# Sell More For Less, or Less For More?



## Basikboy (Aug 28, 2007)

I wondered which is the best way to approach sales when it comes to t-shirts. Which do you believe In... Sell More for Less, or Less For More. When I visit sites like Ebay I see sellers selling the funny T-Shirts for about $5.00 and priority shipping for $5.00 and wonder how they make money but when i see their feedback they are selling close to 1000 units a month. Then I see other sellers who charge about $20. a shirt and their sales are about 200- 250 a month. I am just curious what everyone else thinks...


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## BurnTees (Aug 10, 2005)

ah, an age old question. personally, i'd rather try and sell 10 shirts at $10 and make 100 bucks rather than try to sell 100 shirts with $1 markup.


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## mrshadow (Apr 3, 2008)

I don`t believe the 5 bucks t-shirts have the same quality as the 20 bucks have.
when you lower the price to 5$ they have to steal somethings from somewhere. that`s the quality in my opinion.


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## knifemaker3 (Sep 8, 2006)

You also must remember some other things about the $5.00 t-shirt rather it is on Ebay or Wal-mart or anywhere else.

1. They are either screenprinting the designs theirselves or buying transfers in huge amounts straight from the transfer manufactor as a significant discount. 
2. They have enough capital to take a risk on $1000.00 investment to make $.50 cents to $1.00 in profit by selling huge amounts instead of us smaller guys trying to make a go of it with just a few items and selling for more money.
3. I wonder how many 2nds are used in the t-shirt instead of top quality? I worry about that sometimes.

Just some thoughts that come to my mind anyways when I see $5.00 t-shirts.


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## COEDS (Oct 4, 2006)

knifemaker3 said:


> You also must remember some other things about the $5.00 t-shirt rather it is on Ebay or Wal-mart or anywhere else.
> 
> 1. They are either screenprinting the designs theirselves or buying transfers in huge amounts straight from the transfer manufactor as a significant discount.
> 2. They have enough capital to take a risk on $1000.00 investment to make $.50 cents to $1.00 in profit by selling huge amounts instead of us smaller guys trying to make a go of it with just a few items and selling for more money.
> ...


Hey Craig, I agree 100 %. The issue is educating your customer of the bargin pitfalls. I have found people who buy on price are less concerned with quality. I see mistakes in my work that no one else will, but i won't let them go to the customer. I have a large amount of pride invested in my product. I want to be known for quality merchandise. I think if more americans would get back to quality verses quantitiy our place in the manufacturing hierarchy would be higher than china's. ..... JB


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## peteVA (Nov 11, 2007)

Without going into some of theobvious, like quality, just think about this - 

How long does it take you to pull a shirt from stock, bill it and prepare it for shipping? 

How much are you paying for packing material?

Even figuring some buying more than one, how much time is it going to take you to pull, pack, prepare for shipment 1000 shirts, opposed to 250 shirts?

Same money, less work.

Are you in business to make your suppliers rich? To support the USPS or however you ship? To help the Chinese mailer envelope industry?

Or, are you in business to make money and hopefully have some time to enjoy it.

Now, forget all that if you can get to 1000 shirts at $ 20 each!


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

I was reading another forum a few months ago and I remember a quote that popped up in a semi-related thread (about making money). The quote was something like:

Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes.

I took that to mean that if you sell the high end items, you have less likelihood of selling enough quantity to reach the financial status of the people you're trying to sell to.

Whereas, if you sell to the "masses" with a reasonable priced item that MANY people can afford, you increase the likelihood of selling lots of product and securing enough money to live the glamorous life 


Maybe that could be turned around so that you are selling higher priced items to "non rich" people who want to live that lifestyle. Then you would be selling to the masses.

Here's an article I just found that sort of talks about that: 5 Tips for Reaching the Rich - Entrepreneur.com


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## Basikboy (Aug 28, 2007)

Rodney said:


> I was reading another forum a few months ago and I remember a quote that popped up in a semi-related thread (about making money). The quote was something like:
> 
> Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes.
> 
> ...


Excellent Insight Rodney! I seem to be on the fence about this. I can see vaild points with both sides.


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## mrshadow (Apr 3, 2008)

Rodney said:


> I was reading another forum a few months ago and I remember a quote that popped up in a semi-related thread (about making money). The quote was something like:
> 
> Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes.
> 
> ...


I agree 100% with you


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## ramenplush (Jun 5, 2008)

Rodney said:


> I was reading another forum a few months ago and I remember a quote that popped up in a semi-related thread (about making money). The quote was something like:
> 
> Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes.
> 
> ...


The way I see it, the higher the mark up the less you might sell. But you will also find less returns and customer service, which in turns mean less headaches. Larger Profit will make up for less sales. You'll have less headaches and more time enjoying the profits or you can work yourself to death selling a few extra units.


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## jshade (Feb 24, 2007)

this is a great topic!!


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## sjidohair (Apr 9, 2008)

This one of my 4 buisness's,
For the T-shirt hoodie shop,
I love to make t-shirts,, I also want to make a profit.
This is what I do at this point,
I sell Tees for $9.95 up to 2x, 2x get $1.00 more, and for each size larger,
Hoodies sell for $21.95 and up, depending how much work has gone into it. And also if they are lightweight or heavy weight,.
I do run a sale everyonce in awhile for $6.95 on Tees that have been in the shop for over a month, to get the shirts on the streets, and get the designs out.
so I guess i want to make quanity, and quality, I pay around $2.00 a tee Gilden ultra soft cotton , and about .29 to .80 for graphic. so I have the most $2.80 in a Shirt.
Now my Bella Womens Slim cut long, tissue tees I am selling for $12.95 and cannot keep those in stock i pay for that blank $4.70.
I have customers that love that tee so much they want 6 of each color without anything on them also. for themselves.
I charge the same if i print on them or not.
Now if I had a DTG System, I would have so much overhead I could not proble do these prices. Again, I love making Tees and wearables. I want to make alot of garments, and be able to make a living and make great tees and hoodies, but at great prices.
This is my own opinion.
Sandy Jo


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

there are some basic laws of economics here. you want to basically sell at your break even point which is where your supply and demand curves cross. there are more complications to this but that is basically it. 

to more specifically answer your question i will give an example. 

if you are paying 25c for a product and selling it for 50c your profit is 25c/ea. if you raise your price to $1 then your profit is 75c and you only have to sell 1/3 as much to make the same amount of profit. 

here is the critical part. unless you control the market (you sell 50% or more of the product in the market) there is no reason why you should work so hard to sell 100 units when you could make the same profit selling 34 units. 

an extra benefit here is your capacity remains available to do more than the 34 units. 

just my 2c

now i will add that unless you are at 100% capacity, you might want to fill that capacity first and then raise your prices. but, given that you can still sell the same gross and make a better profit i would raise prices until you reach that break even point and only then worry about filling capacity.


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## Sheepsalt (Sep 12, 2007)

> you want to basically sell at your break even point which is where your supply and demand curves cross.


I think everyone wanting to do anything in business should take a basic economics course in order to understand this premise.

What Fred said about capacity is so significant, too. If you're not operating at a level of at least 80% of your capacity, you either need to improve your marketing or lower your prices - the low volume indicates low demand, so you need to do something to raise demand.

If you're working 80 hours a week to meet the demand, you could either increase your capacity to meet that demand or increase your pricing to better match that demand level.

It all depends on your own personal goals.



> Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes.


I like Rodney's quote allot, too.


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