How NOT To Start A T-Shirt Company

https://www.howtostartaclothingcompany.com/how-not-to-start-a-t-shirt-company/

Thinking of starting a t-shirt company? You might want to read

about my experience before continuing.
My name is Justin and two and a half years ago my fiancee and I started a t-shirt company
named Anomalous. Well, rewind a bit further. From a very young age there have been two
things that interest me more than anything else. Art and entrepreneurship. Two of the most
conflicting ideologies when it comes to trying to make a living. If youre here, Ill assume that
you, at the very least, share one of those two qualities. However, most of you probably share
both.

I realized that designing a t-shirt was a lot like painting on a blank canvas or drawing on a
fresh sheet of paper. There are restrictions, as there are with any art medium, but for the
most part you have the freedom to do what youd like. That enticed me. What I failed to
realize is that slapping some ink on a shirt and blindly creating an attractive website doesnt
equate to a solid business plan and ongoing sales. Its a mere fraction of what it took to start
and run a t-shirt line.

Im not here to tell you how to keep your new, fledgling brand afloat. That is something that I
do not have experience with. What I am here to do, though, is explain how NOT to start a t-
shirt company.

Rule #1: Think!

*Note: None of these are in any specific order. Take from them what you will.

Think. This is probably the most important. And obvious. But we didnt. Oh, we thought we
wanted to own a business. We thought it should be t-shirts. We even thought of a cool,
trendy name with a pretty neat message (Youre different. And so are we.). But we didnt
THINK about anything that would be involved. We envisioned drawing up a whole bunch of
designs, creating a fancy website, and selling a million of them. There are so many nuances
to owning any business. This one is no different. We were flat out wrong. We thought about
nothing.

Inspiration is easy, but its also dangerous. Inspiration can cause spur-of-the-moment
decisions. Let things soak in, but on the flip side, dont battle yourself. Theres a fine line.
Watching a video like the one below was something that propelled us to make certain
decisions we probably werent ready to make.
Johnny Cupcakes

Rule #2: Your Website Should Kick Ass.

Well, it should look like it kicks ass.

At least to the layman. Ours didnt. At first. It was gaudy and ugly. Now, a cheaper website
set up doesnt have to mean ugly. A great web design firm tried to charge me $6,500 for a
website. Hey, thats right on par in terms of pricing, but it was too much for us. I learned it all
myself. The problem (eventually a positive) was that I wanted to learn it all. Its my nature to
try and be great at something. In this case, I didnt need to be. I just needed to be sufficient.
There are a ton of free and premium templates out there that will make your site look
professional.

The day I discovered shopify was one of the greatest days of my business life. Shopify
makes it easy to setup for website and collect payments and they have a large selection of
themes and plugins. Read the article here on why you should choose shopify for your
clothing company.

Your website doesnt have to do a ton. It doesnt need to be flashy and full of scripts that will
knock a customers socks off. It just needs to show your products off in a way that is in line
with your brand. Make sure everything flows and matches and represents what youre trying
to come across as. A few links are all you need:

Your Homepage: Some cool pictures, a welcome message, and your products is all
you need

About your company: You can have a short write up on your home page but you
should go more in depth on its own page

Gallery: Your product in action!

Shop: There are plenty of e-commerce themes and templates out there, but one blows
them all away shopify. Shopify is an online shopping cart CMS (content
management system). It allows you to edit code and match it exactly to your website.
It starts out $14 and goes up from there.

FAQ and policies: A page or two noting your most frequently asked questions and the
policies in relation to returns and exchanges, etc.

Contact: A way to get in touch.

Get yourself a Facebook business page and a Twitter account. We got on the Twitter train
late (granted, this was 09, when Twitter was infantile-ish). A piece of great advice? Get
yourself genuine Facebook fans. We invited everyone and their mother. My fiancees
younger sisters entire high school graduating class was one of them. We had nearly 1000
fans in a few months. It was exciting. Except that none of them really cared. We threw a tee-
party (crafty, right) and invited all of our Facebook friends. We got about 100 people
attending. Five showed up. Two of which sat there the entire time and gawked at my sister-
in-law and talked our ears off about Lord Of The Rings or some other crap. It was torture. I
went upstairs and nearly cried about how much of a failure we were.

Most people will click like when asked to. Again, you want genuine fans. 200 real fans are
worth more and will contribute MUCH more than 1000 fake fans.

