The community colleges and small shows wore me out. You have to set up be there for a couple of hours and you aren’t making that much profit for the amount of work you are putting in. Right now I am just doing the big ones in my area. Renegade LA, SF and Unique Christmas show in LA. These all cost around $300 but they are worth the money. I go in for two days and usually make around $1,500-3,000 at these events. You can also fly to the other Renegade or other craft shows around the country and make a pretty penny. Always talk to the vendors and see what other shows are good. You’ll find out a ton of great info from these guys.

At the moment I wouldn’t suggest doing the Unique LA regular season show (I haven’t done very good at them) but their Christmas show has been really great for me. All of the Renegade shows I’ve seen have had a huge crowd and I would recommend them all.

http://uniquela.com/

http://www.renegadecraft.com/

I would really like to hear your guys feedback on some good shows to do, and even ones that vendors should avoid.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

Shows: go big or go home

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Web usability is an approach to make web sites easy to use for an end-user, without requiring her (or him) to undergo any specialized training.^{[citation needed]} The user should be able to intuitively relate the actions he needs to perform on the web page, with other interactions he sees in the general domain of life e.g. press of a button leads to some action. The broad goal of usability can be:^{[citation needed]}

1. Present the information to the user in a clear and concise way.
2. To give the correct choices to the users, in a very obvious way.
3. To remove any ambiguity regarding the consequences of an action e.g. clicking on delete/remove/purchase.
4. Put the most important thing in the right place on a web page or a web application.

In short communicate what your company is all about within the first couple seconds of a user visiting your site then make the site simple and intuitive so anyone can use it.

A great book on web usability is Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition. I’ll try and go further in depth in posts later about how to communicate what your company is all about and how to improve your websites usability.

SEO (search engine optimization) is another thing that you need to think of when designing a web site. I use wordpress to run the blog or clothing companies and any pages like about, faq. Wordpress has great plugins for SEO and you can tweak your SEO as much as you want. If SEO is something that you don’t understand use the search in the upper right of the site and you can find some good articles on the subject.

I have been using bigcartel to do the stores and cart but it doesn’t give you a lot of options for the individual pages SEO. You can basically just change the meta tags on the layout and it goes on all the pages. The names of thumbnail images aren’t descriptive and you can’t change the url of any items after you create the product. It leaves a lot to be desired.

I have started to use magento which gives you tons of SEO options and other plugins and it has everything you want. It takes more time to develop and you need to get a better host to run it since it uses a lot of resources but it is one of the better carts out there and probably has the most features of an of the free carts right now.

CMS, or content management system is a must. I still have friends I knew from college making static websites or all flash sites and it just makes updating anything a pain in the ass. You will need to have a webmaster update everything which can get expensive. Wordpress, big cartel, and magento all are great CMS’s and you’ll be able to update everything with no knowledge of coding. Unless a client needs a new design I don’t do any updates on a site.

Social bookmarking and user coments are also important.

Facebook has come out with http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments you just insert the code into your site and people can easily leave comments on your products. the beauty of it is you just need a facebook account to make a comment, it’s super easy.

I also have a social bookmarking plugin I use on wordpress. You can check it out below you can easily share my posts with the click of the button.

On my e-commerce product page I use this thing called add this. http://www.addthis.com/ I use a custom icon set which you can check out on the site I made http://heartsofkings.bigcartel.com/product/the-king-logo

So that’s what I’ve got off the top of my head. Put up some comments or questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

Effective Web Design

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I can’t remember the book but they interviewed a lot of people and asked them how much they made and how much they would need to make to consider themselves rich. Pretty much everyone gave the same answer. If they made $20,000 a year it would take $40,000 for them to consider themselves rich, if they made $200,000 it would take $400,000 for them to consider themselves rich. Everyone wanted to be making twice as much money for them to consider themselves as rich.

Even though I want to make more money I still consider myself rich. I don’t have to go to a 9-5 job 5 days a week. I don’t have a set number of days off a year. I can do whatever I want and since I believe time is money I am richer then most.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

How much is enough?

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So don’t get stuck on how much you paid for your product but how much the market will buy them for.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

How much should you charge?

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If you had 100 friends (or is it likes…) on Facebook that responded to every comment you put up that would be way better then having 1,000’s of friends with little to no interaction.

Social networking sites are about building a community. You need to figure out what your community wants to hear and deliver it in a personal way. No one wants to read facebook updates that sound like they are coming from some business. So be person and most importantly be entertaining.

