How To Start a Tshirt Business: A Step by Step Guide Having just one job, living from a single source of income is no longer a possibility for many. Living, truly living, is been getting expensive so it’s time to diversify and create multiple streams of income. This article will teach you how to start a t-shirt business and cover both alternatives for starting it, offline and online. Let’s dive into the subject and learn how to start a tshirt business on a shoestring budget and not fail while at it. You probably have not started yet, that’s great, or you might be halfway there on launching your very own tshirt venture, if this is the case, feel free to skip ahead.

Tshirt Copyright Laws, Intelectual Property and Accountings Do I need to trademark or patent my t-shirt line?

What about copyright issues?

How do you register the name of the business?

How do I guard against someone stealing my design?

Ideally, yes you should protect your t-shirt brand. A copyright is the exclusive legal right of a literary, artistic or musical work which allows you to reproduce it, and distribute it. A trademark is a recognizable name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements which identifies products or services of a particular source from those of others. Trademarks can be licensed to others. By uploading designs to any of the print on demand websites you are agreeing to their terms & conditions regulations where you acknowledge the authenticity of your designs. So yes, you should protect your visual arts. Although in a way, your art gets automatically protected as soon as it is finished and fully perceptible. Quoting from the United States Copyright Law: “your art is considered copyright protected from “the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” It would be a disgrace to find someone else profiting from your hard-work wouldn’t it? Don’t take my words for granted, talk with a copyrights attorney to get the best advice. Read more about art copyrights for artists here. And also check this Tshirt Copyright and Trademark Guide by the guys from Printaura to learn more. Ready to register your art? Visit copyright.gov. Do you need some sort of sellers permit or business tax ID when you sell t-shirts online?

Should I register my tshirt business as a legal business? You don’t need a sellers permit or business tax ID since you are selling through a Print on Demand site. In other words, you are not the seller, the seller is Society6 or Threadless or whoever. IF you are the seller, let’s say you have your own e-commerce enabled website, then you should comply with the state laws. Learn more about your particular state laws by Googling this: [Your_State] + sellers permit

[Your_State] + sales tax

[Your_State] + DBA

[Your_State] + LLC Further reading on the subject: 3 Routes To Register Your Business Name

Which States Require Sales Tax On Clothing What about accounting? Do you recommend any particular software packages or do you just use a generic invoice book? There’s accounting software that can help you out but if you are organized, a simple Google Spreadsheet can help you keep your books up to date. Try XeroTry QuickbooksTry Google Spreadsheets

Doing Market Research for your Tshirt Business The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself. – Peter Drucker How may I know what kind of artwork customers are looking for?

Is it OK to choose more than one niche?

Is there a real market for my products?

A niche market is a small segment of a population that share specific demographics, interests, and motivations. For example, vegans market is huge. Inside a niche there are sub-niches which are the ones you should ideally target. There are different kinds of vegans, there are pregnant vegans, vegan bodybuilders, vegan kids, catholic vegans, you get where I’m going. Niche marketing works because by doing research for a specific sub-niche you will get a good idea of what they are interested in, and this way you will be able to create items that these sets of people desire and will probably want to buy. When the time to invest in marketing and promotion comes, you will have it easier to target your customers and create marketing material that will appeal to them. Your chances of success increase when you follow this thorough research process. Don’t get me wrong, you can still make it big even if you don’t follow this flow; but proper research means you would be making decisions based on data which is definitely the way to go, especially considering how easy it has become to access information nowadays. Take a look at the Niche Hacks website which features expert advise on Niche Marketing. I am interested in starting my t-shirt business, but not interested in creating my own art, how and where can I get graphics and designs?

You designed your own graphics, right? How can I get some graphics of my own if I don’t design?

How do freelancers charge and what range can I expect to pay for a t-shirt design?

Starting a tshirt business without being a graphic designer, an artist or a fashion guru is totally possible. What you can do is buy designs/artwork from a graphic designer friend, or artist friend or head to UpWork, Freelancer, Fiverr or 99designs hire somebody to create designs for your tshirt brand. Try to be as specific as possible when you ask a third person for a design. You might have the idea well pictured in your mind but there’s a huge gap between your mind and the designer’s; so send examples, mockups, drawings, whatever helps to get your point across in order for you to receive the artwork you were really looking for. I’m wondering where/how do I design my T-shirts? Example: I want to have a plain text or just a word.

What template did you use for women’s t-shirts?

