From the Ground Up

To avoid being the weird guy dressed in a suit in his picture, I'll talk a little more about myself. What's most important is that I draw. It's been a hobby of mine for a while but only in the past two years have I taken it more seriously with the aim of making money. Generally speaking, selling art in the form of pictures to be hung is a difficult task, so I went a different route. I tried doing printed T-shirts. These turned out to be a successful venture in Flagstaff, where I sold about 18 shirts to a local shop on two different occasions. All of my shirts have been sold. I realized that there were a couple of challenges to this process. The first one is keeping track of expenses. When I sold my first batch of shirts I was simply excited to get them into a store. A lot of them ended up in my friends hands for free, but I made my money back quickly with a little to spare. This will be something I need to consider in the next, more official round of printing I get done. If only I took accounting...

Simple design concept, smaller than anticipated but effective none the less.

I threw my logo on the upper back of these shirts.

Once again, simple concept. This was my first design.

My first color design. This one was expensive, but so was the screen printer I was using.

The other challenge I have realized is going bulk. I have the intention of opening up an online shirt store and I'm looking to get around 200 shirts printed. I will probably scrap the hand/tree design and use two new designs that are yet to be determined. Going bulk means trying to be cost effective. On the other hand, I don't just want only white shirts, a mistake I made on my first batch, and I also need girl fitted t-shirts, a mistake I made on my second batch. How do you account for this? What are standard size distributions for male/female fitted t-shirts? And how do you choose the right colors if, as a start up company with limited funds, I want to make sure my customers can have the perfect shirt?

These questions still need answering, and I'll let you know what I find out as I move forward. This has been a learning process and there's a steep learning curve. The thing I always need to keep in mind: you have to spend money to make money. If you have any pointers I'm always open to suggestions.