How To Sell Original T-shirts Online [Complete Guide]

T-shirts are the protagonist of casual wear and have become popular with many over the last few decades. Besides being classic casual wear, T-shirts are also a plain canvas for artists and entrepreneurs.

Therefore, the business of selling T-shirts online is now a popular business. For many entrepreneurs, selling T-shirts has become a great and inexpensive option to start an online business.

Given the popularity of the T-shirt business, there is no doubt that you will be involved in competition once you start. Beloved design, cherished brand, and trusted quality are essential to fighting this competition. In this guide, we will look at the production process for T-shirt production and opening an online shop. We would like to identify each step involved and the 

keys to success and help you become a T-shirt entrepreneur!

Let’s get started!

Opening An Online Shop Is Easy

Launching a T-shirt brand is relatively inexpensive and time-consuming. If you already have a T-shirt design idea you want to sell, you can get it up and running in just a few hours. With Shopify, you have a lot of apps in your app store, and you can easily work with on-demand printing services and drop shipping companies, so you’ll have a shop with everything from printing to shipping in no time.

But It’s Really Hard Work

Designing, printing, and shipping original T-shirts can be super simple thanks to tools and technology, but the biggest challenge is building a brand with a competitive presence. .. 

Running a T-shirt shop with a low rate of return while exposed to the competition will be more difficult than the impression you initially envisioned.

If you want to succeed with a new T-shirt brand, you need to make the right decisions from the start.

How to start a T-shirt business?

There are several essential elements for a successful T-shirt business. These factors should be scrutinized before proceeding.

• Niche: By attacking a smaller area, you’ll be able to stand out in the market and at the same time attract the right audience without running out of budget.
• Design: Most people looking to buy a graphic T-shirt want a design, graphics, and slogan that expresses themselves.
• Quality: The quality of the shirt material and print must be of the highest level.
• Brand: Powerful and intriguing branding is a must in the industry.

Let’s take a deeper look at each element. The niche I think it’s a word you’ll hear everywhere, but nothing more important than a niche choice is in the graphic T-shirt world. The ability to achieve a competitive and differentiation will be asked, but of the best ways for the 1 but one, I think that meet the needs and select a specific niche.

In general, in industries like T-shirts, simply printing interesting phrases is not enough to attack the market. You will need to tighten it more. Aiming for more niches means, for example, making T-shirts with phrases that are familiar to doctors and nurses.

Design

Visitors are most disappointed when they realize that your catalog is just a copy of another site. The design doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, the best-selling graphic T-shirts are simple. However, the design must be attractive and prominent to the audience.

Quality

Quality is the next most important factor in the success and maintenance of the online T-shirt business. Even if you cheat once, there is no second time. T-shirts that lose their shape or shrink and tear do not create enthusiastic fans or repeaters.

Brand

Your brand is a commitment to genre, design, and quality. Creating a unique and desirable brand is inevitable for success in this highly competitive industry. A differentiated, strong, and intriguing presence is very important, especially when consumers have a lot of choices.

Get photos that can be used at the T-shirt shop

Burst is a free image site operated by Shopify. Get various high-quality photos that can be used in online shops and marketing!

T-shirt Quality

Not all T-shirts are the same, and the printing methods are not the same. As explained above, quality is important to the success of your brand, so you need to learn about the quality and choose plain T-shirts wisely.

I know you’re tempted to lower quality for profit, but it’s up to quality to make customers want to share your brand and buy it over and over again in the long run. is.

High-quality T-shirts are determined by several factors. Fit, size, material, softness, lightness, etc. A great starting point for deciding which plain T-shirt to use is to read a review of popular plain T-shirts on T-Shirt Magazine Online.

After narrowing down the options, we strongly recommend that you actually purchase and make the final decision.

Also Read : How To Choose The Right Pricing Model For Your App?

Print Quality

Currently, there are three popular methods for printing T-shirts. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and it depends in part on the time you spend on production and the choice of partner.

3 so that the process of one of the techniques can be deeply understood, I would like to outline below.

Screen Printing

Screen printing is an ancient technique that has endured the test of time. As you can see from the fact that it is the most popular T-shirt printing method, it enables products with excellent durability. However, since labor-intensive initial settings are required, cost performance can be improved by ordering in large quantities. Also, it is not suitable for complicated designs, and designs with 4 to 5 colors or more will cost more for each color and production time.

merit

• Cost performance improves with mass production
• Bulk buying discount

Demerit

• Cost is high when using multiple colors
• Only simple images and designs can be printed

Thermal Transfer Printing

Thermal transfer printing also has a history, and there are several formats. You may have seen a basic thermal transfer sheet at a local office supply store as well. It’s possible to transfer a design from a home computer to iron, but it’s subtle when it comes to business use. Advanced thermal transfer is called plastisol and is printed on a professional printer with special thermal transfer paper. The advantage of this method is that you can order in bulk from a local printer, and once you receive the order, you can print it on a T-shirt on a commercial machine.

