Starting a Clothing Brand or Apparel Business | EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW - FREE COURSE

yo what's up my name is rich welcome back to another video in this video right here we're going to be talking about the apparel business and everything you need to know to get started um primarily covering t-shirts right because that's where most of us get started so this is going to cover from the design of the product to getting it printed on the product and to the customer purchasing it and getting the product to the customer's hand so basically from here to the product and getting it to your customer so this is going to cover everything a to z it's not going to be in complete detail but i know it's everything that you need to know to start your clothing brand or your printing business so let's hop straight into it alright so like i said apparel business we're going to be covering design uh outsource versus in-house production methods website um brand versus generic marketing fulfillment pen on demand i know it sounds a little all over the place but i promise you it's going to make sense by the time we get it in all right so we're going to talk about design design um first and foremost there's a few different ways to design nowadays a lot of us are pretty much designed off of templates now true designers of course they draw everything out and then they design it themselves so i like to use adobe photoshop in illustrator this is going to be an actual design program where you have to learn how to use it and this is going to be where you're able to be 100 creative however when we're first starting off you know we might not be able to learn as quickly and we already want to get stuff done there's websites like fiverr um of course i'll post all the links in the pen comment there's websites like fiverr you can find all kinds of freelance services here let's type in logo design on here you can pay somebody to do a logo design for you packages usually start from like ten dollars and you have standard different type of package prices thirty five dollars sixty dollars uh stuff like that so there's all kinds of services you can find on here t-shirt design um you know you can hire a designer to make you a t-shirt design of course there's other websites like upwork.com this one's a little more intricate you can also find designers on here you can also find people marketing find people to build your website these are two websites that you can use um this one right here is called camera this one has been very popular as of the past few years this one you pretty much have um templates to design off of so a lot of people like to use canva because it pretty much has a design page that you can use and you can pretty much just edit it so you can pretty much type in the text that you would like uh you know add little logos and icons and elements that they already have and i believe i'm not sure i think my link down below gives you a free 30 days i'm not sure but be sure to check it out if this is something that you would like to use so um true designers will probably look at something like this and shade you because you're not using photoshop in illustrator at the end of the day to me use whatever works for you okay but um it's highly ideal to learn something like adobe photoshop illustrator there's other programs like coreldraw there's a whole bunch of other programs but the primary one is photoshop in illustrator some key notes to take away when it comes to design is learning the difference between a raster file and a vector file also sizing and dimensions the sizes that you need to print a t-shirt pretty much this comes as simple as taking a ruler out and measuring the actual dimensions that you want printed on your actual t-shirt like i said this isn't going to be a super detailed video but it's going to point you in the right directions when it comes to sizing and dimensions there's some standard sizings when it comes to t-shirts as well such as like a 12 by 16 for a front print there's other things you would like to know such as setting up files for prints say if you want to get a t-shirt screen printed you want to learn how to properly send these files to your screen printer and the important thing about learning stuff like photoshop and illustrator instead of hiring somebody is speed say if you had a simple change and you're you're on the phone with your screen printer and you needed to know how to change a specific file to a vector file real quick if you know these simple tasks in photoshop illustrator and you don't have any other design skills then this will help up with speed so say if you don't know how to design something from scratch but if you know how to resize images and turn it into a vector real quick this will help you out a lot so that's just some key notes to take so when it comes to the design and your product there's going to be a few different things that helps your customer convert which is the message in the niche of the actual product itself of course you have you know the fabric of the actual product the colors and whatnot but the end of the day is what your product stands for the brand um the design does it have a message and is it within a specific niche so the first one we have just a dad t-shirt of course in a particular niche it's just for dads you know you're not gonna buy for a mom and if this actual sweater is expensive you know it's it's kind of unlikely that a person may buy it let's say it feels thirty dollars um the fabric might be nice but let's say it feels nine dollars you know the the customer may be more likely to purchase it because it might be a nice sweater and it might have like a nice applique like chanel patch uh print for the dad area however if it's expensive and it doesn't speak too loudly then you know that message might not cater to the customer too much let's look at the second right here the second one has two different niches it's a dad to uh golf so best dad by par so this is a stronger message so now you're dealing in two niches and now your customer may be twice as likely to convert on this actual product so you might not so you might be able to charge a little more than nine dollars you might be able to get twenty dollars for this t-shirt right here so that's the importance of having a message in a niche it's whenever you can relate to the