The Internet is an ideal platform for selling digitally printed garments, but setting up a website may not be as easy as you think.

Plan on a lot of research, preparation, and hard work if you want to start up a successful Internet business based on your digital direct-to-substrate printer.

There are some very successful web-based businesses today that are based on digital direct-to-garment custom t-shirt printing. Café Press, Zazzle, Printfection, and Spreadshirt are just a few examples. Thanks in part to these custom tee shirt printing giants, this technology is a widely accepted and familiar process that many buyers are fully comfortable with.

So if you’re thinking about starting up a similar operation, which is offering either preprinted or custom shirts on the Internet, the way has been paved, and it will be a lot easier than if you tried to do this 10 years ago.

But as it often is with a company that has reached the top, it looks like it was easy to do. Get a domain name, throw up a website and you’re in the online custom t-shirt business, right? However, what those who haven’t tried it don’t know is the huge amount of research, preparation, and hard work that goes into creating and maintaining a commercially successful web-based custom tee shirt business.

No matter how simple you may think the process is, this article is intended to be an eye opener to the many details and issues you need to consider before getting started. You can be successful if you do your homework and proceed cautiously making decisions only after you’ve learned all the facts. There are still opportunities with plenty of room for growth on many levels in the online custom t-shirt industry.

Research, Research, Research. The very first step you should take is to learn about your potential competitors. Find out who is who in the online custom t-shirt market – who are the big players, what makes them successful and what do they do differently. Who will you compete against?

I recommend devoting yourself to doing research on a regular basis over a few weeks to get a good feel for what companies out there are doing, and compare it to what you plan to offer to the market. Can you realistically compete with the already established players in the custom tee shirt business? Can you attract customers for your tee shirt business, either new ones or existing ones away from competitors?

Determine Your Budget and Ongoing Costs. Websites are not inexpensive to develop and maintain, and you’ll also have the monthly e-commerce subscription fee to cover, so be sure you have a realistic idea of what your upfront costs will be. A static website costs between $3,000 to $5,000 dollars to develop, with a further investment into Adobe Dreamweaver for around $300 to teach yourself how to add pages to your tee shirt site on your own. Or, instead of learning code yourself, you may choose to bring on a full-time, part-time or freelance web designer to build extra pages for your site and update your content. Stay tuned for more!

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11/14/2011
Little Falls, New Jersey 07424