In summary, make your website usable and fun. Dont go overboard. Its just another thing to
stress yourself out about. You dont want to be side-tracked with any more stressful additions
than need be.

Rule #3: Plan Everything

Its hard to watch the video above and not feel like you can take over the world with your little
doodles and vector images. The fact remains that companies like Johnny Cupcakes are one
in a million. They find fame through luck and bunch of other outlets that arent necessarily
available to the average person. Thats not saying you shouldnt try or expect great things.
But you shouldnt expect them right away. Theres a difference.

This is where planning comes in. From day one, keep your pen and paper handy. Write down
absolutely everything. We thought we were writing down everything. We werent. We were
more worried about organization and looking the part than we were actually caring about the
important things. A business plan isnt a joke.To this day, I still dont know how to write a real
business plan. But thats okay. You dont have to. You can figure it out. There are plenty of
online resources and templates that can help you out. I stumbled across my business plan
from Anomalous only a few weeks ago. Its half done. Very indicative of why Im writing this
article and not filming artsy videos.

You dont now how your brand is going to do. Not on day one. And certainly not on day 366.
But you need to plan like you do. Write out projects. Objectives. Goals. Everything. Do it. And
do it now.

Rule #4: Brand It

 There is no screwing around here. A brand is a

serious thing. Even if your companys name is Orange Oompa Loompa Sweat, you need to
take that brand seriously. Once again, we didnt.

Ill tell you a little about our brand or lack thereof.

My fiancee and I try to be good people. We enjoy helping others. Our idea was to assign a
different charity to each design we created. One shirt, one charity. A nice idea. But in order
for an idea to become a reality, it must be executed. And execute, we did not.

I registered the business name and we drew up some designs. Why is that a mistake? Oh,
right there was no LOGO! The single most important part of your company. A logo. And we
didnt bother to make one until well into the designing process. Just design one before
opening up shop, one might say. Errrrrr. Wrong. Your logo defines your shop. It says
everything about who you are. Your colors. Your style. Are you gritty? Are your chic? Maybe
youre gritty and chic. Maybe your colors are cinder and black, but your logo is script. Thats
okay. As long as its telling of who you are.

My fiancee is a wonderful letterer. She draws up some excellent fonts. One night in particular,
I had the epiphany that we needed a font at that very moment. I finally felt the need for a
brand identity. So I asked her to draw something up after a few failed vectors.

Now, let me stop right there. You dont need to be a graphic artist to own a t-shirt company.
There are plenty of hand designed lines out there that dont let their designs touch a
computer screen until theyre getting ready to be printed. And thats just fine. But youll be
paying a small price in terms of color separation and art set up. A suggestion? Learn your
basics. Take a crash course on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Either that, or hire a
designer/artist

Back to the story. She drew up a few prototypes within about five minutes. I didnt like any of
them. After five minutes. Such a long time to wait. Perhaps I shouldve realized that we dont
live in a movie and that the first design to hit the paper wasnt necessarily going to be THE
ONE. A few sketches later and she drew up something I thought looked neat. So we went
with it. I scanned it in. Didnt vectorize it at all. And we had our hand drawn logo. The only
problem was that, to me, it was only neat. It wasnt fantastic. It wasnt something we were
both in love with. I spent the next year disliking it more and more. And the last thing you want
to do is change your logo a year into your companys life. We did. And our company was
dead a month later.
Like I said this is how NOT to start a t-shirt company.

Graphic Design Tutorials

Give yourself a head start. If you arent a designer and you dont plan on heading to school to
become one, use these as a resource. Youll thank yourself later.

Jeremy Shubacks Photoshop Crash Course Jeremy Shuback gives a 4 hour

Photoshop presentation that will blow your socks off. Its weird not to have socks on
after it, but it works!

Tutvid Nathaniel does an incredible job in his tutorial videos.

Rule #5:Capital
This was something we struggled with for a very long time.

Im a very impulsive person. My fiancee is not. What she is, however, is very easygoing. Id
lost my job in December of 09. Anomalous was up and running by February 3rd of 2010.
Coincidence? No.

Wed just had our daughter in May and were struggling to pay rent in our one bedroom
apartment. The job prospects were little to none. We went for it all. Our first order of t-shirts
went on my credit card in the amount of $3,500 dollars (more on how asinine that was later).
In the end, we finished down a little bit more than $3,000 in the red. The damage wasnt
awful, but thats because we were smart enough to pull the plug before we were completely
in over our heads.