customer more and the customer sees it and it's something that they really identify with and like then they may be more likely to purchase it let's look at this third one right here this is best dad ever however there's a personalization on it says sophia peter and maria so that's probably the kids names so this one right here is a personalized item and this is going to be beyond just the niche of dad itself this is a one-of-a-kind print you might be able to sell this one for around 30 bucks so at the end of the day your design and your product is going to matter because if the customer can relate to it the most then your customer may be more likely to convert all right so now that we know a little bit about design and product and we have an idea of which direction ahead and to getting our designs made and the right designs to make the next important thing is whenever we create the actual product and getting it printed into a physical product we need to understand that there's pros and cons to every portion of this business especially when it comes to production and you're going to start finding yourself struggling in this area especially if you're starting off because you're going to question yourself if you want to do this yourself purchase the equipment and whatnot or you're going to want to outsource everything and have somebody else print it of course there's pros and cons because if you purchase the equipment you got to uh go ahead and front that capital up front for the equipment but you're going to lower your profit margin significantly by being able to produce the t-shirts yourself and this also allows you the opportunity to start printing for other brands and other people who's in need of t-shirts instead of you going to somebody else who's printing a t-shirt that you need but there's also pros and cons to that because then you get caught up in a lot of us who who start this is because we want to start our own clone brand at that point we also get mixed up from instead of just printing our for our own clothing brand we start printing for other people's businesses which is nothing wrong with that but there's pros and cons and everything you get away what works for you all right so here are some popular production methods of course there are more but these are going to be absolutely the most important ones in this game alright before we move on to the next section of this video i gotta interrupt this video real quick because this video is brought to you by skillshare so skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for anyone who loves learning and wants to explore their creativity and learn new skills invest in yourself and your personal growth so check it out here's some classes that i've taken as far as t-shirt design as we just spoke about check it out you can learn about t-shirt designs here here's a workshop using photoshop illustrator and hand drawing techniques so this class right here shows you from drawing the actual t-shirt design all the way into photoshop and illustrator so it even talks about sizing your graphic and all kinds of stuff and there's just so much more that you can learn here's photoshop classes where you can learn about designing and even t-shirt classes so let's check it out t-shirt e-commerce so here you can learn about merch by amazon selling on amazon making your own store there's just so much on here that you can learn and help level up your life this will add so much value to your daily routine just by taking a class or two every single day skillshare also gave us a very special link for the channel the first 1000 people to use this link will get one month free trial of skillshare so make sure you click the link and join today first 1000 people gets one month free trial join skillshare so the first one we have is screen printing i'm going to try not to get too in depth if you want a more like detailed explanation of all this i have a video on the channel called t-shirt printing for beginners and i'll explain a little bit more about the printing processes and we've also covered all of these printing processes in more detail individually on the channel as well so just look on the channel but here we have screen printing like i said there's pros and cons to each production method screen printing is going to be the go-to service when you want something mass produced especially for an affordable price you can find screen printing jobs depending on your screen printer and the relationship that you have with them anywhere between like 60 70 cents per color that also depends on the amount that you order we're talking about like thousands at that point for most screen printers um to a dollar per print two dollar per print and then you have the setup fees for the actual screen itself if you see on the actual image you have a screen and you're pressing the color red and there's an area on the mesh where it's exposed that's the portion where the ink goes through and the garment is underneath the t-shirt is underneath and the ink goes onto that t-shirt so this is a very cost efficient way to start except for the fat here's the con if you're starting off this is good for if you have a particular design that you want to mass produce let's say if you don't know if that design is good enough to sell you and you have to print let's say your screen printer has a minimum of 50 t-shirts to print then you're going to be invested in that quantity of 50 t-shirts of that actual printer design so it's not a good route if you want to do one-off designs and it's not a good route if you want to do personalized designs like we showed in that one product that best dad with the three names at the bottom so there's pros and cons to everything however this is going to be once you're moving weight you're moving t-shirts a lot this is going to be your go-to because it's going to be um very high profit margins for you to sell these t-shirts and you can get a lot done quite quickly you know you're going to have your local screen printers especially if they got a lot of autos they can push out a few thousand per day in their screen printing shop the next one we have is directed garment this one's uh popular for one-off prints in full color it can be a slow process if you don't have the capital meaning a lot of these direct garment printers are pretty pricey you can find one between like 10 to 20 