The custom t-shirt printing market is predicted to grow by 11% per 12 months through 2030. And with online tools to show you how to print and sell your tee designs, it’s never been easier to start out a t-shirt business.
By choosing a audience and designing t-shirts that delight customers, you may create popular clothing at a low price.
This guide explains find out how to start a web based shirt business that brings in extra monthly income.
start a t-shirt business
- Select a distinct segment
- Source quality material and t-shirt printing options
- Create t-shirt designs
- Mock up your t-shirts
- Validate your t-shirt designs
- Arrange your online shirt store
1. Select a distinct segment
Successful online t-shirt businesses find ways to face out from the group. The most effective strategies for differentiating your products from competitors’ is by catering to a particular audience or interest group.
Selecting a t-shirt area of interest may help your online shirt business attract these motivated customers.
Generally, niches like “t-shirts with funny slogans” are too broad for a brand new business to successfully compete. As an alternative, search for sub-niches and use keyword research tools to seek out phrases that your audience is trying to find. For instance, sub-niches within the funny t-shirts category could be “t-shirts with slogans about doctors” or “funny t-shirts for dog owners.”
Listed here are a number of ways to estimate the worth of entering a distinct segment:
Once you discover a distinct segment, create a marketing strategy that lays out opportunities to sell custom t-shirts to your area of interest audience.
2. Source quality material and t-shirt printing options
The following step in starting a web based t-shirt business is to seek out a wholesale clothing supplier, or a custom tee manufacturer.
Not all t-shirts are the identical. Different printing methods produce different results. With shirt quality paramount to your brand’s popularity, educating yourself on stock is important.
It could actually be tempting to partner with budget supplier and sacrifice quality for higher profit margins. But consider how product quality impacts a customer’s decision to make a second purchase or recommend your shirts to other people.
Selecting a high quality t-shirt encompasses several aspects, including fit, sizing, material, softness, and weight. Once you cut down your selections, order some samples to make an informed final decision.
3. Create t-shirt designs
After choosing a shirt supplier, you may decide to develop original graphic tees. Listed here are a number of ways to get a head start:
Find the bestselling designs and niches
For those who’re struggling to provide you with t-shirt design ideas, have a look at what’s popular and currently selling well on graphic t-shirt marketplaces similar to:
One other research tip is to make use of Google Trends to achieve a way of the topics persons are currently eager about. Use trending subjects as inspiration in your t-shirt designs.
Hire a designer
Once you have got a general idea for t-shirt designs, start sketching some drafts. For those who know find out how to use graphic design software, you likely can produce great designs yourself. Nonetheless, it’d make more sense to enlist some help.
There are several online sources for locating suitable graphic designer, including design communities, freelance networks, and t-shirt design marketplaces:
Design communities
Dribbble is a design community that’s home to numerous talent. Seek for styles you want, then message the designer to see in the event that they’re available in your project.
Behance hosts portfolios from creators around the globe who concentrate on illustrations and graphic design.
Freelance networks
General freelance networks like Upwork also contain listings of artists and illustrators. Find a certified t-shirt designer, then check their past job successes and portfolio to see in the event that they’re a match in your project. For those who like someone, you may reach out through the platform and hire them on the spot.
T-shirt design marketplaces
As an alternative of hiring a designer, you should buy pre-made designs your t-shirt business. This route saves on upfront costs, but implies that other stores are likely selling your designs, so it could be harder in your store to face out. Try the next t-shirt graphic marketplaces:
- Tshirt Factory has quite a lot of vector images, from old fashioned to punk designs.
- Creative Market has greater than three million graphics and templates.
- Graphic River offers royalty-free Photoshop vectors and icon packs.
Remember, it’s possible you’ll must purchase a business license in your images before you should use them in your t-shirts.
💡 Need a logo in your t-shirts? Shopify has a free custom logo maker.
4. Mock-up your t-shirts
Once you have got final designs, the subsequent step in your t-shirt business will likely be to supply mockup images. Mockups show you how to and your customers see what the ultimate design will appear to be when it’s printed on a shirt.
You may create mockups using web software or with a picture editor like Adobe Photoshop.
T-shirt mockup templates for Photoshop include multiple layers that permit you alter the colour of the shirt and apply your personal design that can mix with the shirt’s creases, folds, and contours.
