Launch a Kick-Ass T-Shirt Brand. T-Shirt Magazine
brand? If you are spending the time to do as much research as possible, then you are on the right track.
Do you buy clothes from other independent companies and think of ways to improve their products? Do you spend night and day thinking about design and name ideas? If so, then creating a detailed business plan for your future brand is the next path to take.
The business plan for your brand is basically going to be your step-by-step map in the creative process. You want to cover as many things as possible so that you will be better prepared once your plan becomes a reality. I will use my business plan for my brand as a guide for this section.
The first steps I took included writing down hundreds of brand name ideas. Taking the time to pick the perfect brand name can be an extremely long and frustrating process. The method that I used was to write down any words that came to mind when I thought about what I wanted my brand to represent. I had always been a history buff and I wanted to incorporate that passion into my brand.
Some people can find history to be quite boring, however, so my goal was to create a brand name with a contemporary feel that would stand out. After jotting down hundreds of words, I then looked for some outside help. I threw out name ideas to personal friends, family members and to people on t-shirt community websites.
After taking in all of their feedback, I found my final name to be Vicious History. You may not come up with your brand name the way I did, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t be afraid to test out your ideas on your peers, as getting outside opinions is very important.
The next step I took was listing design ideas and potential artists. Make sure that your design ideas revolve around a central theme that represents your brand. Nothing is worse than releasing your newest collection only to realize that the products don’t relate with each other.
Design ideas can be tricky to put into words, so print out pictures and articles that inspire the look you are going for. There are thousands of graphic artists out there, so make sure you do your research and hire the ones who have the style you are looking for (that is, if you’re not creating the designs yourself).
The next step is to take into account the type of shirts you will be using, and the method of having them printed. Just as with artists, there are loads of blank t-shirt companies, so go with the ones that have your preferred styles, fits, colors and prices. If you aren’t printing the shirts yourself (which is most likely the case, unless you’re a screen printing specialist), shop around for quotes from screenprinters and decide on the best option based on your business plan.
The last section of the business plan should account for shipping, handling and accessories. Chances are, if you are starting a brand, your start-up capital isn’t going to be very much. This can be a bit limiting until your company starts to grow, but always try to put free items, such as fliers and stickers, into your budget. Figuring out your shipping method can be pretty intimidating and confusing at first.
In your business plan, write down your shipping methods step by step until everything looks right. Take into account packaging, scales, shipping supplies and postage methods. Before you launch, it’s always good to test your shipping methods by sending a package to yourself or a relative to ensure you won’t encounter any problems.
The final section of my business plan included all of the necessary financial information. Planning your costs and expenses is a very important step that you shouldn’t overlook. Jumping into a business without doing any sort of financial research will only slow your business down and reveal your lack of professionalism. Request quotes from graphic artists, web designers and apparel companies and incorporate them into your business plan so you can compare prices and make the best decisions for your brand.
I have seen companies in this industry with starting budgets ranging from several thousands of dollars to only a few hundred dollars. Some of these businesses have succeeded, and others never made it past their first year. Don’t worry about other people’s budgets or whether or not yours is large enough to compete. Building a successful clothing brand doesn’t depend solely on money. It requires countless hours of dedication and passion.
With that being said, don’t rush to launch your brand if you can’t cover many of the important expenses right off the bat. If you are at that point, spend more time raising the necessary amount of funds before you pull the trigger. The moment you launch your brand, it will be out there for everyone to see, and you don’t want to give a poor first impression. It will be easy for consumers to notice that your brand isn’t very professional, and that will greatly reduce the chance of them purchasing something from your store.
So much more goes into planning a successful brand than just ideas for cool-looking t-shirts. You need to develop a brand image that encourages the consumer to purchase a product. Having a clean and user-friendly website, professional product photos, high-quality garments and exceptional customer service are just a few of the things that contribute to a powerful brand image.
The most important step to take prior to launching your brand is doing large amounts of research. You can never do enough research for your brand; there is always quality information out there to help build your brand.
Regardless of the amount of research you do or the quality of your business plan, you are going to make mistakes. The mistakes aren’t what matter in owning a business; what matters is your ability to recognize and correct them in order to promote continual growth within your company. Having a diehard passion for your brand and learning from experience is what will lead to success within the independent clothing market.
Chaz Matses is the owner of the brand Viscous History
Don’t Get Wrapped Up In Planning
After stressing how important it is to plan, you’ll probably go into a planning frenzy, trying to create the perfect plan for your brand to guarantee success. But while total lack of planning can guarantee failure, so can over planning. It goes along with the phrase “too much of a good thing is bad.” Planning your goals, objectives, and daily tasks will put you on the right path, but if you overanalyze your goals, second-guess your objectives, and obsess over perfection when trying to get tasks done, you’re not going to get anywhere.
When running our previous t-shirt brand, we used to meet every Sunday and spend three hours planning and evaluating our marketing efforts, creating new objectives, and writing new tasks that we felt would put us closer to our goals. We’d also go as far as projecting sales figures five years into the future and rewriting some of the same objectives and goals that we set last week, since we never accomplished them.
While some of the planning done during these sessions was helpful and served as a guide for our business, much of the planning was just a waste of time and an excuse for inaction. By the end of the month, we’d realize we kept ourselves busy with hours of planning, but no significant progress was made. We actually spent more time planning than executing. Nowadays, we keep planning sessions down to one hour, one day a week.
To avoid getting too wrapped up in planning, it’s best to focus on one or two main goals and the objectives surrounding those goals. If you set a goal that may take three years to achieve, break it up into smaller, one-year goals. Even further, break that one-year goal into goals that can be achieved within three months each. It’s easier to stay focused on something that can be achieved in three months versus three years.
If there are plenty of tasks you must execute to achieve a certain goal, consider writing only the daily tasks for the current week that will lead to some progress on the set objectives. Then when the next week rolls around, write the tasks for that week.
As obvious as it sounds, it’s important that you actually understand your own plan. We used to print out business plan templates from the Internet and fill in the blanks with a bunch of jargon about how we’re going to run our business, based on other business plan examples we saw online. While we had several pages full of planning written out, we couldn’t really