# New Store Owners:



## Skinbus (Jul 2, 2007)

Very recently, I've seen people opening online stores with nothing but t-shirts, & very few of them. I'm not certain why a business owner would open with such a small inventory; 3 or 4 shirt designs & nothing else. There are other categories shown, but no merchandise in them. Then there will be questions to the forum such as "why are my shirts not selling?" or "how do I get more sales?" With all due respect, before you even consider opening, be sure you have plenty of different types of products to offer. If you walked into a brick & mortar store & saw nothing but a few t-shirts for sale, would you bother going back? Everyone is anxious to get an online store open & start selling, but without any real effort to make it work. Perhaps it's a matter of not knowing what, or how to do it, & if that's the case, see if you can find someone with some experience to at least give you some knowledge of the basics, whether a parent, a friend or just go online & google something like "developing a business plan." Anything to gain knowledge before you jump into an online store before you're even close to being ready & setting yourself up for a big disappointment. I'll never claim to be a business expert, & am not trying to be deliberately rude to those just getting started. Just consider this nothing more than an opinion & an honest attempt to possibly give you some things to consider before taking a big step.


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## GordonM (May 21, 2012)

I agree. Buy some pre-made transfers if you have to round out the line, but get more designs in there. No one likes a ghost town, even the ghosts get lonely.


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

In my opinion it really is so many things combined that make the vast majority of on-line shirt start ups fail but the main issue is not the number of designs, the quality of the designs, lack of real contact information but the very unrealistic thought process that one can open a web store do a little SEO and have people mysteriously find their site.

Just is not possible anymore. If a person does not know how to sell and market their products they will fail if they 3 incredible designs or 300 incredible designs.

Said it many times I would take one professional sales person over a dozen professional design artist any day of the week.


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## Silky49 (Aug 1, 2012)

i like how different people keep asking the same questions when all they have to do is type it into the search bar and get thousands of answers...


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## Silky49 (Aug 1, 2012)

...and anyone who is just starting their own business won't read this post :/


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## Skinbus (Jul 2, 2007)

IMO, the biggest issue is lack of patience. Everything has to be NOW! Although, at this point, one of the driving factors could just be the upcoming holiday season. Or not.


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## dawson21 (Dec 19, 2012)

I Agree with you..


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## Theoblanco (Dec 22, 2012)

a lot of these overnight brands try to take on all the tasks for themselves and can't see past their own limitations but most of the time it's really cause they think starting a brand would be a fun way to get paid quick and forget it's an actual business


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## Magic City Man (Oct 20, 2012)

I launched my site just over a week ago with only three designs, but I will add another three by the end of January.

But I've been making decent sales. Sixteen orders over ten days, some which include two or three items.

My advantage is that I run a blog with a large readership plus I also have a decent following on two Facebook pages as well as Twitter and Google +.

I also launched a FB page for my business which just surpassed 100 likes.

But I've also been reading these forums as well books on marketing because I don't want to solely depend on my readership.

I thought about holding off on the business until I had several more designs but then I was reading posts here that said you don't necessarily want to put out all your designs at once because it makes it more difficult to introduce new designs.

Although I came into the business with a significant advantage because of my readership, I know it's going to take a lot of hard work to reach my goal which is to sell 500 products a month by the end of 2013.


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## skdave (Apr 11, 2008)

Transfers are the easiest and best way to get strarted.


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