# The path to riches :)



## blacktooth (Aug 23, 2010)

After hours and hours of research on these forums I am still lost as how to market my brand. 

I think my brand is geared mostly toward small children up to men and woman in their 30s. This seems to perhaps be a problem because I wonder if an adult sees a little kid wear my brand, or sees that its sold to children, they then will want to stay away from wearing it themselves. What do you guys think, is that a potential problem you see likely happening? 

I think my designs are novel/artsy which makes me ponder if limiting them will help emphasize their novelty and push sales. I like the idea that with limited, one will feel that they have purchased something novel and rare, which will hopefully make them a fan of my brand and purchase more limited items in the future, perhaps items that they would not have bought otherwise. The problem I'm faced with is that because I feel my designs are novel and the subject matter seems to have a broad appeal, there could perhaps be mass appeal for the brand if marketed right, but as Johnny Cupcakes has stated, you could become a fad and then burn out. What do you guys think, would you buy a tee that you saw someone else wear around town a couple weeks ago, or that you saw displayed in a Wall-mart, or would you rather buy something rarer. If you consider your preferences different than most others then what do you think most others prefer? 

Limiting t-shirts to a specific amount I can see pissing some people off because the design they want is sold out, which perhaps could open up prolific bootlegs of them if the demand is great enough for the designs. Also I see some people here diss limited edition for some understandable reasons, but I wonder if they have a problem wearing the same shirt as the dude across the street. So if you guys would please consider that if designs have mass appeal and novelty going for them, how would you market them; in stores, online exclusive, limited, how limited, geared to adults only, kids and adults, high prices, low prices,retire a design after so many have sold so as to not create over exposure, etc? If you would give your reasoning behind the path you would take that would be appreciated. Note: The designs have a charity potential as well to consider, which I think could cause others to be happy to see others with the same shirt design. 

If I go the limited route do you guys think a thousand prints does not seem limited enough? Do you guys know how many tees the average Threadless tee sells, or a JC Penny tee? If a tee has mass appeal then a thousand does not seem like much to me, however a thousand does not seem very limited to probably quite a few minds when first faced with that number.

Thanks


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## Riph (Jan 11, 2011)

Very very broad question without really much to go on to provide you an answer. Without showing the product (which I understand why you haven't) you are basically asking someone to write your entire marketing plan. 

You need to decide what your channel of distribution is going to be. Some are relatively easy to implement, some are _very very hard_. JC Penney, or any other large retailer will be quite hard to sell to, but you can create a website and go online without anyone telling you "no." Do you have the time and resources it takes to get your product into big retail? If not, then forget about it and do what you can do.

I would suggest that you print and try to sell 100 of these T's through any means possible, online, on a street corner, out of the back of your car, - whatever. If you get them sold, then print more. The idea that you are going to need 1000's before you even know how you are going to sell them, well to me that seems like a decision you can make later. Until you have sold a few, the rest of your questions are academic.

Unless of course, you already have a buyer at Wal-Mart that wants to take on your line. 

Good Luck!


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## Hegemone (Oct 18, 2011)

Based on your post, I would suggest that you narrow your brand. kids to adults is not a good target audience. Sparkle loving tweens is a more condensed target. 

You are having trouble describing your brand and its image. That is the first problem. Clarify, condense, and form a consistent voice for your brand. The best brands do this in a catchy manner that gets stuck in your head even when you don't have their product in hand.

You seem to have created images first and a brand second and thats pretty hard to do. Fix the branding and then create for that brand.

Just my two cents. Toss them in a well and make a wish.


