# Tips for New Brand Trying To Drive Sales Activity



## tcweller (Jul 25, 2016)

So we just launched a new brand (www.fuxkgear.com). From concept to hard opening of site in less than 2 months. We're using Shopify and on-demand printing/fulfllment with Printful. 

Now focused on what looks to be the hard part - marketing. We've gotten a lot of good feedback on the brand and have given out almost 200 free shirts. Getting some traction with local bands wearing. Also have a lot of support from people. 

However - 4 days since launching and haven't gotten a bite yet. We are doing a lot of posts on FB, Twitter, and Instagram but no bites. 

Thought it might be a pricing issue so we just reduced prices with goal of driving volumes. 

Plan to connect with a few blogs and get some exposure that way.

Any key points of advice would be welcome! Will keep this post updated as we evolve.

Thanks

FuXk Gear Team


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

Do you want some honesty? I'll give it to you.

1. Your artwork is not very enticing. It looks like you spent 10 minutes in Illustrator with a boring font. There's nothing really artistic or catchy about it. The fact is, anyone with a bootleg version of Illustrator and $20 can make it and create their own Shopify site. 

2. You have no audience other than people who are fed up with politics, which is pretty much everyone. You need to target an audience and make art that is attractive to them, that they would want to buy and wear.

3. If your market isn't cultivated specific to your brand, you are competing with 700,000 other designers who are doing the same thing you are. Look at Teespring and see how many people actually sell shirts (probably 5% of designs actually sell enough to go to production).

I would halt marketing and work on your art. It's just too plain and generic to be a brand you should invest marketing time in.

I never make a t-shirt design without having a following first. The first thing I do is generate a following. Create a blog with regular interesting posts and develop a Facebook page with followers of your blog. When you have 10,000 actual followers connecting with you, you can create a great t-shirt that some folks might want to wear to support you. Out of 10,000 followers you might sell 100 shirts, if you're good at writing and good at designing. That's maybe $1000 profit out of hundreds of hours of work.

The other option is to become a great designer -- and even that takes a lot of time.

It won't happen overnight. It won't happen with 10 minutes of playing with fonts and spending money at Shopify for a generic themed page.

Keep at it. It takes time. I invested decades before I got to numbers I could retire on.


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## tcweller (Jul 25, 2016)

Thanks for the thoughts...the politics is actually an offshoot of the main brand...Fun under Xtreme konditions...an edgier version of life is good...the political shirts were made based on some feedback I saw among my Facebook friends...not the main point of the brand...the feedback on the brand and what it stands for has been overwhelmingly positive but that doesn't translate to sales...can check out the background here https://www.fuxkgear.com/pages/about-us and https://www.fuxkgear.com/blogs/news thanks for the thoughts


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## Shalisk (Jan 28, 2016)

To me you look like you are a 'one trick' pony. "Oh, Hee hee look he said "Fux!" and then you plaster it everywhere. I have to agree with the first statement, the art is ...just not doing anything for me, the single 'joke' wears thin quickly, and I left the site in about 2 minutes due to it. I gave it to my 3 room mates who all had similar reactions.

You have 2 posts on here, and you went from concept to 'roll out' in what did you say 2 months? I have designs that did not take so little time. 

Keep at it, take your time and get it right, no replacement for work done right.


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## Shalisk (Jan 28, 2016)

It also sounds like you basically told TreeFox "Oh hey, thanks for all that info but I don't think you are right" I have done a lot of business with a lot of people, over many years and many types of business, I am not new to it. I am new to Dye sub. But with an awnser like that you wont find much support I am afraid to say.

But thats just my own autistic opinion on the matter.


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## tcweller (Jul 25, 2016)

Thanks for the feedback...helpful!


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## tcweller (Jul 25, 2016)

Sorry it came across that way...it wasn't the intent...point was to clarify that we are not targeting a narrow audience related to political discontent...part of the challenge is the concept has resonated well with broad range from 18-60...makes a lot of sense to do some focused marketing to narrower audiences to see if we can get some traction

Another point of clarification (not meant to be snipey! ) - just some feedback we are getting - the brand resonates well when people tie the name to background

Again that doesn't mean it will achieve adoption or sales or generate one dollar of revenue or profit. 

On the artwork, I'm going to look for ways to improve it and come up with a killer design. We aren't design experts so will likely look to crowdsource something. 





Shalisk said:


> It also sounds like you basically told TreeFox "Oh hey, thanks for all that info but I don't think you are right" I have done a lot of business with a lot of people, over many years and many types of business, I am not new to it. I am new to Dye sub. But with an awnser like that you wont find much support I am afraid to say.
> 
> But thats just my own autistic opinion on the matter.


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## Steve Fuentes (Mar 30, 2016)

hey there, 

not sure of your location. but I think with your brand name, you may consider trying to target the extreme sports areas (skate-boarding, skiing, surfing,). Hell you might have some luck with drag racers, sky divers. just some Ideas throwing your way. possibly put a shirt together saying you love to surf or skydive with a cool surfboard or plane. with your own twist. I don't know just trying to help. lol Good luck with everything! stay at it and always keep pushing forward.


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## tcweller (Jul 25, 2016)

Thanks...that's a great idea...actually a dude we know skydives frequently...offered to get us a video and pics of him skydiving with the shirt...i think that would be really cool...ill keep you posted...I'm in MD area


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

I think there are too many levels/clicking to get to actual product.

- Home page with big photos of surfing and stuff ... What am I supposed to think the site is about? I don't see any fuXing T-shirts ;-)

- (click Shop) Uhm, okay, a couple of black and white graphics take up all the space. Uhm, what the fuX is this place?

- (click a graphic) Huh. This place has T-shirts, and stuff. Who knew?

I'm no fan of big showy Home pages. F Home pages. Put T-shirts that are for sale on the very first page. That is what the site is about, yes? I think there are far better templates for T-shirt sites than the one you are using, so I would start with one closer to the desired end result, and then tweak it.

Sure, sure, incorporate a cool graphics slider if you must, but keep its height short! Actual product should be visible on the first page with no scrolling or clicking at all.

Beyond that, it takes time to get sales. It also takes exposure. If you are selling something that people are not actively searching for on their own (and you ARE), then you must get in front of their faces and let them know your product exists. That costs time, effort, and/or money.

My best advice is to come up with some designs that relate to some niche that people actual search for. Bernie Sanders is one of the niches that worked well for me. I'm not saying that all of your designs need to be along those lines, but you want to get some natural search traffic to your site.

Also (my pet peeve) no one should have to click on a shirt photo to get to a larger photo so they can actually see what the fux is on the shirt. If they can't see what the shirt is about, why would they be interested enough to click to see more detail? on every shirt ... 

*Remove barriers to purchase. Every* click you put between the customer and buying is an opportunity to give up and go back to watching cat videos ...


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## Rookie Rise (Mar 27, 2009)

I feel like you should spend more time on developing a style with your shirts. Having it say Fuxk on a shirt without anything to give it substance or even a driving point to catch the consumers eyes with reason to buy may be a roadblock that you run into. Get some images of people rockin' the line on the front page and in an environment that is appealing to your target market. I always recommend people to take their brand to town when they can describe it in a couple sentences or less. It's a tough industry to get started in but when it catches or IF it catches it's a pretty good ride. It's easy to start a line, it's not easy to build it. It take a ton of patience, rebranding, trial and error, a lot of face to face networking, a lot of a lot of a lot of things..... lol.


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