Clothing people, help me get started.

[CGM]

Hey guys/gals. How are you doing?

After I get all my web projects developed and finished, I am moving towards more tangible work. The next thing on my plate is clothing.

Intro... (feel free to skip)

I ride BMX, have for many years. I still travel alot, going to new places and always meeting new people. I keep in contact with most of them, letting them know when I am in town, and vice versa. I'm beginning to develop some hype for some clothes, and I even have a 'team' in the works who is willing to support the brand. I'm pretty excited about one member in particular who is very well known in the BMX world, and having him endorse us would be great. I have some people in mind for the Pro team, and I have the "Flow" (Amateur team) in mind too. In exchange for free clothes/shirts, these guys wear the clothes, especially at any sort of competition or big event to help support the company. I get photos of them riding their bikes and hanging out wearing it, for advertising and for the website. I'm known well in several online bmx-hubs and have many people who would support this clothing line, simply because the owner is a 'nice dude' and in the BMX community we tend to support rider owned, rider produced goods and parts. We stick together. (I also know of several physical locations accross the US that would gladly sell these, simply because I know the owners of said shops)


Need help...
However, I am new to the clothing industry. I have a more detailed business plan than what is above, thats just sort of a long ramble. My goal is to offer high quality clothing. I hate wearing shirts with tags, I hate ill-fitting shirts or shirts that are too thick. In the bmx-world, most of us seem to like the fit of American Apparel tees. Most of them are pretty light/thin, pretty comfortable shirts.

I want my first shirts to stand out, to not be cheap or half-assed looking. Which is why I want to go with American Apparel Acid Washed T's and V-Necks. Does anyone know of a reputable supplier of these? I know you can get them straight from AA, but sometimes people have extras they can sell. Sizes S-M-L (Medium and Large being in bigger demand. Not too many "big guys" riding bmx bikes needed XL shirts)

I have a design, what would be a reasonable price to produce it? Its a three color (orange, green, white) with a large image on the front. The mock-up sample is here: T-Shirt Design Sample

Assuming my first run of shirts was only 30 or so, how much would it cost to get that made on the shirts I specified above?

When designing a shirt... What format is needed when the person making them, makes your... (can't remember the word for it)... the stencil/design/whatever for the screen printing process?


Lets just leave it at that for right now,

[JRRoss]

Sup man. Are you looking to order the American Apparel T's online?? because I might have a few links for that. The costs of printing varies greatly depending on how the design is. I like that shirt btw. But anyway when i designed a mock shirt for a friend that looked like that (the way the design covers the shirt) he said it woulc cost around $30-$40 to make but thats a rough estimate and it depends on different factors. As for format use .SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)

I hope that helped a bit

[urbanroots]

what you could do is get a software designing program and come up with some digital samples to see how the art flows across the tshirt and it would be cost benefit to you and also try to get your wholesale license because buying American apparel tees can be kind of expensive too

[Jimg89]

Being a fellow BMX rider, I know that the market is not large enough to want to start a business solely on that. Just a few things you're going to need to keep in mind.

-What are your products going to be?
-Whats your target market?
-Are you going to make enough of your product to keep it going?
-How are you going to market yourself?
-Where is your products going to be sold?

I would suggest starting up your own website with an online store. That way, you can cut the middle man out, thus leading to lower prices for the consumer. Its one less thing to keep up with. This way, it goes straight from the printer to you. You dont have to worry about getting them, sending them back out, paying shipping, hoping nothing happens to the large amount of product, etc.

Thats all I can offer. Good luck though!

Edit- You're Curtis from BG, arent you?

[CGM]

Being a fellow BMX rider, I know that the market is not large enough to want to start a business solely on that. Just a few things you're going to need to keep in mind.

-What are your products going to be?
-Whats your target market?
-Are you going to make enough of your product to keep it going?
-How are you going to market yourself?
-Where is your products going to be sold?

I would suggest starting up your own website with an online store. That way, you can cut the middle man out, thus leading to lower prices for the consumer. Its one less thing to keep up with. This way, it goes straight from the printer to you. You dont have to worry about getting them, sending them back out, paying shipping, hoping nothing happens to the large amount of product, etc.

Thats all I can offer. Good luck though!

Edit- You're Curtis from BG, arent you?

I plan on starting small, with a low-number initial batch of just the T's. That will be my way of testing the waters and seeing what the response to this would be.

Target market is not limited to BMX only, in fact what I said in my OP could also be said for skateboarding. My old room mate who I still see 3-4 times throughout the week is a sponsored skater, he knows people, they know people. Its all about who you know. So while I would like to do this for BMX, I foresee it succeeding with the addition of a skate crew too.

Marketing wise, I will utilize what I like to call 'guerrilla marketing'. Basically just doing a lot, with limited resources. To begin, I would try to create some hype on bmx and skate forums, but only after the website was completed so they could see the teams, read the interviews, check out the shirts, check out some pics, etc. Aside from that, using everything from Twitter, Facebook, to just going to the skatepark with a box full of shirts for sale. Ad space on forums like BG are very reasonable.

