How to start your own T-Shirt company
As a contract screen printer, we absolutely love start up t-shirt companies. If you have been thinking about starting your own line of t-shirts or opening your own garment decorating company ... read on!
It's very exciting to have made the decision to start something new. If you have been working for someone for a while and want to strike out on your own and be your own boss, good for you!
This Blog post is not designed to give you a road map to starting your own t-shirt business, it's more so designed to give you a little nudge in the right direction, and to give you something to think about before you go out and start spending your money on equipment to get started.
Nothing feels better than pulling the trigger on $5,000 worth of screen printing equipment or a brand new $10,000 embroidery machine. You get excited almost immediately that you have a capability now that can help you earn money.
But make no mistake, spending money at the very beginning of starting your business is risky and will put a financial burden on you that you might not want at this early stage.
You can ALWAYS purchase equipment. So don't rush. Use a contract screen printer and contract embroidery company to do the work for you. There are several benefits
1. Quality control is their issue not yours, so if jobs aren't done right or mistakes are made, they need to correct it.
2. You don't have to invest thousands of dollars in advance to get started. You may be starting with 1 customer or no customers, do you really want to go into debt at this point in your business? Trust us, you don't, hire a contract screen printer.
3. If you are a one man or one woman shop, your time is very valuable. Think about this, every time you sell something, you have to make it. Take it from someone that knows, you'll end up making it after dinner every night and you'll be going to sleep at 1 AM or 2 AM every night just to get the job done.
4. To make big money in the t-shirt or personalization business you have to sell on volume. You'll get very excited when you sell your first 500 shirt order. But then when you have to spend 1/2 the week making it on your manual screen press, or embroidering it on your single head machine, you are going to be sad.
Life is too short to be sad. Hire a contract screen printer and be happy.
So take it from someone that has been in this business for 27 years ... Hire a contract screen printer to start. If you decide later that you want to buy your own equipment ... go for it.
