Posts Tagged ‘lava guide to starting your own t shirt business’
If you read through this blog you will notice that most of my posts are about work that we’ve done for other companies. This is because Lava Ink is not like other clothing firms – we do not sell our own designs. We are a garment engineering company and our product is our connections, experience and knowledge. We make it possible for anyone to start a label without having the the knowledge about processes, suppliers or service providers.
So you have this great idea for a t shirt label and you want to give it a go to see what returns you can get. You feel a bit scared to take the plunge because you don’t know if the idea will flop? Which t shirts to choose? How should the artwork be prepared? Which processes to use? How do you choose a reliable printing company? All these questions can make you doubt yourself. This is where Lava Ink comes in. We take away all the hassles and make your idea a reality.
So what do we get out of the deal? Lava ink has a rep status with all of the suppliers we use. Which means we get special discounts from these suppliers and service providers and all we do is add our mark-up to their cost and level it out so that you pay the price for the products, if you had gone to them directly. We save you time because you don’t have to run around sourcing all the inputs and give you peace of mind because we only use the best service providers to do the work. This applies to manufactured products as well.
At Lava Ink our main purpose is to bridge the gap between the client (which is you) and the Industry. It’s like owning a clothing business and employing all the right people without all the overheads.
Defining your target market
There is a heap of info out there about target markets but most simply put – you need to define who your customers will be. The trick is to target groups of people and make your t shirts appealing to them. Here are a few examples of target markets:
- people between the ages of 16 -30 who like surfing, coming from households of a middle income group (Billabong)
- people between 16- 35 from South Africa who have a good sense humour (laugh it off).
- Students between the ages of 17 – 25 who listens to hip-hop music.
People in similar age groups; similar beliefs; similar cultures and so forth, are most likely to be interested in similar things. You need to identify these groups by doing a demographic analysis or other kind of research. A great site to get information about age, race and gender population of South Africa is from Statistics South Africa . Having this information will help you establish where to sell your t shirts; which gender to cater for and so forth.It is all about knowing where to throw your net to get the biggest catch.
Have a goal/vision that guides your business.
Anybody starting a business should have a goal/vision, and the same applies to selling t shirts. How do you see your business in 5 – 10 years from now? What are the objectives of your business?
Reasons for starting a t shirt business.
Some basic reasons for starting your t shirt business could be:
- to make loads of money
- to create awareness(e.g. political t shirts)
- to have many people wearing your designs (e.g. designer t shirts)
- or to have the best online t shirt store
It may also be for a range of other reasons but you need to identify these, and tie it into your vision – then work towards achieving it.
Write a guiding statement to achieve your vision.
A great idea is to write a statement that guides your business’ culture towards obtaining your vision – even if you are the only person in the business at this point. Here’s a great example of such a statement as taken from Ecko t shirts:
Rhinos roam the world on the backs of *ecko unltd.’s forward-thinking consumers, and its diverse brands are omnipresent in visual representations of next-generation culture: from music videos and television programs to catwalks, action sports, and video games.
It is clear that Ecko envision’s their products to be legendary and diverse – and anybody reading this statement will know this.