I would say the largest amount of product would be sold online, I didn't mention that before and when I re-read my original post it sounded as if I was solely going to rely on people I know with shops, etc. While it would be nice to have physical locations to sell in, I would do the vast majority online.

Webwork is what I do, setting up an online shop would be no problem and was in the original plan even if I didn't state it.

And yes, I am Curtis from BikeGuide. May I ask who you are?

[Jimg89]

On BG, im Properrider. Not the most liked over there, but whatever haha.

But, it seems like you got this figured out. At first, I assumed you were a kid trying to make it big by printing a couple tshirts and selling them to his BMX friends, but now I know who you are. Anyway, like I said, best of luck. If you end up printing anything out, ill buy a few shirts and help get you some business.

[rogercbryan]

Hey guys/gals. How are you doing?

After I get all my web projects developed and finished, I am moving towards more tangible work. The next thing on my plate is clothing.

Intro... (feel free to skip)

I ride BMX, have for many years. I still travel alot, going to new places and always meeting new people. I keep in contact with most of them, letting them know when I am in town, and vice versa. I'm beginning to develop some hype for some clothes, and I even have a 'team' in the works who is willing to support the brand. I'm pretty excited about one member in particular who is very well known in the BMX world, and having him endorse us would be great. I have some people in mind for the Pro team, and I have the "Flow" (Amateur team) in mind too. In exchange for free clothes/shirts, these guys wear the clothes, especially at any sort of competition or big event to help support the company. I get photos of them riding their bikes and hanging out wearing it, for advertising and for the website. I'm known well in several online bmx-hubs and have many people who would support this clothing line, simply because the owner is a 'nice dude' and in the BMX community we tend to support rider owned, rider produced goods and parts. We stick together. (I also know of several physical locations accross the US that would gladly sell these, simply because I know the owners of said shops)


Need help...
However, I am new to the clothing industry. I have a more detailed business plan than what is above, thats just sort of a long ramble. My goal is to offer high quality clothing. I hate wearing shirts with tags, I hate ill-fitting shirts or shirts that are too thick. In the bmx-world, most of us seem to like the fit of American Apparel tees. Most of them are pretty light/thin, pretty comfortable shirts.

I want my first shirts to stand out, to not be cheap or half-assed looking. Which is why I want to go with American Apparel Acid Washed T's and V-Necks. Does anyone know of a reputable supplier of these? I know you can get them straight from AA, but sometimes people have extras they can sell. Sizes S-M-L (Medium and Large being in bigger demand. Not too many "big guys" riding bmx bikes needed XL shirts)

I have a design, what would be a reasonable price to produce it? Its a three color (orange, green, white) with a large image on the front. The mock-up sample is here: T-Shirt Design Sample

Assuming my first run of shirts was only 30 or so, how much would it cost to get that made on the shirts I specified above?

When designing a shirt... What format is needed when the person making them, makes your... (can't remember the word for it)... the stencil/design/whatever for the screen printing process?


Lets just leave it at that for right now,

A typical run for t-shirts is about 1000 units. The reason for this is the cost to set-up the press with your design. I've thought about being in this business and have even had some quotes worked up. Quality shirts run $2.25 to about $5.50 each with a design set-up of about $150. If you want my guys info PM me. Remember though the minimum order is 1000 units.

[CGM]

Initially we're starting small, although things are developing rapidly. I have some people on-board who are pumped for the project and excited to be a part of it and endorse it. Keep in mind, our target market (initially) is the bmx and skateboarding industry. Its large enough to support something like this, and while it might already be a slightly saturated market, I believe there will be enough support for it.

Anyone know of a good, reputable source of overstocked American Apparel blanks? I have seen listings online of particular styles for sale in bulk tat are often cheaper than getting a small order from American Apparel wholesale.

[gYQue]

Hey,

This is my first post and I just thought I'd help you out with what I found. I'm thinking of starting a t-shirt business/clothing brand as well and I've been doing some research on where to get my shirts printed. Some that I have found are (I can't post URLs yet so just Google these names):

6dollarshirts
Early Morning Print Boutique
Storenvy - Social Shopping Community & Free Online Stores

Personally, I think I am going to go with storenvy. They've quoted me a pretty good price. You and I have the same vision (starting out small). Though it may cost a bit more to print smaller quantities, these websites allow you to print a low minimum of roughly 25 shirts. Hope this helps! PM me sometime, maybe we can help each other out. Btw, I saw your other thread about the small business loans...we're in the same boat. =]

Chad

[CGM]

Thanks for the post, I will be looking into those.

I'm excited about this, I already have a lot of support and a good crew of people situated in different areas of the US who are want to be a part of the project and endorse it, including some graphic designers.

Financing won't be too rough, for about $370 i'm able to get 40 American Apparel Acid washed T's in different sizes. Thats $9.25 a shirt, not too bad.

The whole bank loan thing was to help start another project, which is Hostgasm, which is webhosting and a totally different thing.

But with the combination of the t-shirt biz, the web hoting, and the webwork I do I will be kept fairly busy.