The Teeser offers you a great opportunity to create your own t shirt brand, we are experts in many t shirt print methods such as silk screen printing, heat transfer printing, direct to garment printing, dye sublimation, and embroidery.
Contact us to schedule a conversation about your t shirt branding ideas.
