Thinking of Starting a Shirt Company

Thinking of Starting a Shirt Company [+ favourites]

I have lately been thinking of starting my own t shirt company. I have tons of little sayings that I made up. Does anyone have any idea on how to go about this, what the best supplier is, etc?

"My drum skills > Your drum skills"

t-shirts with varied clever sayings is a good idea... and i'm sure tons of people would want a piece of that action too...


aren't there tons of internet companies doing that right now though?

"as i see it the only "variable" in the equation is THOUGHT. you are capable of changing this and this alone."

You might want to look 6 inces below my post.

"The Restless Mind - The curiosity of intellectual infancy"

You gonna have to have somthign pretty special to get in on that business (SP?)

"I am Domz0r....roar!!!!"

Um.
Not the blow anyone's bubble here,
but starting small business is like asking to commit yourself to hell.
I just started working for a guy with his own small business - he engineers and sells anti-stuttering devices to speech therapists and people with speech impairments, and I spent seven hours on my ass yesterday getting his credit card statements straight.

You can't do this kind of stuff on your own, and I work with this other girl Sabrina who had to sit him down and figure out his taxes and payroll shit because he was so overwhelmed with the success of his business that he couldn't even do that!

Trust me.
Sell little stuff if you want, like with cafepress or something, but small businesses require such huge investments (you're look at at least $20k down, this guy I work for put down $250k starting) that you should think twice about it, if you're serious. Because once you've invested in it, you're pretty much either a) successful or b) stuck with the losses.

Just my two cents of heads up before delving into something too serious.

"Milk, almonds and pistachios."

I say go for it. Every business started with someone just like you... with an idea. And having a "new" idea is rare because most of it's been done so expanding on or putting your own "spice" in an already existing idea has just as much chance of working out. Persistence is key. If you believe in it... go for it.

"Love everyone, question everything and look up!"

So far you been given some good advice, starting up a business is hard. Depends on what you want, what you define as viable?
Being in a tourist state, there are a lot of t-shirt shops & other small businesses around.
I know a guy, who makes curios from scrap wood & natural material that he scrouges. Alittle glue (gun) & a couple of power saws & turns out merchandice. He has a few shops that he wholesales to but he also has a couple of restuarants that allow him to sell out of the back of his pick-up truck.
The latter being the most profitable but he looks the part of a local just making a buck & he has a good line! He makes up goofy little tales to promote each item, he makes a solid contact by being outerwardly friendly, someone they want to buy from to remind them of their vacation when they are backa the old grind to pay for it.

"Terrorist or tyrant, few may come to the Truth that both are poor choice."

hmm still no advice from Decius... is he afraid of some more competition?

"UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus. ~Peter H. Coffin"

competition or source?

"Terrorist or tyrant, few may come to the Truth that both are poor choice."

Wyote: You bastard. Actually Underdawg is on my MSN Messenger and we talked about it on there.

And it's not really about competition! It took lots and lots of time and effort for me to learn the business. That's a valuable commodity, in itself.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

All in all, you can't start a successful business without capital. Especially if you hope to compete.

The one thing about the t-shirt business that is important to know is that the profit margin is much smaller than you might think it is. So there's very little room for inneficiency, advertising, hiring anyone, or mistakes. You can do all that, but don't expect the t-shirt business to pay you back for that for at least a year, assuming you implement all those things properly to begin with, which result in a successful business.

Would i have started the business knowing what I know now?

Probably not.

But then again.

If I knew how long it would take to make the UGN Network, I wouldn't have done that either.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

i was mostly poking fun at the astonishing number of tshirt websites that are out there.

i have heard many stories of people coming out of failed businesses because they simply underestimated the amount of capital they needed to stay competitive.

i hope you have some pride in your accomplishments Decius, few people fully immerse themselves in large projects such as you have, let alone at such an early age. if nothing else, you can brag about how much balls you had to follow through with everything.

"UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus. ~Peter H. Coffin"

Shirt idea: "Just Bushit"

Maybe with a swoosh shaped turd in the middle.

"Durch Nacht und Blut das Licht"