What did you use to make your shirt designs? Having basic Photoshop and Illustrator knowledge helps. By knowing your way around this software you will be able to work with .AI and .PSD files which are the standard for the graphic design industry. The reason is that Print-on-Demand websites require specific image sizes and resolution to print your artwork properly and Adobe’s software allows you to manipulate your artwork as needed. Society 6 suggests uploading an image at least 6500px at 72dpi or higher in order to have your artwork ready to print on most of the available items in their marketplace. Then Redbubble suggests starting at 13500 x 11462 pixels in order to make it fit every product they offer. Nevertheless, more options exist for those without graphic design experience. T-shirt design templates allow you to jump start you t-shirt design process. These are ready-to-use t-shirt designs that with a little editing from your desktop can be transformed into original designs. There are all types of t-shirt design templates for all the occasions you can think of. Similar to this tool, other t-shirt design software exists, be sure to consider all the available options and keep the one you feel more comfortable working with. If you are selling online, you don’t need to work on templates. As long as you have your artwork then all you have to do is to create an account on your Print-on-Demand platform of choice, be sure to follow file upload requirements and specifications and once uploaded you will be able to preview and create your products directly through the website. If you want to start an offline t-shirt business (brick and mortar, pop up shops) then the best way to go is to get in touch with the person or company that is going to print your tshirts and ask about their specific file requirements. You can show them how you want your final product to look by creating a tshirt mockup by using Placeit tshirt mockup generator which is ridiculously easy to use. Once inside Placeit’s website go and choose a model/mockup you like, then choose a garment color, drag and drop your artwork, arrange your artwork to the desired position, and voilá you have a t-shirt mockup done in a matter of seconds. Send on an email this mockup image file together with the original artwork file plus specific indications to your tshirt printing partner and that’s it. https://blog.placeit.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/how-to-start-a-t-shirt-business.mp4 https://blog.placeit.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/tshirt-business-tutorial.mp4

Choosing Sales Channels for your Tshirt Business Should I be opening a brick/mortar store to sell t-shirts or should I start an online business?

Best custom T-shirt printing company?

Wheres the best place to sell shirts online? If you have little money or almost no money to start your new tshirt venture you should definitely start selling tshirts online. Wherever you look, rent costs of brick-and-mortar shops are too high when compared to e-commerce costs. So your best shot is to start by selling online through ONE Print-on-Demand e-commerce website, get real good at it, and then start diversifying your efforts and sell on more sites. Don’t get greedy, nail it first at one POD site and then move on to the next one. So here’s the best way to start your online tshirt business and not failing at it: Study the subniche you will be selling to, define a persona. Infer where your designs are most likely to have success by looking at the POD’s audiences. Choose the Print-on-Demand website that is going to help you sell your tshirts. Get really good (have several successful sales) at the specific POD site you chose. Triple test your marketing strategy. See what works on and what doesn’t and improve upon. Once you know exactly how you can take advantage of every aspect of that POD site or you are close from getting there (maybe 80% close) then start diversifying and move on to a second sales channel. Repeat. Selling through Print-on-Demand marketplaces reduces profit margins but you stop worrying about printing, dropshipping, etc. It’s a great way to start your soon-to-be big tshirt business. Etsy for instance is a great place to get started selling t-shirts online, check this Beginners’ Guide for Etsy T-shirt Sellers to learn more. Ideally, you should save money from your sales and save up to eventually end up buying bulk t-shirts, printing, selling, and dropshipping them yourself to get all the profit for yourself rather than giving away a big cut of your hard work to the POD websites. It’s hard to tell which online T-shirt printing company is the best but Printful and Printaura are two of the best online printing, fulfillment, and shipping companies . It’s also difficult to know if people that post about their “experience” with different printing companies are somehow affiliated with a specific printing company or if their reports are legit. One good way to know how shirts from a specific site look is to search for user-generated content on Instagram through hashtags. In fact, user generated content can also be a great marketing tool you can use in your favor.

I hope you’ve found this guide useful and that you succeed selling tshirts online. I will continuously update this guide to keep it relevant and will gladly add more tips and tricks for you as I continue with my research. It’s on Placeit’s greatest interest to help everyone that wants to sell t-hirts online with their marketing and that’s why you can find thousands of t-shirt image and video mockups on Placeit to help yourself out with your marketing strategy. Don’t forget to also check out this incredible Guide On T-Shirt Mockups or Placeit’s Logo Maker ! What are your thoughts? Let us know what has and hasn’t worked for you while promoting your t-shirt business. Leave a comment, let’s start a conversation