This is also one of those areas you can hire someone else to do it. There might be a fan or friend that will do it for a few shirts.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

It doesn’t matter how many friends or followers you have on social networking sites!

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Recently I have been working on my business system. How do I keep on generating sales and income without doing all the work? The answer was very simple, get other people to do it (read my post on delegation for more info). Every successful business is run on the simple concept of get bigger checks and write smaller checks. So once you’ve got that business system down and don’t have to do work all the time what do you do then?

ANYTHING YOU WANT!

It’s awesome. I’ve been reading tons of books, hanging out with friends more and working on personal projects that I always put off because I was too busy. Once you’ve found a way to work only a couple hours a week and still make money you’ll be able to work and do things that are more important to you.

This isn’t the easiest thing to let go of your business. The best clothing companies I see have been built by people that are perfectionists and do everything themselves. These people usually find it very hard to let go because they are use to being in control of everything. What this usually means is a lot of stress and them finding out that their dream job wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

You’re self employed with your business, now what?

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Decisions are temporary so make the call and move on

Done. Start to think of it as a magical word. When you get to done it means something’s been accomplished. A decision has been made and you can move on. Done means you’re building momentum.

But wait, what if you screw up and make the wrong call? It’s ok. This isn’t brain surgery, it’s a web app. As we keep saying, you’ll likely have to revisit features and ideas multiple times during the process anyway. No matter how much you plan you’re likely to get half wrong anyway. So don’t do the “paralyis through analysis” thing. That only slows progress and saps morale.

Instead, value the importance of moving on and moving forward. Get in the rhythm of making decisions. Make a quick, simple call and then go back and change that decision if it doesn’t work out.

Accept that decisions are temporary. Accept that mistakes will happen and realize it’s no big deal as long as you can correct them quickly. Execute, build momentum, and move on.
Be An Executioner

It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an nda to tell me the simplest idea.)

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

• Awful idea = -1
• Weak idea = 1
• So-so idea = 5
• Good idea = 10
• Great idea = 15
• Brilliant idea = 20

• No execution = $1
• Weak execution = $1000
• So-so execution = $10,000
• Good execution = $100,000
• Great execution = $1,000,000
• Brilliant execution = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.

That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas. I’m not interested until I see their execution.

check out their site.http://37signals.com/

I have had a hard time making decisions in the past and I can say nothing ever gets solved by waiting. I usually am never more prepared waiting 2 weeks then making a decision then just making the decision immediately. Just do it and get it done. You can always make more decisions later.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

Make Decisions

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Tee zine is around for quite some time now, and as you may presume I get a LOT of emails from various T-shirt labels, asking if they could be featured on Tee zine. Among all of them, there is a certain amount of emails which seem to be sent out just for the cause of it, which can actually be quite iritating and detract relatively severe T-shirt blogger like me from the original idea – to get me interested in particular tee label or a shirt.

Now, I know this is a case with many T-shirt bloggers around, and if you’re a blogger you can just skip such emails, thinking: “who cares about those people anyway”? Well, okay, but I wanted to give a couple of advices to newly established tee labels on how NOT to contact a T-shirt blogger in order to actually GET a feature on desired T-shirt blog (don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to “sell you brains” here, I just think it could be really useful if you’re getting started in this whole T-shirt business).

First – do NOT start an email with a matrix. I get a lot of emails starting something like: “hello (insert name), I really like your blog and I think we need more blogs like yours out there”. I mean – if you want me (or any T-shirt blogger, in that sense) to actually check out the links or images you’ve added to your email, please take some time and in fact DO check out that particular blog you’re trying to contact. Read a couple of articles, see what kind of tees / designs the blogger is into, try to write something that will show a blogger you REALLY like what he writes. Matrices are good only for mass emails. We bloggers are people, too

Second – do NOT send emails with a lot of info - I mean, it’s great you started this wonderful T-shirt label with those amazing designs, but giving me a lot of info in your initial email in which you ask me for a feature on my blog may also turn me over. In other words – be relatively short and to the point, and if I really like what you do and decide to write about your line I will surely reply to your email with some questions on particular details. I am sure many T-shirt bloggers have this problem, so if I’m writing “me” you can be sure that it in fact means “us”.

Here’s an example of a well-written initial email from Connor Fathers of Alive & Well tee line, who’s “Owl” tee design can be seen below the text: “My name is Connor and I run a small, independent line, Alive & Well, from my garden shed in the south of England. I really like what you have going on, it looks really clean and you pick out some great shirts, I was wondering how I could go about possibly being featured? I’ll keep it short and sweet as I’m sure you’re very busy, here is the link to my store so if you like what you see, please let me know! aliveandwell.bigcartel.com Thanks for your time, I really hope to hear back from you”.