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## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

i agree, you need to find your niche. anyone alive 30 years old and younger is not a niche, it's a third of the human population, lol. if you were to step into JCP, in what department would you find your brand in? 

those huge outlets are, as i understand it, difficult to break into. without tons of research into selling wholesale, i wouldn't even attempt it. and how would you even manufacture these? 

just my opinion, but the dumbest thing i see no-name brands do is exclusives of their best design. why on earth would you do that?! of course, it's probably a production issue for a lot of these guys, but it's still unsane to me ~ you're in the business to sell shirts, not collectibles. no one is going to be pissed off if you don't have a shirt in stock, you'll just have lost a sale. i don't know a single person that has ever bought a tee shirt b/c of its 'exclusivity.' maybe there is that person out there, but that's nothing i would count on or cater to. the idea that someone across the street wearing the same shirt is pretty hopeful. remember, you sell art, not tee shirts. when you run a design out, you have to come back with a new one, eh? 'exclusives' are, i've seen, generally limited to about 50 or less, so offering a 'limited' run of 1,000 isn't really making it rare at all. 

you have no problem making money, right? then forget charities. just my opinion there, but there's no money in it as far as i could ever tell. 

if you want my reasoning behind pricing, that's easy: marketing. i think what's really going to help you immensely is going to the library and taking out a book about marketing. 

let's say you produce a 100 tee shirts to start. how many of those do you think you'll sell and in what time-frame? i ask to get an idea of your expectations and what you consider reasonable.


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## kimura-mma (Jul 26, 2008)

When starting out, print as many as you can sell.

If you print too few, you are leaving sales (and money) on the table. This could have a detrimental affect on your business growth because you need to generate as much cash flow as possible.

If you print too many, you are going to end up with a basement full of unsold t-shirts.

You also need to factor in your budget. How much are you planning to spend to launch your brand? Be sure to set aside enough for marketing and other overhead, monthly expenses, etc. The money you budget for production will help determine how much inventory you can stock.

As your business grows, you can start thinking about exclusivity and/or mass production. If you are selling through your own distribution channels, it's really up to your own preference. If you are selling through retail stores, it depends on how many they order. You may want to mass produce designs that are sold through retail chains. But then produce limited edition shirts for sale on your website to service those customers who prefer exclusive products.


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## blacktooth (Aug 23, 2010)

Thanks for the responses guys. 
@Riph
I have given two specific qualities of my brand. One being novelty, and the other being of a theme that has apparent mass appeal. Other qualities include modern and simple. The strategy of limited or not is a main question I would like to solve as I feel once I answer that, I can start answering many of my other questions. For instance, if it is limited I don't think that's probably a selling point for most young kids.

In case you have misunderstood my post, I never said or implied I need or plan on making thousands of tees before I even know how to sell them. I think my post is all about trying to figure out how to sell my tees with no specific number of them as of yet.

I understand I need to decide what my channel of distributions going to be, but is that not dependent on many of my other questions, such as going limited or unlimited?

I can answer many of my questions later and perhaps that is what I should do, but please explain why you think I should do it that way. I understand that if I cannot sell a shirt in any way then my brand is apparently sunk, but I think it is of practical use to me to have an understanding if marketing too broadly has big down falls. If I do as you suggest and try to sell one hundred shirts by any means possible, and the means I choose to sell the hundred shirts is by making them limited, then how am I in a much better place then I am now in answering my questions? I think I understand what you are saying to me though, and it's usefulness, but I think my inquires are not only academic as I think having a better understanding of these things will hopefully help give me the means to sell that first one hundred shirts better, and the next hundred, and so forth. No?
@Hegemone
Why is kid to adults not a good target audience to you? 

I can make my brand clear and precise. I can create it in many different lights if I wanted to, but does doing that make me a wise marketer, and if so, why? What I'm trying to find out is how would you market a brand that seems like it could have mass appeal and novelty to it? I understand it's hard to be of more help with out seeing more specifics of my t-shirts, but why suggest a narrow market to me? Do large markets not exist or are hard to reach for common reasons or something, and if so, what are those reasons?

You are right in that I created one image in a style, then created more with the idea of branding in mind. I have a feeling that many successful brands if not most started this way, like how about Picasso, Pollock, Obey, Johnny Cupcakes, etc? 
@ryan barker
Why is thirty years or younger not a niche to you? Why does the market need to be small? Is the market small for Levis jeans? It was in the beginning at least, so maybe the philosophy your sharing with me is to start small, but can one not start small and still sell to lots of ages?