Thermal transfer printing allows you to print full-color images on T-shirts relatively quickly and easily.

merit

• Can print on demand

Demerit

• Low quality and weak durability compared to other methods
• An initial investment in press machines (hundreds to thousands of dollars)
• I need time to do it myself

Direct printing (DTG)

DTG printing has a printing process similar to that of a home inkjet printer. You can apply ink directly to your T-shirt to create an accurate full-color image.

DTG printing is of the same quality as screen printing and better than thermal transfer. Since it is an inkjet-like format, there is no cost for settings like screen printing. This means that even small orders are not cost-effective and easy.

The downside is that each print takes the same amount of time, so there is no discount even if you place a large order.

merit

• Unlimited color options
• Highly accurate design printing
• Ideal for small lots and single-shot items

Demerit

• Inefficient in mass production
• No volume discount

Make An Original Design

Find the best-selling designs and niches

If you can’t come up with a niche idea, it’s a good idea to start by looking at what’s on sale and what’s popular.

The list below is a marketplace for popular and selling graphic T-shirts. It will help you discover your next niche design.

• Teeview
• Zazzle Bestsellers & Zazzle Popular
• Redbubble Popular
• Snorg Bestsellers
• Kickstarter T-Shirt Campaigns

It’s also worth considering using Google Trends to find out what topics people are interested in.

Free webinar:

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Learn how to start selling your original design T-shirts online in a 40-minute webinar. Try a new way to get started risk-free, without inventory control or shipping!

Hire a Designer

Once you have a design idea, you need to actually bring it up as a design. If you have Photoshop or similar tools, you can create simple images yourself. However, many will seek outside cooperation.

There are many tools and marketplaces to help you find designers.

Design Community

Dribbble -Dribbble is a popular designer community with unique talents. Find designers of your favorite style and let them know if they can get involved in the project.

Behance -Behance is also a popular designer community. Find your favorite designer to design your next T-shirt.

Buy Design

If the designer has a hard time, you can buy a design that you already have. If you do this, consider that someone has already made a T-shirt with the same design, which can make you less successful.

Create a Mockup

Once you have decided on the design, let’s move on to the process of applying the image to the actual T-shirt. Your customers want the image photo to be the same as the actual printed T-shirt.

There are several ways to get the image of the final design on a T-shirt. You can order a sample and take your own product photo, or you can use the many T-shirt templates to create a 100% digital mockup like the one in the image below.

Photoshop template files are a common mockup file. You can easily check the image when printed on a T-shirt. Most Photoshop files are made up of multiple layers, which allows you to change colors and adjust the design to match wrinkles, creases, and outer shapes.

I’ve put together a mockup resource for your next project.

If you want to use non- Photoshop tools, there is web-based mockup software. With them, you don’t have to download or touch Photoshop.

Verify The Design

Before spending a lot of money on your new business ideas, you should make sure you have an interest in design and a market. There are several possible ways to do this.

The most common verification methods are as follows.

Personal SNS: Post your design on social networks such as Facebook , Instagram and Twitter that your friends and potential customers might see. One thing to keep in mind is that your friends’ opinions tend to be biased and positive.

Reddit: Reddit, which I’ve covered in past blogs, is a big deal. A large amount of subreddit will make it easier to discover targeted potential customers and will also get them to comment on their pre-launch design.

Kickstarter: Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites make it very easy to test, validate, and raise funds in advance for your business ideas. Crowdfunding campaigns are time-consuming and difficult to prepare, but the benefits are immeasurable. Sometimes you don’t need any of your own money to raise money.

Open a test shop: Finally, using a platform like Shopify, you’ll be able to launch a fully functional online shop in a matter of hours and validate your ideas. 

Open An Online Shop

After undergoing original design, mockup, and idea verification, it is finally time to launch an online shop. As mentioned in the verification section, Shopify makes things fast and easy.

There are several T-shirt on-demand printing services that can work with Shopify, and you’ll be able to launch and run your shop in no time. These printers and drop shippers will automatically print and ship your order when you place it for you.

Also Read : How To List Your Products For Free On The Google Shopping Tab?