How to Start an Online T-Shirt Business in 2020
Starting an online t-shirt business can be rife with unique challenges that can initially seem impossible to solve, particularly if you are new at this. For instance, how do you start building a customer base? How do you correctly price your products or services? How can you manage your online inventory, pricing, and customer portals?
As with anything, however, you can follow an ordered process so that everything flows and makes sense. In this post, we are going to explore the best way to start your online t-shirt business in 2020. Then, we will show you how ShopVOX can help you keep track of everything online in one easy business management software program.
1. Understand the Industry
Perform a single Google search for “buy t-shirts online” or something similar and you will likely return billions of results. The bottom line is: it will probably be difficult at first to stand out from your competition with your own products. However, every successful online company must start small at some point. One way to get ahead is to examine your competition to see what they are doing well. Maybe customers love them because they price their shirts just right and offer discounts as you buy more. Take note of this and see if you want to incorporate anything into your own business.
2. Find Your Niche
As with any kind of business, being more distinct in your specialties might attract a somewhat smaller audience, but the customers you do find will tend to be more likely to buy now. Finding your niche will save money, as well; you won’t have to spend a lot printing up t-shirts for every last market out there. Instead, you can dedicate your resources to producing just what you know your audience wants. For instance, instead of trying to cater to die-hard fans of movies, music, vintage looks, humor, and science fiction, you can choose one area and really do it well. Your customers will appreciate that you go so in-depth with your products.
3. Start Producing
Once you have determined what your company’s brand is all about and who your audience is, you can start producing your t-shirts. You will obviously want to use the highest-quality materials possible so you can truly stand behind your products. Don’t go with cheap shirt material that you know will rip easily after just a few wears or a graphic that will crack and fade quickly. Whatever extra money you have to spend to get the product right you can just bake into the prices.
As things pick up and you start producing more volume or new designs, you may find you need a software tool to manage your screen printing workflow. Probably the most beneficial aspect of the ShopVOX tool is that you can view, modify, and oversee all parts of your t-shirt business in one place, which will be more useful the busier you get.
4. Establish the Right Marketing Persona
The marketing of your t-shirt business should be a relatively fun part of your enterprise, but only if you can get it right. Ideally, your online marketing should be based on your niche. Your marketing materials should be catered to your known audience and incorporate aspects of your subject matter. Let’s say you specialize in creating surrealist graphic t-shirts with a hint of weird humor. In that case, your marketing should not be “straight” selling. You should work out your taglines to contain some off-beat humor based on your designs. Take this thought process into all your advertising, whether that is on your own site or in your social media or online ads.
Taking the time to do this will go a long way toward keeping your audience engaged and attracting new customers since they will understand that you truly believe in and “get” what you are selling.
Take Advantage of Business Printing Software
At ShopVOX, we understand that running your own online t-shirt business can be difficult even if you do follow these steps. Sometimes it takes quite some time before a new company is able to gain traction with the right audience. In these situations, patience helps, of course. But you also need concrete assistance that can help you manage the various components of your business.
ShopVOX’s business printing software can do that! Our product allows you to manage your sales leads, pricing, merchandise production, online shopping cart, invoicing, cash flow, and much more, all in one convenient app. We have helped many businesses get ahead with their operational management, and we can do the same for you.
We invite you to contact us with any questions about our product, and we will be happy to help!