Started a clothing company

brickharbor

brickharbor

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For the last 10 or so years I've always wanted my own clothing company and the other week I finally grew some balls and ordered some T shirts.

I now have a few questions that I'm hoping someone can help me with! I'm currently using bigcartel but I plan on moving to wordpress, can anyone recommend a decent ecommerce plug in? And do I have to sign up to anything else to accept payments? Or is that included within the plugin?

The tees came today and so far I've managed to sell one haha!

Any other tips about promotion would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!
 
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Just work hard get your product out there...

You have an online shop, which is a great start but the more advertising and marketing you do the bigger sales
 
WooCommerce is pretty good if it's compatible with your theme. I would get on social media and start growing a following and connect with people as well. Clothing lines are very tough, it's a pretty saturated market and almost everyone has one, or wants one.

Good luck
 
If you want to use Wordpress for your eCommerce store, then I recommend you to pick up WooCommerce, and get a nice theme to go with it. (Should be WooCommerce compatible).
 
steelballs said:
Just work hard get your product out there...

You have an online shop, which is a great start but the more advertising and marketing you do the bigger sales
Click to expand...

Yeah I've got a few Instagram accounts that add up to around 100k followers but none of the accounts are related to clothing at all, still gained a few hundred on my new page from them though!

zndrzeus said:
WooCommerce is pretty good if it's compatible with your theme. I would get on social media and start growing a following and connect with people as well. Clothing lines are very tough, it's a pretty saturated market and almost everyone has one, or wants one.

Good luck
Click to expand...

Maggeren said:
If you want to use Wordpress for your eCommerce store, then I recommend you to pick up WooCommerce, and get a nice theme to go with it. (Should be WooCommerce compatible).
Click to expand...

Cheers guys, i'll check it out!

GreenGoblin said:
Congrats! bro!
now work work work
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Cheers man!
 
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I ran a t-shirt company a while back and used wp e-commerce. It's free and worked out pretty well for me. If your not much of a designer and don't mind spending a little money though, I'd suggest using shopify because it handles all the hosting, design and order handling for you.
 
There are plenty of opportunity?s for promotion. Advertising on sites like Facebook and Reddit work like a charm. Make sure that you give a business-card/flyer out in every package that you ship. Usually, clothing advertises it self; Friends of buyers ask where they got their tee shirt, etc. Over time, a community will start to grow. I hope you the best of luck. You have already got past the hardest part... taking initiative. :)
 
brickharbor said:
For the last 10 or so years I've always wanted my own clothing company and the other week I finally grew some balls and ordered some T shirts.

I now have a few questions that I'm hoping someone can help me with! I'm currently using bigcartel but I plan on moving to wordpress, can anyone recommend a decent ecommerce plug in? And do I have to sign up to anything else to accept payments? Or is that included within the plugin?

The tees came today and so far I've managed to sell one haha!

Any other tips about promotion would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I've helped many companies launch online stores and therefore have quite a bit of experience.

I'm also in the process of building and launching my own.

From what I've seen, it's tough to beat either WordPress + Stripe + WooCommerce + SSL or Shopify.

I'm a Rails advocate more so than PHP, so I prefer Shopify over Big Cartel. It's also slightly cheaper.

I'm actually running my store on WordPress though.

Are you working on a custom design?
 
imdaily said:
I ran a t-shirt company a while back and used wp e-commerce. It's free and worked out pretty well for me. If your not much of a designer and don't mind spending a little money though, I'd suggest using shopify because it handles all the hosting, design and order handling for you.
Click to expand...

I just checked Shopify out, it does look pretty handy to be fair, might have to look into that one!

WoozyBluff said:
There are plenty of opportunity's for promotion. Advertising on sites like Facebook and Reddit work like a charm. Make sure that you give a business-card/flyer out in every package that you ship. Usually, clothing advertises it self; Friends of buyers ask where they got their tee shirt, etc. Over time, a community will start to grow. I hope you the best of luck. You have already got past the hardest part... taking initiative.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was thinking of getting some cards printed tomorrow with social media usernames on. I've never had any luck with Reddit, ever. And Facebook I've spent money on advertising things in the past and had no joy with it! Hopefully I can grow a page naturally! Cheers!

GoForJacob said:
I've helped many companies launch online stores and therefore have quite a bit of experience. I'm also in the process of building and launching my own. From what I've seen, it's tough to beat either WordPress + Stripe + WooCommerce + SSL or Shopify. I'm a Rails advocate more so than PHP, so I prefer Shopify over Big Cartel. It's also slightly cheaper. I'm actually running my store on WordPress though. Are you working on a custom design?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what country you're from but in England BigCartel is cheaper than Shopify, but after checking out Shopify it does look a lot better! Not working on a custom site design just yet.
 
Don't rule out viral sharing! Giveaway coupon codes or something for free for each five friends that buy something or anything like that.