There are also web-based mockup software that can allow you to create similar images without having to download Photoshop:
For those who don’t like the thought of making digital mockups, you may at all times order samples of your shirts and take product photos.
5. Validate your t-shirt designs id=”Validate-your-designs”
Before you spend money on your recent business idea, test the recognition of your designs. There are various ways to validate design popularity before you sell your t-shirts online.
Common methods for validating your design ideas include:
Reach out to private social networks
Post a preview of your designs to your social media accounts and on feeds that your potential customers visit. Watch out when asking the thoughts of family and friends, nevertheless. Their opinions can include a positive bias.
Ask Reddit
Despite the community’s general aversion to marketing, Reddit continues to be the most effective places to get honest feedback in your designs. Through this process, it’s possible you’ll earn yourself some future customers and gain some free marketing along the way in which.
Use crowdfunding
Crowdfunding sites have made it easier to check, validate, and collect money upfront for brand new business ideas. Launching a crowdfunding campaign may be time-consuming and requires preparation. Nonetheless, if you have got a very novel t-shirt business idea, crowdfunding could be for you.
🎧 Here’s why you need to test your t-shirt designs before you invest.
6. Arrange your online shirt store
With t-shirt designs commissioned, mock-ups created, and feedback acquired, it’s time to construct your online store.
For those who’re using a print-on-demand service to supply your tees, it’s easy to integrate your products with a Shopify store. Customers can visit your store to browse shirts. Once they make a purchase order, print-on-demand apps will produce and ship the items.
Try these t-shirt printing apps that integrate directly with Shopify stores:
💡 Need advice on constructing your store? Here’s a step-by-step guide.
5 considerations for starting a t-shirt business
Today, there’s a tool for each stage of running a t-shirt business, from designing and printing to shipping.
For a lot of, the really difficult a part of is constructing a brand that stands out from the competition.
Listed here are five things to contemplate when designing your t-shirt business strategy:
- T-shirt printing techniques
- Design
- Quality
- Brand
- Inventory
1. T-shirt printing techniques
There are three popular methods for printing t-shirts. Deciding which one to make use of will partially rely on your product pricing strategy.
Whether you spend money on your personal printer or use a neighborhood supplier, it’s value knowing how each printing technique works.
Screen printing
Screen printing is an old technique that has stood the test of time for business owners who design and sell t-shirts online and in stores.
As one of the vital popular methods for printing, screen printing can produce durable and long-lasting results. It also enables you to print on products like canvas items, mugs, hats, and other things to make and sell if you should expand your product line.
Nonetheless, a labor-intensive initial setup means screen printing is most cost-effective when printing in bulk. Screen printing also poses issues with regards to complex designs or designs with greater than 4 to 5 colours, as each color increases costs and production time.
Heat transfer
Heat transfers exist in several forms. For instance, you will have seen basic heat-transfer paper at your local office supply store.
Although this method makes it easy to print designs from your house computer and transfer them with an iron, a more complicated process is required when running a small business. The more advanced form of warmth transfer is named plastisol transfer and is printed by skilled printers on special, high-quality heat-transfer paper.
The advantage of warmth transfers is the power to order a stack of prints out of your local printer and transfer them to your t-shirts with a business heat press machine as you receive orders. Heat transfers can produce full-color images onto t-shirts relatively easily and quickly, helping to make them an inexpensive option for small batches.
Though inexpensive in the long term, a heat press machine generally is a large upfront cost. Also, the do-it-yourself approach requires you to take a position more time making the t-shirts and the may be lower quality and fewer durable than shirts that use other types of printing.
Direct-to-garment (DTG)
The direct-to-garment printing process operates like an ink-jet printer. It’s common in t-shirt printing businesses since it prints ink directly onto the t-shirt and might produce full-color images with accuracy.
DTG printing produces quality printing on par with screen printing, and is seen as more premium than heat transfer. Since it operates like an ink-jet printer, there aren’t any setup costs, unlike screen printing. This implies it’s easy and cost-effective to print small orders.
The most important drawback of direct-to-garment printing is the dearth of volume discount for giant orders, because it takes the identical period of time to print each shirt.
