Anyone running their own T-shirt shops?
 

I've been looking for something new to do lately and I was curious if anyone here is running a successful T-shirt shop with their own designs?

I've always wanted to do shirt designs and have some ideas for a few different niche style shops.. I'm just curious if people actually buy from all these little shops I see all over the net or is it somewhat low volume?

I guess maybe a secondary question aimed at people whom have never run a t-shirt shop.. Have you ever bought a t-shirt from a website online?

Personally, I never have, which is why I wonder what kinda volume these sites would have. I seen shirt I liked but always just assumed they would be low quality. I'm wondering if most people are like me when it comes to buying stuff like this online.

I have bought 1 shirt online like that.
I have owned a shirt company.
Your equipment is critical to your success.
The cost per unit completed must be low because there's so much damn competition.
I'm not saying you have to undercut to make money.
Well... Yeah I am..

Assuming I'm talking about screen printing & not heat transfers or DTG printing.

When you say equipment quality, do you mean to allow higher out put volume or you mean not some wobbly cheaply made carousel set up?

Reason I ask, is I've been doing research on equipment and I've seen some of the obviously cheaply made carousel set ups, but I've also seen the higher end ones that are obviously much better which seems to be what most shops use.

Meanwhile, I've also seen some very high production sets ups that were using a basic table set ups, but they were doing quality multi color prints with them.

I know a guy that runs one. Not sure how successful it is for him.

My sister has a very successful store that is based on shirts and more. Using shiny rhinestones. She does very well.

You can do good work with the carousel units.
I'm saying focus on screen printing. It's far cheaper per unit than anything else.
I would start with the carousels and graduate into the automated units if volume warrants it.
You just have lots of competition that's all so watch the costs and you should do ok.

Shelly Crash, the woman that own Swurve.com, also owns an online t-shirt shop with her own designs. I can't remember the name of it, but I remember she posted some of the shirts on here and I thought they were really good, including a Dawn of the Dead spoof shirt for babies that said Spawn of the Dead.

I buy t-shirts from online shops all the time, including T-Shirt Hell and other sites I see advertised. I see a lot of t-shirt shops buying up Adwords spots on various websites month after month so they must be profitable. If you have a good sense of humor and can come up with clever designs why not? I actually just bought this shirt off redbubble.com a few weeks ago...

http://ih3.redbubble.net/image.12056...x550,black.jpg

Yea that's screen printing is what I was looking to do. I've checked the heat transfers as well as the DTG printing & both seem to lack quality/durability and probably cost more in the long run.

Yea that's something I didn't think to look at was the adword campaigns. Heh I do like the Heisenbird.

I have several

Care to elaborate? Are they your shirts/designs or are you just selling as an affiliate somewhere?

I am think about snagging a button/pin maker on eBay after the elections. Going to target local bands and fuckers that dont speaker their mind with their mouth.

Make trips to China every year and ship back containers of knockoffs. Sucks when customs breaks one of the seals off and seizes, however, for every one they scandolize, I have five get through np.

I'll never buy another heat transfer, you are correct about only screen printing.

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I don't own a t-shirt shop but know the guys that can print high quality full color pretty cheap about 4 euros per shirt, if you order more than 100, though 100 are not so many....

Try doing the art and see if anyone likes it before you buy a bunch of equipment. http://society6.com/

I've never understood how sites like that get away with all the obvious copyright infringement, but yea I was wasn't looking to buy the equipment right away. I can get access to a hackerspace that has a full screen printing shop, so I figured I'd take advantage of that and do a limited run to see how it goes.

I like water based inks over the plastisol inks. Water based are easy to clean up:thumbsup

drive carefully

http://www.neoflexprinter.com/ best DTG printer on the marke bar none. It produces great quality shirts and prints white. They are expensive but worth the money ;) Only issues i have ever had selling shirts is people getting the wrong size. Your fat...face it you need a XL not a l lol