Do yourself a favor and save some cash and do it the right way. If youre putting it on a credit
card, make sure you get approved for 0% APR. With something as bootstrappable (a word I
just made up) as a t-shirt company, there is absolutely ZERO reason to screw yourself over.
And learn your taxes. In NJ, clothing isnt taxable. Its considered a necessary item. We were
lucky that we chose t-shirts, because sales tax is a pain. With that said, there were plenty of
other legalities and tax issues that came along with owning a business. I chose to register my
business using my name as the DBA. I figured we would register as an LLC if things got
serious (which they never did). Do yourself another favor. Cough up the couple hundred
bucks and register as an LLC. They may be a pain in the butt to dissolve, but youre a whole
lot more protected.

Learn about your write-offs. These are important. Use your states guidelines. There are
plenty of things you can save a ton of money on if you simply do the research. Gas and
mileages from craft, art, and music festivals, business meetings (with printers and store
owners and the like), printers and ink, stationary, computers, office space (sometimes),
inventory, etc.

*Not all of those things may be a tax write-off, depending on where you live. This is not legal
advice, just a simple heads-up that these thing are out there to be researched and
understood.

Sub-rule, or Rule #5.5:

Keep track of everything!

I just spoke about tax returns, and thats really the tip of the iceberg. Keeping track of
everything will make your life much easier in the long run. Something we didnt do well,
either. Organization reigns supreme. Keep your finances in check. Keep a business checking
account (which we actually did) so that you can show exactly what you put in or what went
out. Keep all statements. Keep receipts from hangtag orders, etc. Keep track of how much
inventory you have, from the t-shirts, right on down to the mailers you ship them in.
Everything should be accounted for.

Rule #6: Start Small.

Okay, there is a lot of debate on this particular subject, but Im going to tell you what did NOT
work for us. Twelve initial designs, on both unisex and womens t-shirts, some different
colors, styles, or material. Horribly. Bad. Idea.

The point of establishing a brand is to gain a following. In order to gain a following, you have
to be nearly perfect. I dont mean perfect as in, the best company ever created. I mean
perfect as in, the most perfect company for your style. And only you have your style, unless
youre blatantly ripping someone off, which will not work (and wont work for long if it works
initially). So unless you have a high bankroll, a phenomenal branding idea with tons of flow,
and breakneck designs that youve worked on for years and years (and already have a great
following of fans, which is absolutely possible but extremely rare), stick with a few designs
off the bat. Get people excited about your company. And for dogs sakes, put out a logo shirt.
Your art can be great, but there are plenty of great artists who are sitting at home not making
a dime (Id like to think Im a decent artist that doesnt make much of a living in that respect).
People need to become fans. They need to be your legions. They need to spread the word
like wildfire. Put out a few designs and put out a logo shirt or at the very least, a shirt that is
a play on your logo. Some get away with not doing a logo shirt initially, but even then, they
have a bread and butter design that becomes the face of the company.

Also, printing tons of designs from the beginning can make your inventory a nightmare. If
youre like us with a shoestring budget, youll only be able to order a limited amount of sizes
and styles. Instead of being able to order a dozen of each size (or more), youll be getting 3
or 4 of each size. Add in the fact that XXL is a real life size that real life people wear (and
XXL and XXXL and you get it), and that you have to pay an additional $1 a shirt in most
cases, and youll want more bang for your buck instead of having to make special orders to
satisfy the larger crowd. Also, something a lot of people do not seem to think of when
choosing materials and sizes is the neck tag. The more materials, the more varied the
necktag orders will be. And if you get them printed directly into the shirt, youll need to have
multiple screens made (more $$) in order to satisfy the different materials your shirts are
made of. And you cant bypass this out of laziness its the law. Like, the actual law. Not the
unsaid law. Well, its an unsaid law, too. Just freaking do it.

Rule #7: ESTABLISH A PRINTER.

I repeat: ESTABLISH A PRINTER.

I should write this entire section in capital letters because its absolutely essential to a t-shirt
brand. This was the single most bitter area of our entire endeavor.