grand as a startup point but you know there's a learning curve to it you have the pre-treatment machine and whatnot like i said i have that other video if you want to go in more detail this one right here is a corner avalanche i don't know how much arranged nowadays some of these more expensive ones they're going to print pretty quick but a lot of people don't have the capital to start off with however you know you can go to your print shop and ask them hey how much for a dtg print some shops will probably do between like 12 to 15 16 17 per t-shirt however you get a full color print and a one-off print one-time t-shirt print so a lot of times shops don't really have minimums on this so you don't have to look into screen printing where you have to print off 50 t-shirts at once so this is direct to garment the next one is dye sublimation this one is popular with jerseys of course it's poplar roof it can be used with other items like plastic card paper and fabric or whatnot it's pretty much printed out in a die sublimation paper and you pretty much just heat press it onto the actual fabric most of the time this can be only done with mostly polyester items there are little ways and tricks where you can print on a cotton but most shops aren't going to do that that's pretty much something that you can do in-house if you decide to purchase a dye sublimation printer and heat press yourself so the cool thing about this though the full color designs that gets printed and heat press into the shirt looks amazing um you pretty much see this like in full color print jerseys and stuff like that so the next one we have is heat transfers which dye sublimation also is included in however heat transfers also opens a whole new door to other types of heat transfers as well i do cover this one a lot on this channel because this is the method that i use a lot and it's a pretty easy way to start up and it's easy to learn heat transfer vinyl directed film plastic cell transfers white toner all of that pretty much goes into this uh group so plastisol transfers you can outsource from other companies it's screen printed you can usually pay between like 15 cent to a dollar per plastic saw print when it comes to a full color print most of the time it's a digital print with like a plastisol base or you know some kind of adhesive base nowadays those will be a little more pricey because it's full color you're not going to get the exact same feel as a direct-to-garment print t-shirt however it'll be somewhat similar it's going to be something more similar to heat transfer vinyl however this is um like i said this is a lot to soak in but this is heat transfers the next one is embroidery i know you've seen this one this one's uh it's pretty much just decorating a pair with needle thread and yarn this one right here the process can be slow especially if you're purchasing the equipment for this one file formats like i said in the design section you got to learn a little bit about designs here and there or you got to outsource you got to learn how to digitize files because the file type is going to be different you got to learn how to point the thread that you want it layered in whenever it comes to the actual embroidery itself of course as you see in this image right here this adds a nice little elegant it's it's used a lot in like you know polo adds a very luxury touch right so that's embroidery the next one is going to be your cut and sew and your specialty prints so your cut and so is pretty much where it's made from complete scratch you know most of the times a lot of people use overseas suppliers for this because you know it's cheaper but this is pretty much where it's done from scratch you know as you can see in this jacket there's multiple different kinds of fabrics you're probably not going to find a t-shirt a blank t-shirt um in the u.s like that where you can just print on so you got to get something like that made from scratch and then you also have like your specialties so like as you can see that's a 3m jacket of course there's also like 3m vinyl but however this is like quote unquote a specialty print so you have a 3m transfer the actual product entire like you see in the jacket the entire thing is made out of 3m and it's reflective and then you see in this bottom right photo you have what's called embossed it takes an entire custom metal plate just to make this entire product um of course you can do something like a puff print and kind of do a faux embossed look where you just print orange on top of orange but like i said we're getting way too into it this is just direction of the multiple production processes that would be used in this apparel business game so this one right here is obviously going to cost a little more and there's going to be minimums um but you get a full-on unique product experience okay but it might take a little bit more capital if you want to head in this direction um one thing i do want you to know a lot of you all who start off always like this is expensive uh to get a sample it's like 50 bucks just to get like one item just to see how it looks a lot of this is research and development research and development it's like a underlooked thing when it comes to any type of business that your money just pretty much you know just has to go somewhere of course you can write off but that research and development is something that you're gonna have to spend money on that you're not going to get back whenever you first start off all right so that one thing i want to talk about in the production process this is the most common production process right here this is what a lot of people do when it just comes to blank t-shirts you order blanks from assets activewear alpha broder sandmar jiffy shirts etc these are just more popular websites because these are distributors who carries uh blanks like bella canvas haynes and t-shirts like that so this is alpha brother as you can see right here um there's all kinds of t-shirts there's gildan t-shirts they're pretty much just blanks right this is going to be the most popular way that most people get their stuff printed you just order t-shirts and then you pick the production route that you want to head into so you know um a lot of these distributors they got warehouses across the states for example alphabolder i have a warehouse near me in north atlanta so you know if i'm