# How Long Did It Take Your First Batch Of Designs To Pick Up Sales?



## rcxy (Apr 21, 2008)

HI...I'M A NEWBIE AND I HAVE A QUESTION...
realistically, how long would it take before you're sales pick up online? granting that you have great designs and did some strong myspace-facebook ads.... tnx


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## JABshirts (Mar 20, 2008)

our company is in this same stage and have done similar advertising and marketing. I am interested in hearing other folks replies.


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## BfloTees (Mar 6, 2008)

Can I ask how long you both have been up and running? And what the experience has been? What have you done to promote yourself? I have not yet opened my online store so Im very curious. Im opening a regional site (my tees will focus on regional happenings, architecture and sentiments), so our audiences, etc. may be very different. However, Im a 12 yr veteran in advertising and design. Maybe we can figure out what to do together...who knows. I'd be very curious to hear how you are promoting your companies.


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## Leatherneck (Jan 18, 2008)

BfloTees said:


> Can I ask how long you both have been up and running? And what the experience has been? What have you done to promote yourself? I have not yet opened my online store so Im very curious. Im opening a regional site (my tees will focus on regional happenings, architecture and sentiments), so our audiences, etc. may be very different. However, Im a 12 yr veteran in advertising and design. Maybe we can figure out what to do together...who knows. I'd be very curious to hear how you are promoting your companies.


Is your focus strictly in the online market? It really depends on how long it will take for sales to pick up on what group you are marketing to and how hard core you persue marketing your product. Do you have your own site or are you using an avenue such as ebay or cafepress? One of the effective ways I have found to market my product is I create promotional t shirts complete with my contact information as well as events I am capable of servicing. I am also sure to place on their custom work is available. Then I make them a major part of my and my families casual wardrobe


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## rcxy (Apr 21, 2008)

thanks for the interest 
let me rephrase my question:
on your initial attempt to sell online, how long did it take for you to sell your first shirt? 
in a month of website/myspace/blog activation/promotion, what is the rate of sales?
hope you could give me a ballpark figure and a background of your product and market...


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## Leatherneck (Jan 18, 2008)

rcxy said:


> thanks for the interest
> let me rephrase my question:
> on your initial attempt to sell online, how long did it take for you to sell your first shirt?
> in a month of website/myspace/blog activation/promotion, what is the rate of sales?
> hope you could give me a ballpark figure and a background of your product and market...


_Absolutely I can not a problem  First a little background. My product is made up of both inkjet transfers as well as plastisol transfers. I focus in a few areas mostly relating to military, spiritual, as well as slogan type shirts. I run listings on ebay so for me it did not take to long at all to sell my first it sold in 2 days. Rough estimates of my ebay sales are around 100 / per month sometimes more sometimes less @ between 8 and 10$ each. Here lately that seems to be falling off a little. But do understand my sales on ebay are not my primary focus. I list my items there and let them sell themselves. I concentrate most of my efforts going to festivals, fairs and selling through first person marketing (wearing shirts with my logo and information on them) I certainly hope this helps some  If you need more information please don't hesitate to ask._


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## JABshirts (Mar 20, 2008)

Honestly we haven't done much. We started our business while both of us were still in college and didn't have the time or the money to do much advertising. We relied mostly on word of mouth, flyers, myspace, and facebook to promote our stuff. We both just graduated so we are going to really start hitting up the free posts online (bulletin boards, forums, myspace, etc). We are going to try to get booths in different fairs and community festivals, help with fundraisers, and possibly do a raffle of some sort. 

We have a VERY limited budget and don't want to borrow a lot of money so we are not able to print many of our designs, so we are trying to find ways to earn money without spending a lot of money. We do other design work outside of t-shirts (web design, logos, brochures, etc) so we are hoping to really build up that part of the business to gain some income so we can start really working the T-shirt side of the business. 

What route(s) are you planning on taking with your website and how are you going to promote it?


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## mikelschwarz (Apr 12, 2008)

we're a little different than some of the other folks here since we aren't selling t-shirts, but rather, we are selling {under}shirts (keeping the web spiders from indexing us here). 

we just launched 2 weeks ago and we've averaged a couple of orders per day since launch (we're happy about that). our primary sales channel is our website/online store and I've been spending lots of time on SEO-related (keywords, link building, etc.) activities to drive visits. Been experimenting with Google Adwords on about $100/month budget to see what ad copy drives the best impression-to-click performance and it also helps me understand what key words/phrases people use to get to our site.