I'm not sure where in JcPenny my shirts would belong, that is why in part I'm asking my questions. I'm guessing though that they would probably be in the t shirt section with the others that have designs on them. However I have the feeling JcPenny is not an ideal place for my shirts, but I have not checked out the store in years so.....

I plan at the beginning at least to manufacture them myself, so I can hopefully better control production quality and print small batches and make/save the extra money that I need. Why do you ask?

Some seem to think that a good way to do business in selling shirts is by selling collectables. If you think selling collectables is not a good way to sell tees then please explain why. You don't know any one who has ever bought a tee because of it exclusivity, but I'm not so sure what you are getting at by telling me this. Are you saying the idea of scarcity does not make a good selling point for most people? From my own perspective I see lots of dud designs coming out of Johny cupcakes, but they seem to be selling all right at 35 + dollars in the apparent limited quantity of hundreds. Do you think he would be just as successful selling unlimited tees of these same designs for even a much lower price? Maybe. Also, do you consider Johnny Cupcake tees rare and collectable as they seem to sell in numbers way over what you consider to be rare and collectable? Do you think the people that buy them also think like you?

I have seen people wear the same shirt, but perhaps it is uncommon enough to not worry about, and that is something I would like to know about. I don't go out much and live in a small town so I'm not able to answer this well myself unless I venture out. 

To me one of the biggest draws of limited is that one can feel like they are displaying something others have not seen before, but if most people don't care about that, or feel safe that the likelihood that others have probably not seen that tee before, even though they bought it at Wall-Mart, then limited does not seem the way to go to me much. It does not seem like a good selling point to have others invest/gamble in buying collectables from an unknown artist that might never be worth collecting, or is it? I was having a vision of my brand all of the sudden popping out of nowhere looking fresh and pushing the scarcity button in shoppers to generate sales and buzz for the brand, but maybe just being fresh is enough if pushing the scarcity button doesn't do jack to most.

I am making no money currently. Why do you think there is no money in supporting charities or causes? I prefer buying organic cotton over non organic, and that is to support a cause (creating a better environment to live in).

What is a good book on marketing that you recommend? 

I think the time frame depends on how I market them and what profit margin I want. If you give me more specifics on profit margin I could give you a better answer I think, but as of now for my brand I do not have any real expectations and an idea of what I consider reasonable because I do not know how I will market my brand. I think it is very likely I will be able to sell all hundred if I market smartly. I would be interested in you giving an answer to the same question, imagining that you had a product that was somewhat novel and had a subject matter of fairly broad appeal that you believed in as being something that a decent amount of people will appreciate and buy if marketed well. Like you, I ask to get an idea of your expectations and what you consider reasonable. Please explain the reasoning behind your answer. I think that information would be helpful to me to see your understanding of how to sell t-shirts well.
@kimura-mma
I'm not planning on spending much, a couple of thousand at most. My plan is currently to print a few and go from there, or perhaps the idea of pre orders if I went limited. Part of me likes the limited idea to help generate sales and repeat customers, if it has that potential, but Ryan seems to think it's dumb and I want to better understand if that is so, especially if my tees do have broad appeal.


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## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

not saying that 30 years and younger isn't a place to start, just that the 12-30 age group probably isn't going to work. consider a & fitch and hollister. i doubt you'd find too many sites that sells the same designs meant to appeal to a 30 year old woman that appeals to a 13 year old boy. of course there might be exceptions, say, for example, a christian shirt with a simple message/design, or maybe trendy shirts that would appeal to a mother and her teenage girl. and if those are your intentions, then that's your niche, i suppose, and your marketing should be targeted towards them.

yeah, levis appeal to most everyone. they've also built a reputation over a century. they also filled a need, not only a fashion gap where none existed before. take affliction ~ no one was doing that before they did, they found a customer niche that didn't really exist and created it, not to mention coming up with a brilliant design concept. unless you're creating a niche, you're adding to one that already exists, so i'm rather loathe to compare brands to innovative designs and customer bases.

your production methods are incredibly important. it either limits what you do because it's cost prohibitive to test new designs and fulfill orders, or it frees you to experiment, imo. 

