Jumping into the T-Shirt Printing and Selling Business in 2021 might seem like we are a decade late to the trend, right?A little background about myself - I am a digital marketer who has been in this field for around 7-8 years now and have worked with a dozen or so T-shirt brands over the last few years. What I have come to understand from my experience is that t-shirt is a highly competitive industry given the low to non-existent entry barriers and that means you end up competing with everyone for sales.Some of the insights that I kept in mind while doing my research are:Dropshipping doesn't make sense cause you need your own designs to stand out and create a brandingPrint on Demand works to start out but quality control issues are there and given that I am planning to do my business in India, that means not many optionsOne needs to target a particular niche to stand out - makes it easier to sellBuild credibility with reviews and user-generated contentDo not paste your logo in a monster size - no one wants to wear a design with a log unless it's Nike or Reebok.So, what is my plan?Have my own printer setup - we are thinking of going the Digital Heat Transfer Route using Inkjet printers and heat press. We had discussed DTG but the upfront cost is too much and not to mention the cost of printing. Having our own setup would also enable us to print patterns and placements that POD might not provideWe print what we sell - maintain minimum inventory and print what we are able to sell. Since we will do the printing ourselves, fulfillment times should not be an issue.Build an efficient print cycle to maximize production and lower costs - also test out what materials work best for us and vet the suppliers. This will also help us pass the learning curve in printing.Build a slick, fast loading website focussed on User Experience. - We already have a team in-house for thatStart building a brand on social media and work towards getting credibility. - Also got a team in place for this as we were/are primarily a social media marketing team.Focus on 2-3 niche audiences for the designs. This isn't fixed yet but our choices are either to go with a single niche or diversify and segment our designs into 2-3 niches.Don't depend 100% on social media ads - FB/IG. In the past, we have helped t-shirt brands scale their business through Facebook ads but it's always a hit or miss scenario - there are lots of factors to consider ranging from target audience, margins, and business models. My plan is to use FB ads but also go local, this is something most t-shirt startups neglect. Go to retailers and mom & pop stores and get them to stock our products.Since we will have our own print setup, we plan to focus on the B2B segment as well - get in touch with local organizations for those bulk orders.Initially we will do the cold calling and outreach for B2B and retailers ourselves but after 1-2 months, hire sales folks for the same.Another branch we want to expand to is - printing customized t-shirts. People give us their pictures or designs, we print them for them with very low MOQs. The website functionality for this is already tested (perks of having an in-house dev team).6-9 months down the line, expand to more niches. All design is to be done in-house. The only thing we will be outsourcing is buying the blanks and we plan to buy more than just the regular crew neck t-shirts. This will help us creating some product differentiation and also provide variety in our productsIn theory, all this sounds very rosy but the execution will always be much more complicated. The current lockdown situation in India has given us some downtime to iron out the issues and what we might be missing. This is something we had been wanting to do for a long time and I feel our marketing experience with t-shirt brands provides us an edge - we have insights about the pain points without having to spend our own money so far. Still, the market is highly saturated and standing apart is a tough task.I would love to hear what you guys think of my plan. Any feedback or constructive criticism is much well. Also, if anyone is in the t-shirt business, feel free to add your insights. Did we miss something? see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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