in a bond or something i can pick up same day if necessary this is the most common production process you pick up a blank t-shirt and then get something printed locally you know or pin it yourself if you head in that direction all right so the next thing we have is your website and the big question is do you want to sell on your own website or a marketplace you have your own website um or platforms such as shopify wix xyro squarespace etc and then you have marketplaces like amazon etsy ebay etc so the big difference really boils down to traffic and that's why you have higher fees on a marketplace because these are websites that already generate traffic and uh most customers already ready to convert for example if somebody goes on amazon they type in uh father's day t-shirt they're already looking for a father's day t-shirt to purchase so they generate the traffic for you that's why there's higher fees and your product really becomes very heavy in seo you want to have your product very search engine optimized for that actual marketplace now if you're selling on your own website you don't have traffic you know you got to build that traffic that's why the fees are less but you got to build your own traffic a lot of times most people don't make it on their own website so that's why you got to work hard at it and learn the entire marketing portion of selling on your own website so websites like shopify wigs are shopify is going to be the most popular just because it's so easy to integrate third party applications however a lot of handful of people still use other platforms as well but shopify is really like one of the most popular ones when it comes to a standalone website alright so another big difference is data when you're selling on your own website you know the customers that you bring on there you have access to their emails their phone numbers um stuff like that which is important when it comes to text marketing or email marketing or running ads whenever you're selling on amazon etsy and whatnot um at the end of the day it's somewhat really not even your customers all right because when they're shopping at amazon even though they purchase your product those are amazon's customers in a way all right so the next thing you want to know is cloning brand versus generic brand so on the left side you see ralph lauren this is their own clothing brand they sell their own logos own designs own products on the right side you have six dollar shirts dot com which is pretty much sales generic t-shirt designs within uh different niches now if all the t-shirts itself aren't necessarily very general but it's it's a website that caters to multiple different niches so the products still speak loudly when it comes to the customer however it covers a wide variety in comparison to something that's a brand now they both do well however you know like i said it's two different lanes on the left side you have a brand um at the end of the day if you do a brand properly you know that's going to be your money maker if you can do it properly but in the day most people have more success when it comes to selling generic t-shirt designs and that's pretty much the business model that i have is selling generic t-shirt designs on marketplaces all right so the next thing you want to know is marketing say if you have your own website you got facebook ads you got instagram ads google ads tick tock at social media there's so much right the thing is there's pros and cons to everything like i said facebook ads say if you on your own website shopify store you're pretty much putting a product in somebody's face in hopes that this is something that they want let's say if we go back to design portion right if we threw a facebook ad for just the t-shirt uh design of that itself it's gonna be hard to get a customer to stop the scroll and be like yo just check out his dad t-shirt but if this is a personalized item this third one you know that'd be might be more likely to stop and say hey man we need this uh shirt for dad which we can personalize with the names or even the second one the second one they might be like oh dad's into golf so we might need to purchase this t-shirt for him and it's easier to uh pick an audience for this when it comes to targeting facebook target because then you can choose a dad that likes golf in comparison to just a dad right but you really don't want to target dads anyways because the mom's going to purchase this t-shirt that's just a little bonus for you but google ads is going to be more search related so customers are a little more likely to convert when it comes to something like google ads it almost works similar to selling on a marketplace except for they go on google and they type in dad t-shirt and then you're pretty much paying to have your website in a higher position or if you're using google shopping to have your product in a higher position right there as well so like i said that's marketing that's traffic how you can get traffic to your website of course you got retargeting ads emails text text marketing one of them popular apps that i use is clavio of course there's other apps like postscript and whatnot there's a lot of apps out there okay just you know like i said this is gonna help point you in the right direction there's a lot of apps out there just do your research and see which one works for you um the next type of marketing is pretty much building community such as facebook groups forums meetups you know doing pop-up shops stuff like that because when you really build a community you know that's a part of building a brand and that's just a whole different layer of actually marketing so this is just a little bit about marketing and i'm gonna you know of course at the end of this i'm gonna let you know why this is important all right the next one we have is fulfillment most of the time selling on your website most platforms nowadays has a fulfillment process for you say if you're selling shopify you can purchase shipping labels on shopify if you're selling on essay or amazon you have a platform where you can purchase shipping labels and whatnot if you're moving a lot of t-shirts at a time you might want to sign up for something like shift station xps pirate ship is a free option because these softwares make it a little easier to purchase say if somebody purchased a hundred size medium with the exact