Think about this simply. Your shirts are your canvas and your printer is your brush. 99% of
screen printers out there (and literally mean 99%) are house painters, not fine art painters.
These are people that bought a printing press, installed the clip art editor that came with their
1997 Gateway computer, and started printing crappy quality shirts, jersey, and uniforms for
local schools, companies, and sports teams with crappy quality inks and crappy quality
attitudes (can you tell that were bitter?). These guys dont need to have any real graphic
design and printing experience because the Hanes Beefy t-shirt with the thick plastisol ink
displaying Local 560 Annual Spring Picnic was good enough to use for one day and then
become a housecleaning rag. Then, someone with real artistic aspirations approaches said
crappy quality printer with crappy quality attitude, and he tells them, Sure! I can do anything
you want! They listen, because, really, do they know any better? Not to mention theyre
seeing $3 a t-shirt and drooling at the idea of saving some money. I promise you, you are
saving nothing. You are costing yourself more money and time in the long run, both in
printing costs and in reputation costs. No one is going to be happy (yourself included) paying
$25 for an indy t-shirt that can double as a snowboard.

Another problem with a crappy quality printshop, is that most of them have workers that are
even worse than they are. These are guys that havent a clue what theyre doing and dont
really care to learn. I can not tell you how many shirts we had to return to our first two printers
(first two in the span of three months. Try running a business that way. You cant.) because
they had ink splatters, inky thumbprints, or, you know, gigantic holes from being stretched too
roughly over the palate (the flat surface of a press that t-shirts are printed on). Theyll deny it.
The crappy quality printer/owner will then deny it, and youll be up dookies creek without a
paddle.

I got into an all-out screaming match (and Ill admit I have a temper, but this was absolutely
provoked) with a printshop owner because he claimed that minor discrepancies are a part of
the process (which they are most companies allow a 5% screw up rate. Screen printing is
far from a flawless process and the more accustomed with the process you become, the
more youll understand that). By discrepancies, in this case, Im talking about the ink stains
and holes that I mentioned previously. We went at it for nearly half an hour with the guy
throwing things at me like I just filled an order for Vera Wang! Luckily, I actually did the one
thing I preached about in Rule 4.5. I kept track of everything. We sat down with our initial
250+ shirts and scoured them for blemishes that were worth complaining about (minus the
5%). We wrote down every single thing, which I was able to show him, point blank. At the end
of it all, he relented and refunded me nearly 1/3 of the original price. Not bad, except that I
had to take my work elsewhere, get reacquainted with a new printer, get all set up, and then
go through that same process all over again. And, yes, nearly the same bleeping thing
happened with the second printer.

The way to go about it is simple. Reputation, reputation, reputation. You will most likely not
be able to find someone in your immediate area. Its sad but true. Unless you live in NYC or
another urban area with an artistic, understanding shop, youll be resorting to an online shop.
I can vouch for one in particular, lucky for you, and I will do so below. However, do this at
your own risk. One mans treasure can also be another mans trash. You may have never
heard it that way, but in this case its absolutely true. Do your homework and make your life
and business so much easier. ESTABLISH A PRINTER.

T-Shirt Printer
When it comes to T-Shirt screen printing, not all companies are created equal. Screen
printers come in all shapes and sizes and finding a solid one can be harder than you think!
From inexperienced garage shops with one manual press to experienced industry shops
with 500 shirt minimums, quality and price run the gamut. We used this screen printer and
they did an incredible job and I was amazed at how meticulous they are. Our order had the
neck tags removed properly and carefully (unlike previous printers, who simply cut them but
left the hidden part of the tag under the seam so it was completely noticeable). There wasnt
one discrepancy. They also print posters, hangtags, and a bunch of other cool stuff. We had
buttons done by them and they came out great.

Rule #8: Money. Not The Same As Capital.

Im going to divide this section into two: Bootstrapping and Pricing.

Bootstrapping:
I mentioned this a few sections back. Bootstrapping is essential. We bootstrapped in all the
wrong areas. We bootstrapped our time instead of our money. While time does = money, it
doesnt always = debt. Bootstrapping time and not money can = debt. It makes sense in my
head.

In the beginning, time is endless. It needs to be. And if it isnt, youre not doing it right. You
can not, can not, CAN NOT build a business without the proper time. If youre rushing to
make money because youre out of a job like I was, you need to supplement. It just doesnt
work any other way. Trust me, I wanted it to work another way. I hate working for other
people. I willed it to work this way. We set an unrealistic launch date for Anomalous. It was so
ridiculous that we were taking product shots up until half an hour before the launch. Try
editing and touching up photos of 24 different designs in half an hour. We had to push back
our launch a full day. Not a great start.

I did take away some great skills from rushing and learning quickly, however. Becoming
skilled in web and graphic design was a result of starting Anomalous (more on your website
later). I took that and made some good money on the side of my regular job. Its a nice little
skill to have to make extra money while starting a brand.

