One of the blogs/clothing lines that we follow regularly is called Linty Fresh out of Marietta Georgia.  They are an operation that is founded and run by one single guy named Eric Terry.  He does one heck of a job doing it too.

One of the things he is doing to get a bigger following fo his products are videos that show his personality.  His latest video had a few tips for a fan that e-mailed him asking him questions about starting a t-shirt line.  His designs are awesome and his skills are very advanced and you can easily witness this in the tutorial he gave on separating colors for a printer. Since we are a fan of his, we would like to reach out to give him a little tip on separating his colors inside Illustrator (the native program he creates his designs in).

In the video he took his vector artwork from Illustrator and opened it up in Photoshop.  We recently completed a tutorial for VectorTuts that explains the quick process of separating your colors within Illustrator.  This way, he doesn’t have to deal with a raster version of his artwork, nor the pain of taking the design from one program to another.

It is worth giving a try and we hope it helps with Linty Fresh’s well-deserved success.  Click on the picture below to see the tutorial.

Recently we came across a pretty cool site called Bear Annihilator.  All the shirts on the site feature an angry looking bear in an array of different situations.  The shirts are printed on American Apparel.

Our favorite is called Astrobear.  Check this fella out:

The understated product description simply says “One giant leap for bearkind.”  I’ll say!  How would you like to be an alien out for a relaxing stroll and come across this guy?

We’re looking forward to seeing this grizzly mug in still more scenarios.  Keep up the good work Bear Annihilator!

Over the past few weeks we’ve created a series of blog posts to assist people in creating their own t-shirt line.  The past blogs have acted as an introduction to the process, help with design, and knowing your audience.  Today we would like to focus on a topic which goes hand in hand with knowing your audience, knowing your competitors.  This is something which we’ve touched on lightly in our past blogs and today we would like to nail down a few more of the specifics.  We hope that you’ll find this helpful and we encourage you to check out the other blogs in the series as well.

Knowing who your competitors are is essential.  It lets you know what you’re up against.  If your customers repeatedly mention ‘XYZ T-Shirts’ or compare your products to ‘XYZ T-Shirts’ then you can bet that getting to know a little bit about ‘XYZ T-Shirts’ is a good idea!  If possible, find out:

-how long they’ve been around
-how large are they in terms of sales, capital, and profit
-how large they are in terms of employee size
-where they are based
-how much they spend in advertising sales
-how many products they offer

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of the possible information you’ll want to find out about them, but it’s a good start and it’s general enough to be helpful in most cases.  Basically the function of all of these different questions is the same; they questions will help you learn about your competitors and it will put everything into perspective for you.

For example, you might be bummed out after your first year to find out that you only made a fraction of the sales that ‘XYZ T-Shirts’ made.  On the other hand, if you know that XYZ has been in business for many years, that they have a huge staff size, that they spend tons in advertising and other overhead, then you might not feel so bad about your own first year.

Knowledge about your competitors will also help you know what you need to do to set yourself apart. Remember, you want to continue to successfully appeal to your target audience like they are (presumably) doing, but you also want to find a way to brand yourself and find a competitive edge.  Without knowing about the competition in the first place, that becomes impossible.

Finally, knowing about your competitors will help you figure out what you need to do to successfully market your line to your buyers.  If you’re producing similar items and selling them to similar kinds of people then it stands to reason that you will want to employ a lot of similar strategies for advertizing and marketing.

Remember doing your homework and learning about the competition and the market will be invaluable to you in the long run!

This is the third post in a series of blogs to give people tips and advice for starting their own t-shirt lines. This idea was conceived from the numerous phone calls and daily inquires people make regarding this topic and it’s our hope that the readers will find this series helpful and informative. Be sure to check out the other two posts [links?] and stay tuned for more!

Today we want to discuss the importance of doing your homework when it comes to knowing your audience. What we mean is, it’s very important to ask yourself “who am I trying to sell my t-shirts to?”. This will influence all aspects of your business! For example you come up with completely different designs if you’re marketing to baby boomers as opposed to Gen X-ers. You’ll also have vastly different designs if you’re focusing on say the tech/sci-fi crowd versus the music crowd. These are just two VERY basic examples and there’s a huge ‘niche’ potential. Of course you may want to focus on ‘mass appeal’, but even there it’s STILL important to know exactly which ‘masses’ you want to appeal to.

Once you have your target audience in mind, you’ll want to consider various aspects about them. For example, what is their culture like? What types of references and common history do they share? This too will heavily impact the designs you come up with. You’ll also want to bear in mind what they are likely to spend their money on in the first place. It’s a good idea to get a feel for where they often like to shop. Online and/or offline? Who are your competitors? What types of products do the stores that are popular with this group carry? What are prices and purchase volumes like?

Another useful thing to find out is what sites and other areas of the internet do they inhabit? This will be important to discover not only so that you can gain more information on their interests and ‘personalities’, but also so that you can consider marketing to them. Would you want to buy ad space on one of the popular sites for this group of people? Would you be able to tailor it to appeal to them?

