Why Sell Designer T-Shirts Online
The market for original t-shirt designs online has grown significantly over the past few years. Since 2011, revenue has risen at a rate of about 9% – making the industry worth about $3.7 million today. Teespring alone ships approximately seventeen million shirts a year—highlighting the growing demand for new and interesting designs in the industry.
A t-shirt business can also serve as a gateway to the larger e-commerce market for fashion and accessories. Most choose to market their designs through popular print-on-demand companies like Printful (https://apps.shopify.com/printful), Merchify (https://apps.shopify.com/merchify), and Teelaunch (https://apps.shopify.com/teelaunch-1). This has the added benefit of turning the sale of T-shirts into a low-risk business venture. Many of the direct shipping t-shirt marketers also have additional products like leggings, cups, shopping bags, and more – allowing you to expand into more product categories within your niche.
How to create custom designs for clothes
When you choose to sell T-shirts through print-on-demand, you'll need to create your own designs or purchase them from a designer. If you have graphic design skills, you can create your products using tools like Photoshop or Affinity.
Some choose to purchase and modify graphics from Creative Market or Graphic River. Note that if you choose to go this way, you will be required to pay for a commercial license to sell these designs, even if they have been modified.
However, combining purchased designs with amusing captions can be an easy way to sell online for those with limited graphic design skills. You'll probably only need to know how to crop graphics, change colors, and place text. You can limit your spending by using free design tools like Canva.
Print-on-demand companies for fashion and accessories
There are several companies created to receive, process, and ship custom-designed fashion products directly from within your Shopify store. You can choose to use one of these companies – or several of them for different products:
Printful allows you to sell over 80 types of t-shirts, hoodies, tank tops, and more. They also have products like wall pictures, cups, pillows, shopping bags, hats, tights, phone cases, dresses, skirts, and more. Printul also has an application for creating images for products.
Merchify offers a variety of t-shirts, iPhone and iPad cases, mouse pads, laptop stickers, cups, and more.
Print Aura allows marketers to add their designs to t-shirts, shopping bags, phone cases, cups, posters, maps, and more.
Printify offers several types of t-shirts, hoodies, iPhone and Samsung phone cases, cups, wall stickers, and volumes.
Teelaunch includes a variety of types of shirts, bags, shopping bags, Android phone cases, beach towels, beer jugs, cutting boards, dog bowls, shower curtains, and more.
Pillow Profits is a great tool for selling custom printed shoes and home decoration products.
Although many entrepreneurs start out as a t-shirt company, the ability to expand into other product categories allows you to offer a larger selection to your customers. If you sell shirts with dogs and cats – you can choose Teelaunch which also allows you to sell pet bowls and pet beds. If you sell t-shirts, you can use Print Aura, which also offers print-on-demand references. If you're creating a fashion brand, you can use Printful to sell designer shirts, leggings, and other clothing. Choose the print-on-demand company that best suits your specific job.
How to Market Graphic T-Shirts
Most businesses that use the print-on-demand model market their t-shirt shops with Facebook ads or Instagram marketing. In the print-on-demand t-shirt business, earnings are often low, which means that Facebook ads need to be made to be targeted accurately.
For the goal of “lovers of [the field]” this is not accurate enough. May help you to target “[domain] lovers in [city/country]” like “Drinking beer in Dublin.” The goal is to create an ad designed for a subdomain within your domain. This will keep your ads low so you don't reach a point of equilibrium. Instagram influencer marketing works well with print-on-demand businesses. You'll have to find cheap influencers, ideally those who are beginners, with a large audience that converts. You'll want to connect with people using the email address in their bio.
You can also use a tool like FB-search.com to find posts from those who use print-on-demand companies like Teespring to do your competitive research. By typing in “teespring+ (your domain)”, you can see which types of t-shirts get the biggest impact and which ones don't. While you can use this tool to do research, you should avoid blatantly copying another brand's designs. Success in printing T-shirts on demand depends on your ability to meet an available and unique market.
While promoting your business, it may help you share photos of happy customers with your t-shirts on your store's official Instagram and Facebook accounts. This will encourage other people to purchase your products and share them on social media. Plus, don't forget to use tools like scheduled posts and special offers to keep existing and new customers interested.
Business Model
The print-on-demand business model allows entrepreneurs to create and sell unique products without buying inventory in bulk. While some providers will provide guidance on the price of your products, they often don't exist for ad advertising. When running a print-on-demand t-shirt business, you'll want to consider retail value as well as your marketing expenses to determine the price of each product accordingly.