same design these programs make it easier to print out 100 of those labels at once and it's pretty simple how to ship out t-shirts i pretty much just purchase poly bags from amazon or you know if you're buying a lot of time you line right here is 13 bucks for a hundred of them i'm not sure if that's 100 but um i'm sure it is here right here it's 16 bucks for 100 10 by 13s i usually use 12x15 for more than one t-shirt and usually fits by like two to six or so and so on and then a rolo or a dymo i have both i've realized uh i like the rolo a little better um the dymo has broken on me a few times this is going to print out a 4x6 shipping label in a thermal fashion all right so you're not using any ink or anything like that it's going to save you a lot of time and money on ink as well so you know pretty much just buy a poly bag and some shipping labels that way you can ship out your t-shirts it's simple at first but it'll get a little more complicated when you start having a lot of t-shirts you gotta ship out then that's whenever you you know start doing more research the next thing is print on the man we gotta touch on this print on the man has been popular over the previous years it's pretty much a drop shipping service that prints and ships your t-shirts for you all right so like i said you're gonna be outsourcing it's gonna be a little more expensive in comparison to you doing it in-house however you don't have to pay for inventory you don't have to purchase equipment and you can practically start today here's a website called printify you hop on here the way it works is you pretty much just pick the product that you want uh upload the design that you want and it will link to the actual product that's on your website and when somebody purchases it they will ship out the actual product itself all right so like i said the pros and cons are everything one one con that a lot of people don't like especially if they're building their own brand is a quality control a lot of people who build an actual brand likes quality control so most people who use print-on-demand services usually sells you know generic t-shirt designs or something that doesn't really cater as much to um clothing brands however you can start this way if you really want to so i've also worked with penify before here's an article that they wrote for me linked down below here's another company that i work with slate um there'll be more videos on state in the future however the only reason why i mentioned slate as well is because there's hundreds and hundreds of print on demand companies out there now do your research see which one works for you and go from there all right so the reason why we mentioned all of this is because of the process this is the entire process from a to z marketing you need marketing because you need traffic to your website how are people going to get to your website whether it's a social media influencer whether they land on a facebook ad whatever it may be there needs to be something that tells them to go to your website whenever they get to your website your landing page the customer sees your product this is where you know you have to get them to convert so the product must speak to them the product has to be a good design and you know a design that has a message or a niche or something that speaks to them now once that person converts because you had a good design this is your fulfillment you know your production method plus your fulfillment method whatever type of production you use for your product you need to fulfill it and if you're not using uh something like printify then you know you have to figure out how to get that product printed with one of the production methods that we mentioned and then put throw in a polybag and ship it out now the next is marketing once again follow up you know with retargeting ads or with emails texts and then build up your community so if you're selling on your own website this is the pro of selling on your own website you have the data it's easier for you to follow up and you know have your own circle of customers so the reason why a lot of people want to do cloning brands is because you're building your own community you're more passionate about it however most cloning brands it's going to be a very long-term game you're not going to hit a home run right when you start it's a long-term game but it's something that you're going to be more passionate about now the last step is reinvest do more research and development you know create more products more designs and start all over market get people to your website see the design is it something that you know they relate to fulfill it mark it again that's pretty much it all right so that's your a to z process i hope this makes sense for you this video helped you out subscribe to the channel i'm thankful that most of you all already are subscribed i appreciate you check out t-shirt sellerpro.com if you want to get in on the same way that i have my business model i've helped a lot of people go from zero to five thousand dollars a month ten thousand dollars a month from selling t-shirts so make sure you check out t-shirtsellerpro.com if that's something that's of interest for you and also t-shirtmastermind.com hopefully i'll get this landing page up soon if you want to be a part of the four-week live program so that's going to be you know pretty much t-shirt seller pro in the live version uh i'll be doing that soon it'll be a four-week live program so if it's up if you go to teachermastermind.com you can go ahead and type in on your email and get on the waitlist so i appreciate y'all for watching i hope that really helps y'all out uh i think this is probably like a 30 minute video if you watch all the way through i'm pretty sure it's gonna get you where you need to go all right so wish you much success i'll see you next time

Channel: Hustle Ninjas

Views: 55,612

Keywords: starting a clothing line, how to start a clothing line from scratch, how to start a clothing line with $0 dollars, how to start a clothing brand, how to start a clothing brand with no money, how to start a clothing business, how to start a clothing business online, fashion, how to start a fashion brand, how to start a clothing line, clothing brand, clothing brand startup

Id: 3UdqIYaPA_4

Length: 30min 59sec (1859 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022