How To Start a T-Shirt Business

Five Platforms to Start Your Online T-shirt Business

If you want to start a profitable business but do not have a lot of money to invest, you can try setting up an online T-shirt business.

You can start selling T-shirts online through multiple methods, for example

Affiliate Marketing

Reselling

Dropshipping

Print-on-Demand

Digital Printing or Screen Printing

While digital printing/screen printing and reselling requires some investment, dropshipping, and print-on-demand can be started for a small investment. Likewise, you can start selling T-shirts through Affiliate marketing without any investment.

Four eCommerce Marketplaces to Start Your Online T-shirt Business

Try these platforms to start a t-shirt business with little or no investment.

Amazon: You can not only do affiliate marketing for the T-shirts available on Amazon store but also sell your custom-made T-shirts through FBA and or T-shirt designs through Amazon Merch.

Etsy: You can use dropshipping methods to sell T-shirts or sell custom-made T-shirts. You can also sell Print-On-Demand T-shirts through Etsy. All you need to do is join a print-on-demand provider like Printify or Printful, integrate these sites with your Etsy account, and sell the T-shirts you created on these print companies through your Etsy account. 

Redbubble: Redbubble is a print-on-demand company that not only provides printing of your products but also a marketplace to sell your products. You can upload your designs, or even create designs, on Redbubble. Use your designs on T-shirts, or any other products you want to sell, and start selling these items. You don’t have to spend money to create products. You don’t even have to ship the products. Redbubble will take care of everything, you only need to create designs.

eBay:  You can use eBay to sell T-shirts in numerous ways. You can sell your custom T-shirts, or sell through dropshipping or print-on-demand methods. If you want to sell T-shirts through a print-on-demand model, you will have to integrate print-on-demand companies like printful or printify with ebay. Integration is free and takes less than a minute. When you use this method, you don’t have to create products or fulfill orders.

Teespring: If you have the desire to start a T-shirt business, you should be using a platform called teespring. This is a print provider as well as the marketplace of print-on-demand products. Unlike printify and printfull that require you to integrate with your own store (Shopify or woocommerce) or third-party ecommerce platform like ebay and etsy, you can use tee-spring as a print provider for your designs as well as sell your designs. You can also start free, you pay only when you make a sale and your order needs to be fulfilled. There is no upfront cost for starting a t-shirt business on tee-spring. However, there is a drawback to using this platform. Your product will not appear on their marketplace unless you build your trust on the platform. You need to sell your items on your own and built a trust score so that your product will appear on the marketplace

Two eCommerce Platforms to Start Your T-shirt Store

If you want to maximize your business profit, start selling from your own store instead of ecommerce marketplaces. You can use Shoipify or woocommerce to build your online store

Woocommerce: Woocommerce is free but in order to create an online store by using woocommerce, you will have to build a wordpress website first, which requires a domain and hosting.

Shopify: You have to pay monthly fees but the drop and drag feature makes it easy to create your online T-shirt store.

Two Ways to Start a T-shirt Business With Zero Investment

You can start a T-shirt business with zero investment. Here are two methods to do it.

Go to Amazon and join Amazon Merch Program. This program is specially a print-on-demand business model where you design a product mockup, and display it for sale. When the product is sold, Amazon will create a product and ship it to the buyer.  The difference between the amount you pay to Amazon and the amount you receive from the buyer is your profits. You also pay an additional $1 commission to Amazon. However, there is no upfront cost, you pay only when your product is sold. You can also sell other kinds of clothing items on Amazon Merch

Go to Redbubble and create a seller account. Redbubble is a print provider for print-on-demand products as well as a marketplace for print-on-demand products. There is no upfront cost to start a t-shirt business. You will pay only when someone orders your product.

Skills Required to Start a T-shirt Business

If you have the desire to start a t-shirt business and are wondering about the skills required for this business, this post might help you. If you want to start a t-shirt business, you need following skills.

Screen printing /digital printing: If you want to setup your own t-shirt manufacturing studio, you need screen printer or digital printer, you need skills to do screen printing or digital printing.

Designing skills: Whether you are screen printing t-shirts or using print-on-demand methods to sell t-shirt, you need designing skills. You need to design t-shirt through a designing program like photoshop.

SEO: Whether you are selling from your own store or through ecommerce marketplace, you need to do SEO on your store in order to increase visitors on your stores.

Marketing skills: Just like SEO, you also need digital marketing skills. You will have to market your store and products to generate sales. You will require social media marketing skills, email marketing skills, etc.