Selling your own T-shirts and simple clothing has become very popular. When we decided to launch our own range of bilingual clothing we had very idea how to go about it or how involved it was. However, with a little direction, you can quickly create your own store and designs.

As casual clothing is now a staple item, T-shirts are being used to reflect our personalities, interests, and identities. They are used for campaigns, charities and any awareness day. Once you have your shop created you can quickly adapt each time a new trend emerges.

So how do you go about creating a business and what should you consider before you start?

1. Where to sell

Think about who your target audience might be? Don’t try to sell to every person and every different type of interest. Narrow it down to a specific audience, maybe cyclists, hen parties, in our case parents of bilingual children.

Then consider where they might shop? Would they go to Etsy to buy their gifts or would they rather go to Shopify? If your audience is in America, Red Bubble or Zazzle might suit you better? Maybe you would rather pay to have someone create them for you with a platform such as rarecustom.com/

2. To ship or to dropship?

How would you like the logistics of your operation to be handled? Are you going to print from home? This can now be done using a Heat Press Machine. Many people do this now and it’s perfect for printing on demand and not holding lots of stock.

They will ship it for you once it has been produced. This means you don’t need to keep stock or spend time going to the post office. In the USA there are lots of companies offering this service, in the UK they are a bit harder to find but it’s useful to have your drop shipper in the country where you think you will receive the most orders.

3. Packaging

How your products are received by your customer has become one of the most important parts of your business.

It’s not enough that your packaging keeps your products clean, dry and in good condition as they arrive.

Consumers are much more conscious now of the effects packaging has on the environment. They are looking for cardboard packaging, not plastic. So research thoroughly and find a supplier who have a range of sizes, shapes, and strengths to suit any purpose. It is possible to find packaging with a low carbon footprint, ethically sourced materials and printed with plant-based recycled inks.

Often the packaging can be branded for you as well, as completing the professional appearance of your business.

4. Costs

There are several costs to take into account when launching this type of business. This includes everything from legal setup costs (to officially become registered as a business in your state/country) to platform and material costs.

When choosing a platform, consider how much commission they will charge you and if there is also a listing fee for each item. I’ve found Etsy to be one of the cheapest options (although it has less automation for orders) and Shopify to be one of the most expensive.

If you create and ship your products at home, you need to think about the costs associated with buying blank T-shirts in various sizes and colors in order to create your products. Do you have a place to store them? To get the best results with your product, if you decide to go this route, make sure that you purchase a high-quality printer from trusted sellers such as AA Print Supply Co , like the AA Prestige A3 as well as AA Prestige A3 DTF inks and supplies.

If you use a drop shipper they will give you a cost per T-shirt which includes the blank and printing. Make sure you check whether their prices include or exclude VAT.

5. Marketing your products

Once you have some designs for your shirts and have worked out how you will sell; you need to market them!

If you’ve seen the perfect images of happy, smiley people wearing great T-shirts and wonder how you will buy everything in your range, find a model and take wonderful pictures… The truth is you don’t have to.

There are lots of T-shirt mockup websites where you can upload your design to a picture of a model wearing different styles of shirt. You can download these and use them for your marketing.

The best mockup sites do charge a fee but it is usually worth paying for a one month service from a company such as Placeit and creating all of your images in one go.

We hope you’ve found this a useful guide.

Once these steps are in place it’s easy to make small changes and

add a new range whenever you wish.

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.

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