Remember, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. If something has been working well with your demographic and you’re able to establish yourself as a strong, viable option to them then there’s no reason to think similar strategies won’t prove useful to you as well!

We recently did a blog post with a basic introduction of ideas and suggestions for what to do to create your own t-shirt line.  At You Design It we are frequently asked about this topic so it is our hope that this series of blog posts will address some of the questions that people have and hopefully also start them off on the right foot.  Today we want to focus on the design aspect.

In order to own or run an even remotely successful t-shirt line you have to have a great design.  It is essential that people like your product and want to buy it.  This is a very basic concept and it should be almost completely intuitive.  Nevertheless, the design aspect is often one of the most challenging for people to ensure that others like their design concept as much as they do.

NOw we aren’t going to sit here and tell you exactly WHAT to design.  That’s going to depend on your taste and the taste of the consumers to whom you are marketing your t-shirts.  What we did want to do though is give you some ideas on how to get your design out there, how to interest people in it, and how to improve it.

So let’s say you’ve spent the past week coming up with what you consider to be a top-notch design.  At this point two things are likely to happen.  One, you’re probably going to be very proud of your design (though perhaps a bit modest and nervous) and two you’re likely going to show it to your family and friends and ask them what they think.  That’s great!  Those are definitely two very important steps in the process.  However, it’s only natural for the people closest to you to say nice things about your work, especially if they know it’s important to you and they can tell how proud or nervous you are.  So we definitely do encourage you to solicit their feedback, but remember to take what you hear with a grain of salt (this is important to remember with both negative and positive comments).

So how do you branch out and get feedback on your design from impartial, knowledgable strangers?  Well the good news is, it’s actually not as hard as it may seem!  Thanks to the internet and people’s growing interest in networking and meeting others who have similar hobbies and interests, there are quite a few thriving t-shirt design communities out there.  You can easily go to a site like Threadless or Design By Humans (just to name two of your many options), register, create a profile, and start submitting your designs.  This comes with several benefits.  First, because of the way these communitites are set up it’s likely that people will comment on your design and tell you what they think. It provides that all important feedback and since the people that frequent the site are likely to be very interested in t-shirt designs (or perhaps even designers themselves) then in most cases you can feel pretty good about the quality of the comments.

Another big advantage is the simple publicity and ‘buzz’ it creates for your designs.  Remember you’re planning to sell these things, right?  So obviously the more people that see them and become interested in them the better off you are!  It also gives you a feel for the ‘pulse’ of the market.  You can see what people are interested in, what might be lacking, what opportunities are out there for you!  Finally, you may even win one of the contests.  This will be a major confidence boost for you, it will look great on your resume, and you’ll even get some cash and prizes out of it.

We hope that these ideas are helpful to you and we look forward to bringing you more suggestions for starting your own t-shirt line and for enhancing your designs!  Good luck and remember to get out there and try!

Very often at You Design It we get calls from people who are excited and looking to start their own t-shirt line.  That’s fantastic and we’re very eager to do what we can to help them get started.  That’s why we’ve put together this series of posts with that objective in mind.  We hope that you find them useful because everyone can be successful with the right t-shirt gameplan.

By far the most common question we get from people who are just starting out with their own t-shirt line is something to the effect of, “How much would it cost for me to get 500 or 600 shirts?”  Whoa!  Now don’t get us wrong, we’d be delighted if you ordered 600 shirts from us, but let’s back track a bit and see what’s in your best interest.

As with any major new undertaking, the first and most important place to start is by far with research.  What type of shirts will you be producing?  Who is your target market?  How will you reach out to this demographic?  What is the competition like in this market?  What type of capital are you working with?  How much can you afford to invest in your new business and how long will you be able to keep it afloat in the early stages when it probably won’t be profitable?  Remember that very few businesses start out in a blaze of glory and success.  You’re going to need some time to build up a buzz and get your name out there.

There are many more considerations that go into the research section of your business development and we definitely encourage you to think them over carefully, but next we want to touch on one of the other major aspects of this whole endeavor:  the t-shirt design.  In all honesty without a great design, or set of designs, you won’t get very far.  It has to be something creative and unique, but also popular enough to resonate with people.  This is going to be especially important when your line is just starting out and you don’t have any ‘name brand recognition’ for your company.  For a very popular company it’s possible that people will buy tees just to own a shirt from that line. With a new company however, you’re completely out there on your own with just your designs, creativity, and hard work to sustain you.

With these factors in mind we encourage you to start off with a smaller sample of shirts and ‘test the waters’ so to speak.  Starting off with something in the neighborhood of 12-36 shirts will give you a chance to get a feel for the business without investing anymore capital than necessary and then to make modifications as necessary.  Remember the last thing you want on your hands is 495 slow selling designs when the first five buyers have all said something to the effect of “this is great, but I sure wish the print was larger” or “if only this came in darker colors”.

We’re very excited about the prospect of helping you out with your new line and we know that it’s going to be BIG once it gets off the ground. We hope that you’ve found this brief entry helpful and that you’ll be able to get rolling in no time.  We have much more to come….