T-Shirts For Rags Or Riches?

How many people do you know who do not own a t-shirt? I imagine you would struggle to think of anybody. Is it any wonder then why so many people have turned to the humble t-shirt as a source of income?

Yes, t-shirts have become big business and now it is easier than ever for anybody to start their own t-shirt printing business. When you stop to think about it, it is a relatively straight forward business model. If you are buying in bulk you can easily secure plain t-shirts for pennies each. With a little creative flair and some decent market research, you can create designs which will have a wide appeal to consumers.

That’s all well and good, you might think, but I’m not a designer. Well, it doesn’t matter because there are no end to the number of designers out there who are desperate to have their work seen but just can’t get it out in the real world. Just match yourself up with a suitable one and you will have designs galore.

OK, so you have the t-shirts and the designs, what about getting them printed? Well if you are just starting out you may want to go down the route of printing them yourself on your home printer and ironing them on to your plain t-shirts via a simple kit you can buy. While this is appropriate when you are getting small numbers of sales, as you can imagine you would soon run out of time in the day if you were getting high volumes of orders.

This is where you would need to enlist the help of a professional printing company. Many printing companies will cater for t-shirt printing and if you offer them a decent amount of work they will give you a great reduced price in return. You may think this would be expensive but the cost per shirt would be less than 20% of the price of a standard t-shirt in a high street shop. In addition to this, bespoke t-shirts will usually command a higher price tag as consumers like to have something different and unique.

So you have your t-shirt business ready to go, but where do you get the customers from? This is something that has been made very simple for you thanks to modern technology. For a modest amount you can have your very own website which you can use to showcase and sell your t-shirts. Promoting a website can be tricky, but there a host of great ways of getting your name out there for free if you use a bit of imagination.

For instance, how many people do you communicate with via social networking? Sending them a simple message with details of your website may seem a waste of time, but if only a few of them like what they see and sent to all their friends you will soon have a great number of potential customers. So if you are thinking of starting your own business but don’t know where to start, t-shirts might be a good first stop.