How to Start a Clothing Line – t-shirt business, clothing company

When selling t-shirts online, a major thing that determines your long term success in the industry is how well your customer service is. Of course your t-shirt designs have to be good in order for people to want to buy, but what makes people really buy from you is how much they like you; how [...]

Creating a brand identity is one of the most important aspects of building a successful clothing line. Your brand identity is how your customers are able to identify your business, and is achieved by any images, lingo, philosophy or other details about your clothing line. It’s what makes your business unique, and in a world [...]

Some of the most visited sites daily on the internet are various social networks. The largest demographic of these sites are the people who purchase the most tee shirts of any other group. There are many tee shirt brands that have launched to success with just a small beginning presence on a social network. Depending [...]

It’s been a ton of of hard work and I still have a website redesign for our website and store, a photoshoot to do, and get everything in order before we launch. Here is a mockup of the design so far. Let me know what you think. It reminds me of the 300. This is [...]

My buddy David Murray over at SEIBEI wrote this great article about doing screen printing vs hiring it out. I get e-mails all the time from people who want to learn screen printing and start their own t-shirt line. It’s always a very tricky issue for me to tackle, because the way I came into [...]

They’ve got some really strong designs, better than most of what’s coming out lately. Classic, simple, unique – true style. casualtykillers.com

So assuming that you have a bunch of great products and you have the money to produce them, the next most important thing is to have a professional website. To us indie designers, a website is everything. It’s pretty much our only storefront, well, for those who can’t afford a brick and mortar store anyway. So like any store that you would visit in a mall or in SoHo or in Tokyo or wherever, it has to be presentable and professional and give the customer a good impression of your brand.

I get lots of questions from people who want to get into the shirt business asking me about using licensed imagery, sayings, and characters in their designs. They ask me if it’s “ok” because they deviated from the original works by a certain percentage, or because it’s a parody, or some other excuse they claim will allow them to cash in on their design while not getting into trouble. The fact is: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and even quacks like a duck…it’s copyright infringement. That means that the little “personal flair” you add to the design idea isn’t enough to keep you off the radar of any major company protecting their intellectual property rights. Make any excuse you want, but you know what? You’ll have to prove it in court…and do you have enough money to do that? That’s what I thought…

Two important things When taking on the endeavor of a new market it is always important to realize and address couple things. The first is that you must realize that you are doing something new. Hence, all of your experience that is in marketing but is not in the same niche is almost irrelevant and [...]

Here is a post that was recently on an online forum. I changed the name of the company to disguise their identity. Hey, you think you got what it takes to make a shirt or hoodie design for Paper Clothing? Then bring it!!! Email designs to paperclothing@gmail.com Looking for bright, hand drawn art that is [...]

You need to be a part of your company and give proper art direction for a design to succeed. The worst jobs I’ve had were when the client didn’t really know what they wanted and couldn’t even answer my basic question about where they want the designs direction to go. The saying “I’ll know what I want when I see it” is very painful for a designer because they can be working hours on a design only to find out that it wasn’t what the client wanted.

I’m very glad to say that the first interview for tee shirt fashion is with Kyle Crawford of Electric Zombie. I want this interview to speak for itself, but I will say that I chose Kyle as the first interview not only because I admire his work with Electric Zombie, but also because of his [...]

out now – http://www.stussy.com

I have gotten a lot of emails being a freelance designer myself and most people don’t know how to properly contact artists. The worst is when I get an email that say “how much for a design”. Really… that’s all I have to go on. I don’t even know who the person is, what their company does, or if I am even the right person for the job. Please don’t do this if you expect to get any kind of response.

I have individually headed the development of business opportunities, however, in others I have decided to work with partners. I will tell you upfront that I enjoy partnerships more than flying solo. If there is one red flag to mention about partnerships it is that some people get greedy and want all the rewards. Sharing makes a business work.

The first piece of advice I am going to give is: Don’t just look at money signs, look at the pleasure you are going to get from building this business and seeing it succeed with the people you are sharing this adventure with. It is very important that if you are only focused on money you are missing out on the big picture of what will truly make you successful.

new tees are set to launch soon. some may be up on 80s purple already http://www.grnappletree.com