i don't believe average tee shirts are collectibles, and even if they are meant to be the collectibles market is down and has been for years. sure, of course there are collectors out there, there's no doubt about that. again, though, you're looking at johnny cupcakes, and as far as i know they never had 'collectible' shirts in the beginning. most new brands that offer 'limited editions' are also those that are limited in their production means. the idea behind a collectible is there's usually a high demand versus a limited production. and let's face it, there's a demand for johnny cupcakes and not so much your shirts, lol. in other words, if they do it it's because they can get away with it, and i don't think it's something a new brand will find a successful marketing gimmick. to limit sales of your best-selling design is just silly, imo. 

i don't care if i see someone in the same shirt i have on. if two people are wearing the same shirt in the same place that you've made then i'd say you've likely done your marketing well! lol.

'limited' also means fewer people see your shirt. don't you want the widest possible number of people seeing your shirts? i would.  

any marketing book will work. 

if you want to buy organic cotton shirts and reflect that in your prices, cool. no worries there. if you sell your shirts to charities at at your regular price, cool, no worries. if you give it to them and 'write it off,' fine, congratulations, you've earned nothing except feeling good about supposedly doing a good thing. it's your business, it can be run any way you deem fit. i'm a capitalist, though, and i don't like to give stuff away for free without there being a good reason. i've done trophies and awards for seven years almost to the day, and in that time i've learned that charities just always want stuff for cheap if not for almost free, there's only so much i can 'write off' (which usually hits that point in february, so anything i do after that i do for a loss), and the 'marketing' of doing that only brings in more people that want free/reduced pricing. then why i say i can't, i have to put up with their high-horsedness ~ obviously these self-righteous do-gooders don't run their own business! lol. sponsorships are nearly a complete waste, imo. we make exceptions for breast cancer and hospice charities, but with all the bike runs and run-for-the-cure-of-somethings out there, i'd go broke by march if i did work for all of them at the price they want.

how many you sell and how fast depends on your marketing, pricing, branding, designs. my expectations are probably going to be a lot different than yours. when i get the time and money to do my brand the way i want it, i would be thrilled to sell a 100 shirts within six months. but, i realize it's a marathon while others need instant sales. tentatively, i'd like to see profits coming around the 3-4 years mark, and that's assuming i do everything within my power to maintain the quality, design and marketing. my designs may take off sooner, but if i haven't built up a customer base by then, it's time to get out or change things (actually, changing things before then is probably advisable, lol).

of course, your wider markets have more appeal in theory. they're also going to be the most competitive for obvious reasons. rarity and uniqueness? the latter may get you noticed, hopefully, and the former is almost a built-in given assuming you're turning over your designs every three or four months. i mean, if you're still selling the same five designs a year from opening, you shouldn't have to wonder very hard why you're not getting many sales, right? lol.


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## suzamac (Mar 18, 2008)

Buy a subscription to Spyfu.com. Enter the websites you want to emulate and see what their monthly spend is. You mentioned Levi. I haven't checked them out but you should before you say that your target market is not too broad because that is the target market of Levi Strauss. 

For example, in an unrelated field, if I were a small insurance agency and decided I wanted to compete with Geico or Progressive. They spend $300K *PER MONTH* on pay per click!!! You gotta find a market so narrow that you can afford to rule that market. Learn about SEO and PPC...how to get yourself on page 1 of Google.


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## TOONCOUTURE (Aug 17, 2012)

Love Johnny Cupcakes ! Anyways


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## molecul3 (Feb 16, 2012)

i found this to be a very good topic... i too have been thinking about all those questions with no one to turn to for answers and advice. All valid arguments here...

I was wondering.. how has it gone for you Blacktooth? Any progress or decisions?

As for me, at the end of the day, whether to be exclusive or not, the first thing is that you need people to know about your brand. If it is exclusive and you only print 100 but you can't even sell one.. this is not a situation you want to be in. Not unless you have unlimited funds or am fully committed to this concept. I guess each thing will need to the next and you will have to change your strategies along the way but hopefully, not stray too far from your initial ideas.

All the best to you!


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