And I'm in the US. Last time I compared their prices was back in 2009 though. And then Big Cartels prices were cheaper, but I compared per-product. While they were cheaper, you didn't get as much as you did with Shopify.

Big Cartel does have a nice template engine though.
 
brickharbor said:
I've never had any luck with Reddit, ever.
Click to expand...

With reddit, they like sincerity and hilarity. You've got three options. 1) Use a username you've contributed with in the past, to post about how you just started this company, what do you think of the designs, can anyone give you any advice etc. 2) Take pictures of people in your shirts in weird/gross/funny situations and posting them to IMgur, then submitting the IMgur link and hoping someone comments on the shirts. 3) Wait til your business grows a bit and start an "AMA - I built my own clothing company from scratch". So many people want to do this, I'm sure you'd get a ton of questions and a few fans.

I've seen all of these work, but tbh The last ones probably the most reliable of the three.
 
GoForJacob said:
Don't rule out viral sharing! Giveaway coupon codes or something for free for each five friends that buy something or anything like that. And I'm in the US. Last time I compared their prices was back in 2009 though. And then Big Cartels prices were cheaper, but I compared per-product. While they were cheaper, you didn't get as much as you did with Shopify. Big Cartel does have a nice template engine though.
Click to expand...

I was thinking about advertising a competition/giveaway or something from my other Instagram accounts to see if I can drum up some interest. Considering my first sale came from Instagram I reckon there's a lot more potential there!

imdaily said:
With reddit, they like sincerity and hilarity. You've got three options. 1) Use a username you've contributed with in the past, to post about how you just started this company, what do you think of the designs, can anyone give you any advice etc. 2) Take pictures of people in your shirts in weird/gross/funny situations and posting them to IMgur, then submitting the IMgur link and hoping someone comments on the shirts. 3) Wait til your business grows a bit and start an "AMA - I built my own clothing company from scratch". So many people want to do this, I'm sure you'd get a ton of questions and a few fans. I've seen all of these work, but tbh The last ones probably the most reliable of the three.
Click to expand...

I shall definitely try these out, thank you!
 
Very cool bro, I always wanted to start a clothing company too! Send me a pm with your link, I want to take a look
 
I have a great domain if you're looking for one. I was going to use it for my web solutions company but everyone who is non-web savvy (apparently about 80% of the population) thought it sounded like a clothing company.

Inside Tag
 
TheMasterOfMoney said:
Very cool bro, I always wanted to start a clothing company too! Send me a pm with your link, I want to take a look
Click to expand...

Just sent you a PM.

seochris96 said:
I have a great domain if you're looking for one. I was going to use it for my web solutions company but everyone who is non-web savvy (apparently about 80% of the population) thought it sounded like a clothing company. Inside Tag
Click to expand...

I've got a domain name, cheers!
 
brickharbor said:
For the last 10 or so years I've always wanted my own clothing company and the other week I finally grew some balls and ordered some T shirts.
Click to expand...

Congratulations! Not a lot of people get enough courage to do what they've always wanted. It's a good thing you finally did :)


brickharbor said:
Any other tips about promotion would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I would suggest using social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. A friend of mine sells women's clothes through Instagram and they're selling like hot cakes!
 
SmartWriters said:
Congratulations! Not a lot of people get enough courage to do what they've always wanted. It's a good thing you finally did :)

I would suggest using social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. A friend of mine sells women's clothes through Instagram and they're selling like hot cakes!
Click to expand...

Thank you, unlike 95% of people on here I've been taking action online and finally decided to do so offline and follow something that I've always wanted to do! I'm going to mainly focus on Instagram with the social media side of things, I've never understood how people get big on Facebook but I'm still trying to figure it out haha.
 
I did an all day photoshoot with my assistant (aspiring model) yesterday. We got some cool as F images.

Part of the shoot was for him to wear a couple of t shirts that a Brighton company had sent him to wear and promote on Instagram (18k followers).

We have another couple of shoots planned if you are interested. Shirts need to be a bit street/ young if that makes sense.

I'd normally charge a lot for this but I'm doing it free for him to build his portfolio to go to an agency (he is the son of a friend and an important part of my team).

He's quite a stunning model and I'm sure he'd be cool to model some shirts for exposure (and I'd want a backlinkl!!!)

I can send you shots if you are interested.
 
igniteimages said:
I did an all day photoshoot with my assistant (aspiring model) yesterday. We got some cool as F images.

Part of the shoot was for him to wear a couple of t shirts that a Brighton company had sent him to wear and promote on Instagram (18k followers).

We have another couple of shoots planned if you are interested. Shirts need to be a bit street/ young if that makes sense.

I'd normally charge a lot for this but I'm doing it free for him to build his portfolio to go to an agency (he is the son of a friend and an important part of my team).

He's quite a stunning model and I'm sure he'd be cool to model some shirts for exposure (and I'd want a backlinkl!!!)

I can send you shots if you are interested.
Click to expand...

Send me a PM with some more info man!
 
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