Now that we've been live for a couple of weeks and have most of the bugs worked out of the site and the ordering process, I'm going to be spending the majority of my time scouring the internet for topics/discussions/sites related to what we sell. I've started posting on blogs (thoughtfully), trying to align ourselves with style sites that review the same type of products, and found some benefit in perusing questions on yahoo answers and contributing there. Ultimately my goal is to get placement by way of product reviews, blog posts, or inexpensive advertising on sites that link back to our site using keywords that are relevant to our product category (further helping in SEO). I've also found some high trafficked relevant style websites that have very inexpensive ad placement programs ($50/month).

I also started a topical blog on our site and have used feedburner to syndicate the blog out to the web. My hope is that I can continue to contribute to the blog every couple of days and build a destination that is categorically relevant to people interested in our type of product. Again, the goal here is that we build upon the SEO/SEM techniques.

I honestly don't know what the norm is, but I'm kind of glad that I don't. It keeps me from being "satisfied" with our daily sales and drives me to keep thinking of new ways to promote our brand and our product.


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## rcxy (Apr 21, 2008)

thank you everyone! you've all been very helpful and informative. i appreciate your help big time. 

to tell you more about my line, i'm starting out with 100 shirts and 10 designs. i don't know if i have a market for this concept but i'm hoping that there's at least a fraction of the world's population who thinks like me. 
i'm a bit tired (no offense meant to anyone) of all the maximalist prints and designs (print-over- print, vector shapes, etc..) i see around. from diesel to topman to myspace, it's really hard to choose which shirt is worth your bucks design-wise. someone, somewhere always comes up with better graphics. it's kinda hard to have a shirt that stands out.
so i thought, i'd go against the flow.
i'm planning to create a very minimalist graphic designs with very raw and home-made feel. it's like going back to basics while everyone are exploring and exploiting the on-going trend (vintage/big font prints/ photo-prints, etc...). reminds me when tattered and embellished jeans were a fad then suddenly someone went raw and unwashed. it created a cult status. i hope my analysis would move toward this direction in shirts, as well. 

marketing-wise, i'm planning to go underground. offering exclusively to select groups via their blogsites. my market is very specific-hipsters, indie rock bands and djs. i wanna build a street cred attached to the brand before i go mainstream. i really hope to start a trend on this one than ride on whats on-going. i know. it's very idealistic, ambitious and its not gonna be easy, but everything is not easy ,anyway. i just wish its worth my while and money. hehehe

if you have thoughts you wanna share let's continue this thread
if you think that my idea is already a flop from the start, gimme a holler while there is time
tnx


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## dbcom (Jan 17, 2007)

rcxy said:


> marketing-wise, i'm planning to go underground. offering exclusively to select groups via their blogsites. my market is very specific-hipsters, indie rock bands and djs. i wanna build a street cred attached to the brand before i go mainstream.


rcxy, going against the stream is always fun...and bracing for the change in current, so I'm glad you're exploring such.

I don't recommend limiting your exposure from the get-go, in your case with rock bands, UNLESS you personally know them and/or they've asked you to do a shirt design for them. Otherwise, you can't really expect quick growth and you'll be relying on only a few bands to spread word...not good.

Your initial push, however big or small, will always be 'limited'...and it's just a matter of time before word starts to spread. Sometimes it'll be months, other times it might be years before word gets around everywhere. So don't limit yourself from the get-go.


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## IntegralApparel (Jan 18, 2008)

Well I started almost a year ago, soley on cafepress, and using free ways to advertise, myspace, facebook, forums, groups and now flickr which I think helps a lot..

I started with the funny tees, adult humor, and I found out right away that "niche" is too big to stand out, so I opted for something I know, GAMER TEES, I am a gamer, I am big nerd, so I started those, and they took off, got a great response since they are not the cliche "PWN , NOOB" type shirts, real fashionable graphic tees.

So like most people on this thread, I am going live with a new site in a few weeks, slowly pulling away from cafepress except for designs that can be centered in the middle within 10x10, or smaller jobs... I plan on outsourcing printing, for now until I can figure what if I want to move into printing..

But I think after I got things rolling on cafepress I had my first sale within a month, some people say 2 mos, some didn't get sales for almost a year, it just depends on your marketing. I havent once paid for any advertising and I am doing okay, so once we roll out our advertising/marketing campaign, I think we will be golden. Good luck to you and hope it all works, one thing that comes out of cafepress is the marketplace, it can really help you narrow down which designs are hot sellers..
Good Luck again


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