2. Design
The final thing a visitor desires to see in your catalog is a poorly plagiarized shirt design. Your designs don’t necessarily must be complex—in actual fact, lots of the bestselling graphic tees are easy. Nonetheless, they do must be original.
To make sure quality prints in your shirt-selling business, your design files needs to be not less than 300 pixels per inch (dpi or ppi), have a transparent background, and be large enough to cover the actual print area of the t-shirt. Just note that your specifications will vary depending on the printer and printing technique used.
3. Quality
The following most significant think about starting a web based t-shirt business is product quality. You may disappoint a customer once, but they will not return to your store. A pattern that fades and cracks or a t-shirt that shrinks and rips won’t create loyal customers.
Higher quality t-shirts may cost a little more to supply but also can command higher prices. Remember to base your product quality decisions on expected profit margin, not the product costs.
4. Brand
A robust, interesting brand is significant for starting a shirt business online. Your brand will tie together all your selections, including your area of interest, designs, and shirt quality. Out of your t-shirt business name to the brand you utilize, constructing a novel and likable brand is essential in a high-competition industry.
When customers have a alternative of stores to buy from, businesses with a particular presence usually tend to capture attention. For those who’ve chosen a distinct segment in your online t-shirt business that embodies a certain lifestyle, you may incorporate it into your marketing and website to talk to those customers.
5. Inventory
T-shirt businesses can purchase and hold inventory, making the most of bulk pricing and native printers. Or, they’ll use a print-on-demand service to take inventory management and shipping off their plate. You furthermore mght can go for a mixture of each.
By holding your personal inventory in your online shirt selling business, you may sell in-person, which could help improve your profit margins. With print-on-demand, you are taking on less risk because your production is determined by your orders. Weigh the professionals and cons before you begin. For those who’re unsure, print-on-demand is a very good idea for smaller businesses.
After all, if you have got the budget, you can even spend money on a printer and make your personal in-house clothing line.
An internet t-shirt business success story
Many entrepreneurs have been successful in starting a shirt-selling business. For instance, Ryan McCarthy, founding father of Imouri (formerly Sugoi), has used Shopify to run his anime-inspired t-shirt printing business since 2016.
Ryan decided to create his t-shirt business when he couldn’t find anime-themed clothing that fit his personal style. He quietly launched what he thought could be a small clothing business, which has since became a six-figure print-on-demand apparel company selling streetwear inspired by Japanese popular culture and anime.
His secret to successfully starting a clothing line? Identifying winning designs early on by utilizing Reddit and paid ads to check products.
Start your t-shirt business today
It’s never been easier to precise your creativity and sell t-shirts online
Whatever area of interest you select to serve, and nevertheless ambitious you choose to be together with your quality and designs, a t-shirt store may be a fantastic first ecommerce business for brand new entrepreneurs.
Shopify can show you how to start selling and control your costs. Connect your store to a t-shirt printer in minutes and launch a catalog that your customers will love.
Illustration by Alice Mollon
Starting a t-shirt business FAQ
Is a t-shirt business profitable?
T-shirts are a staple around the globe, with global apparel sales reaching $1.79 trillion in 2024. Creating a web based t-shirt business may be profitable due to low startup costs in comparison with other business opportunities.
How much does it cost to start out a t-shirt business?
Starting a t-shirt business from home requires little investment. Print-on-demand services offer product manufacturing and shipping, and only charge vendors for products once they’re sold. Meaning fewer overhead costs and little risk of overstocking.
What should I do before selling t-shirts?
- Conduct market research on a distinct segment and discover a passionate community.
- Give you a t-shirt company name.
- Make a business logo and arrange a web based shop.
- Create your personal t-shirt designs.
- Arrange your social media accounts.
- Run paid ads in your online t-shirt business site.
- Do blog outreach and free promotions with influencers.
How much are you able to make selling t-shirts?
The quantity you make selling t-shirts is determined by aspects including your chosen area of interest, production methods, pricing, and marketing strategy.
How can I start my very own t-shirt business with few upfront costs?
If you should start a t-shirt business without an initial investment, create a Shopify store and integrate a print-on-demand app similar to Printful.
Do you would like a business license to sell t-shirts online?
Typically, you don’t want a business license to sell t-shirts online. It’s possible you’ll need a resale license to purchase clothing from a distributor without sales tax. Check together with your local revenue or finance department to learn more.
