# If you were able to do it all over again...



## chris_ (Oct 27, 2006)

Here are a couple of questions i'd like to ask you guys!

1. If you were able to start all over again, what aspects of marketing would you do differently?

2. What was a complete waste of time and what has really worked for your clothing company?

For me:

1. If I could start over, i'd spend more of my resources on a quality product and less on contests and advertising. If you build it (good), they will come. 

2. Advertising in Alternative Press magazine didn't work out for my brand, we took a big hit and I feel that it was a complete waste of our resources.

However, taking our clothes on the road at the 2005 and 2006 warped tour has proved to be a gold mine. We make enough in the summers to keep us afloat over these sad winter months


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Great thread, Chris. Hopefully others will post their experiences as well (there was a similar thread a while back with some good feedback...but I can't find it now)

I made a similar advertising mistake like yours when I started out. I didn't know a thing about advertising or marketing, but I placed a "classified" ad in Rolling Stone and paid too much and got very little response.


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## Robin (Aug 28, 2006)

what would I do differently....Id have found this place before I bought my heat press. I would have gotten involved in local networking groups right from the beginning.

marketing....any direct mailing we have done was a huge waste of money. But I think it was just the target we were aiming at.

...what worked and continues to work...artwork/advertising on my truck. This bring quite a bit of traffic to our website, and quite a few calls for work.

....worked the absolute best, getting involved in networking programs. I have one specific customer who has ordered 4x since meeting her in september. 

We really havent done any print advertising. Most of our business comes from word of mouth, the truck, and my networking. This year however we will be doing print ads.......especially if I want to double my profits this year over last. However, just doing the above, we doubled our income of2005.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

I guess it would also help to know what type of business you're in, since offering printing services and selling your own line of t-shirt designs at retail might have different tips.

I left that out of my post  In my post above, I was talking about selling t-shirts at retail.


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## Robin (Aug 28, 2006)

just to clarify...by networking I do not mean blogging or any other type of web networking. But joining different local business networking groups. I tend to do much better in person


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## tim3560 (Jan 7, 2007)

Has anyone tried out advertising in one of the free newspapers like the American Classifieds, one of the newspapers that they give customers free at the grocery or at restaurants?


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## rook1200 (Jan 25, 2007)

In the T-Shirt Selling Business, it's all about the Design and Word of Mouth... the other stuff is the same for every other tshirt business out there... once i made it all about the design, it took off..


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