Third – do NOT expect a reply right away – like I already said, there are a lot of emails coming to T-shirt bloggers’ inboxes, so give us a chance to read them all and decide which ones we’ll feature on our blogs. It’s also the case that some labels send out an initial email and get my reply some weeks later, but I cannot tell you how many times I didn’t hear the label back. I mean – why did you contact me in the first place?

Fourth – do NOT be the same as others – in other words: try to be original and think of something unique which will set apart your email from dozens of others. Some kind of contest for the readers of particular blog, a discount coupon, an original idea of promoting your tee or a line… It guarantees you almost 100% blog coverage, and some curious blogger (like me) may really like what you’ve got going on and write a couple of extra sentences on your original and unique little company (even if she / he doesn’t like your designs so much).

For example, Richard Wilde of art & design community ArtyBuzz.com, which also features T-shirts, needed a judge for his next tee contest, so he wrote me an email to see if I was interested in it. Why not, I thought, and so I’ve checked his site and found out a great new place for tee designers and other artists, which I now visit more or less often. There I found this particular shirt I really liked.

Fifth – do NOT neglect the contact once you’ve been featured – I really don’t know why this happens, but there is a certain amount of labels which just don’t stay in touch after they’ve been reviewed or mentioned on a blog. Isn’t it logical you want that particular blog to write about you again? So why not add it to your mailing list and shoot an email once in awhile with some news on your latest activities? To me, as a more or less dedicated T-shirt blogger, it’s important to make lasting connections, plus it’s always nice to have some “fresh juice” in my news section.

Another good example – Dalene and Alexa of T-shirt designer community Springleap.com often inform me on their tee design contest winners. Now, I know they may be using matrices for such emails, but it’s always nice to see they haven’t forgotten what’s my birth name By the way – one of their latest winners is called Whoo Hoo!!! and the winning design is called “Rabobi, Rabobi” (it’s the South African version of Spiderman).

At the end – I hope this article doesn’t sound like some kind of T-shirt preach. Also, these are not “the sacred rules” or something like that. I just want these tips to be useful and help you get a feature on desired T-shirt blog. Since you obviouly got into T-shirt business to CREATE, and not neccessarily just to SELL, why don’t you start with creating a good & (kvalitetan) relationship with a T-shirt blogger?

This was originally posted by Dejan at Tee Zine

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

how NOT to contact a T-shirt blogger

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Like most things the greater the risk the greater the reward. Lot’s of people want to put up no risk in starting a clothing company and with that attitude you won’t get very far. With most of these direct fulfillment sites your costs per tee are $13-20. Average shirts you would probably sell for around $20. So that’s a $7 profit at the most but you don’t have to take care of any of the printing or shipping.

If you printed 50 white shirts, 1 color, on something inexpensive like tultex it would probably be around $6 per shirt depending on who you print with. You have up front costs of $300 but your profit per shirt is $14 for shirts you charge $20 for. That’s twice as much profit as with one of these direct fulfillment companies. You have other costs like shipping materials and shipping costs but you usually recoup all those loses having the customer pay for shipping to the order.

I wrote this post because lately I have just been getting so many emails asking for direct fulfillment sites.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

Print to order sites don’t work

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The following is an excerpt from the book

“Can you personally make a better hamburger then McDonald’s?”

So far 100% of the people I have talked with have talked with about their new idea have said “yes”. They can all prepare, cook, and serve a better quality hamburger then McDonald’s.

At this point , I ask them the next question: “Can you personally build a better business system than McDonald’s?

Some people see the difference immediately, and some do not. And I would say the difference is whether the person is fixated on the left side of the Quadrant, which is focused on the idea of the better burger, or on the right side of the quadrant, which is focused on the system of business.

I do my best to explain that there are a lot of entreprenuers out there offering far superior products or services than are offered by the mega-rich multinational corporations, just as there are billions of people who can make a better burger than McDonald’s But only McDonald’s has the system that has served billions of burgers.

-Robert Kiyosaki “Cashflow Quadrant”

This quote really opened my eyes that the product isn’t the only thing to worry about and I need to focus on creating a strong system for my clothing company to succeed. It’s not all about the product and the sooner you understand that and work on all the other areas of your business the sooner you will succeed.

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

It’s not just about the product

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