I had the opportunity to start a successful T-Shirt Business which we have sold at Craft Shows that were held in Malls and Community Events. I will have to say that I was able to pump out a lot of shirts in a short amount of time once I got the hang of it. Sometimes I would stay up all night making last minute shirts in time for the show the next day or two. What kind of T-Shirts did I sell? I sold Screen Printed Transfers that I believe were the best in the Industry. The way I applied them on was with a 16X24 Professional Heat Transfer machine that I had purchased for just over six hundered dollars.
We could make on a Saturday at a Shopping Mall about 1100 dollars retail in one day. On a Sunday it could be about 400 to 600 dollars. I would try and separate my shirts from other business owners by having the best designs and the best brand in my opinion of T-Shirts or Sweatshirts. Most of my other competition did not have as nice designs or shirt quality material. Some competitors would even sell their t-shirts very cheap. Yet I had no problem selling mine which were just selling on the higher end when it comes to T-Shirts and I would have plenty of people especially women who recognized the quality and were willing to pay a little extra for them and many times they would be lined up with T-Shirts or Sweatshirts in hand to purchase. Many people got excited when they saw the designs and when they saw the brand of the T-Shirt many were surprised.
I really had a lot of fun making these shirts and if I were to do this again the one big thing I would do different is to cut down on my design styles. I had too many designs and I would rent two booth spaces to display them all. I think I could of likely sold just as many if not probably more T-Shirts and Sweatshirts if I would of kept enough for one booth space and saved money this way. Although I did sell many types of designs, my best selling designs were Crafty designs. I discovered that Women like to buy and are not afraid to. When a potential customer sees our booth they know we are only there for one or two days in most cases. This creates Impulse buying! People are more quick to buy because they did not want to see us gone and they missed out buying a great gift for themselves or someone else. Sometimes we would receive orders from people to ship to their location.
It is funny that it creates Impulse buying because the designs that we used were from Impulse Designs. They were the best quality Screen Print Transfers that I have seen. I do not know if they are still in business but if anyone was to get into this aspect of the business this would be a great brand to have.
I really enjoyed this business and it was a lot of fun. It was nice to see a quality product displayed in a short amount of time. I had wanted to sell them on the Internet but I did not go that far with them. I ended up selling my inventory and equipment. My advised to anyone is to know your market and start off on the small end. Start off with several (in this case) Country designs and expand slowly from there making each of your buying purchasing a smart one.
I hope this helps and if you have any questions please feel free to reply to this posting or email me and I will tell you everything that I know about this business. It is a lot of fun and wouldn't really mind doing it again.