Bootstrapping your money is important, as well. But there are areas where you absolutely
can not. Printers are one of them. Youll spend upwards of $10 per shirt if youre doing the
whole nine. Printing cost, American Apparel shirts (the go to for most t-shirt companies,
though Anvil and Alternative Apparel make a decent alternative (bad unintentional punt) and
also have a nice organic selection) tag removal, tag printing or sewing, shipping, etc. This is
not the place to cut costs. Packaging material is important, as well. You need to protect your
investment. Having to re-send a ruined shirt eats into nearly your entire profit.

Where you can cut costs, however, is on things like hang tags (which can double as business
cards if you have a hole puncher and some string), home office (your regular, run-of-the-mill
computer is just fine when starting out), and anything else that doesnt effect the quality of
your product. Youll learn as you go along. We wanted the best of the best of everything. And
it just cost us more and more money. We tried bootstrapping on things like craft show and
music festival fees. We went for the cheaper events. Thats not saying you cant make money
at those type of events (we made $400 at our cheapest event $70 for the table), but you
can find a balancing point. The more expensive events generally get more attendance and
traffic, but the overpriced events are just trying to make money on its venders. Again, do your
research.

Pricing:
Most companies seem to stay in the low to mid-$20s category. There are some more
expensive brands, but they seem to build as it goes along. We started with our cheapest shirt
at $24 and our most expensive at $32. It wasnt horrible, but it was fairly expensive for a t-
shirt. Factor in $5 for shipping, and youre paying a lot of money. There is no mold for this. It
really relies on how much your printing costs are. You always have to factor in your
wholesale costs. If you plan on getting into stores, youll need to set a wholesale price. The
algorithm is generally as follows:

Cost x 2 = wholesale x 2 = retail.

Its not always so cut and dry, but thats a general rule. Play around with your price before
hand, but stay consistent once you set them. Youll need to be confident once you do put it
out there.
Rule #9: Be Fresh
There is nothing worse than being cheesy. I really believe that. Especially as a brand. Were
pretty granola people. Were both almost strictly vegetarian. We buy mostly local or organic.
We recycle and reuse things. We are minimalistic in our lifestyles. When creating our brand,
we figured it was necessary to use all of that. I dont mean one or two of those things I
mean all of it. We were a brand of browns and greens. Trees and grass. We had designs that
preached recycling and erasing your carbon footprint. Some of them were pretty cool.
Others, not so much. Like I mentioned earlier, we really rushed a lot of our designs and never
finalized anything. It was a pump-them-out mentality.

We were somewhat unique and original, but the green fad has been played on for a long time
now. Peace signs are dead. And there is no worse business strategy than chasing a trend
especially one that is already done for.

There is a simple resolution to this. BE FRESH. Be the trendsetter. And as soon as you are,
evolve it. If youre original and fresh, youll never run into a problem. Get the creative juices
flowing.

Rule #10: Have Fun

Just as important as anything else is to have fun.

By the end of Anomalous, my fiance and I were at each others throats. To this day, shes
extremely hesitant to start another business with me. And I dont particularly blame her.
Anything we disagreed about was initially taken offense to (primarily by me). We pretended
to wonder why things werent working but we knew exactly why. I remember looking her in
the eyes one night in particular and asking, If you saw our clothing in a store window, would
you buy it?

That was the moment we knew it was all over. Granted, there were a few kick ass designs
that I still wear today, but they were few and far between.

I cant promise you anything, but I can imagine that if you avoid most of the pitfalls that Ive
spoken about, youll find yourself in decent shape. Running a company can be a blast. There
were times (when our blinders were thick) when I knew this was something I wanted to do
with the rest of my life. It still is. The problem is that Im completely gun shy at this point.

Youll never avoid every single thing that Ive mentioned. And thats okay. No business is
perfect. But youll have to compensate for your mistakes quickly. Be fast on your feet.
Intuition is important.
Do it right from the start, and you wont have to worry about looking backwards while walking
forward. Then maybe you can write an article called How To Start A T-Shirt Company,
Successfully.

Written by Justin Merm

Im Justin. Im a writer, artist, and a father. Not necessarily in any order. Except the last one
first. Ive owned a failed t-shirt company and am a designer by trade. I used to work for
Apple. It really, really sucked. Im a jack of all trades and I like to ramble incoherently about
all of them.