Are you looking to start your own t-shirt printing business from home? You have come to the right place because I have come up with a list of strategies that will help you start the business.
Before that, let us talk about the market opportunity. T-shirt is a profitable business, as brands want customized clothing to portray their products and expand their brand awareness. As a t-shirt printer, you help them meet that need and make money in the process.
Step-by-Step Guide on Starting Your T-Shirt Printing Business from Home
Table of Contents
If you follow the steps below, you might just be able to start your t-shirt printing business from your home and scale it when you have the resources.
1. Identify and Understand the Market
T-shirt printing has been here for a long time. In the last couple of years, the market has undergone different changes, from the wearing of t-shirts as a fashion statement to the new trend – branding.
Your first major move is to identify and understand the market you want to venture into. This includes niching down and creating customized solutions for different audiences or target markets. For example, you may want to focus on printing t-shirts that are meme-focused. Serving brands by printing t-shirts showing what the brands offer is also a good idea.
2. Study the Competition
Your competitors are the existing t-shirt printing brands. Study their business models, see the areas that need improvements and work on those to penetrate the market.
3. Create a Solid Business Plan
Every business needs a business plan that details what the business is all about, how it is set to achieve the goals, and the possible loopholes to watch out for.
4. Make Your T-Shirt Printing Legal by Getting a License
It is now time to put a structure to your t-shirt business. This includes deciding on the type of venture you want to run and getting the license permitting you to run it.
There are different ways to make your business legal, and that includes:
- Sole Proprietorship: This is if you want to be the sole owner of the business.
- Partnership: In this case, you are collaborating or pooling resources with someone to start the t-shirt printing business.
- Limited Liability Company (LLC): Consider registering as an LLC, if you intend on scaling the business and building a bigger brand out of it.
Other business ownership routes to consider are:
- Doing Business As (DBA): If you are running the business under a fictitious name.
- E-Commerce: This means that you are selling the t-shirts from an online store. If this were to be the case, consider applying for a sales tax permit. The essence of the permit is to help you collect tax on each t-shirt sold in your online store.
Read Also:
- Why Getting Embroidered Work Shirts for Your Staff is Vital in 2019
- How to Use Branded T-shirts as an Offline Marketing Strategy
5. Decide on Your Printing Options and Acquire the Equipment
There are several options for a t-shirt printing brand to choose from. They include:
- Heat Transfer: This t-shirt printing option involves making a pre-print of the t-shirt design on heat transfer paper before using a heat press machine to transfer the design to the t-shirt, for which it is intended.
- Direct-to-Garment: This t-shirt printing option offers higher quality at the end of the printing. The printing process includes using a wide palette of colors to print low volumes of t-shirts. It is recommended to use this option for large-volume printing.
- Screen Printing: You can use screen printing to transfer designs to t-shirts, provided the design is not complex.
6. Draw up a Budget and Stick to it
It is imperative to know the financial aspects of the business, including the costs of purchasing the t-shirt printing business equipment, overhead costs/ miscellaneous costs. Those will help you in fixing the price for each t-shirt.
7. Create Your Concepts and Don’t Stop Tweaking Until You Get It Right
You may be unable to get the right designs the first few times you try but with consistent practice, you will get there. The goal is to create a unique design that makes your t-shirt printing brand outstanding.
8. Seek Feedback before Promoting
You can make a few t-shirt designs and give them to your friends and family members to test. Think they wouldn’t give the kind of unbiased feedback you are looking for? Consider giving the t-shirts to random persons and solicit their thoughts on the same. It is also possible to post the designs on social media to elicit a response.
Take a cue from everyone’s viewpoints to improve on the t-shirt designs, before making the ones to sell.
9. Market Your Unique T-Shirt Designs
Your t-shirts are now ready for the market. Start promoting using different marketing channels, such as:
- On your website
- On social media
- Using paid advertising on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Conclusion
It is quite easy to start a successful t-shirt printing business provided you understand the existing solutions in the market and how to be creative with your brand’s solutions. It is one of the low-risk businesses to start and you don’t have to overthink it either. If at any point you feel overwhelmed or lack ideas, seek help from professionals in the field and they would help you get back on track.
