If you’ve read the main best T shirt printing machine post, then you may have been directed here to try to get a better understanding of which T shirt printing business is right for you.
You may have found your way here directly from a Google search, of course, in any case, this post is designed to help you to decide which kind of T shirt printing business is right for you.
The T shirt printing business can be split into three main categories.
- Personalization T shirt printing AKA customized T shirt Printing
- Own designs/own brand T shirt printing
- Bulk or Trade T shirt printing
Personalization printing, or Customization printing.
With this kind of a printing service, you will be printing the customer’s own image and/or text onto T shirts, and/or other garments & products.
Personalization printing can be 100% personalised, for instance where the customer gives you their design, and you print this design onto a T shirt. It can also be partly personalized, for instance where you have designs that you have created which can be personalized with the name of the gift recipient, and/or with a photo.
Personalized/customized T shirt purchases can range from single T shirt purchases, for individual gifts, through to larger group orders, for events, such as bachelor and bachelorette parties, other events and parties.
This business model is good for anyone who doesn’t class themselves as particularly creative. Some people want to get into the printing business to express their creativity, and if this is you, personalization printing probably isn’t going to be your thing. With personalization/customization T shirt & gift printing, you’re going to be working mainly with other people’s designs.
If you would be happy to print mainly your customer’s designs, then personalization may be the business for you.
Having been involved quite heavily in personalization, I can tell you that there are some pros and cons.
The first thing to say on the negative side, is that you’re often going to be printing single items, and there’s often a bit of legwork to do, such as reminding customer’s to send you the image, or asking the customer to send a higher resolution image, as they’ve uploaded a postage stamp sized 72DPI image that won’t even be recognizable once enlarged to the required size, and so on.
Another con of personalization printing is that repeat business is generally infrequent. I’m not saying people won’t come back to you, but I mean that compared to trade T shirt printing where you’ll be taking regular repeat orders, with personalization, the repeat orders from each customer will be less frequent, and smaller, so you’ll need a more constant supply of new customers.
The pros of personalization printing, are that you will have lots of different customers, so you won’t have all your eggs in one basket. If you lose one customer, it won’t affect your business all that much. You’ll have a pretty large potential market, and there are plenty of networks that you can use to market your business. You wouldn’t have to give anyone credit with personalisation printing, so you’re not in danger of having bad debt.
If you’ve decided personalization printing is for you, see: The Best T shirt Printing Equipment for Personalization Printing.
Own designs/own brand T shirt printing
If you’re wanting to create your own brand, by working with your own designs, artwork, photography, slogans or poetry, the chances are you’ll already know that this is what you want to do. Most people who launch a brand do so as a way to profit from their creativity and turn their vacation into a vocation.
Personally, I think working with your own creativity is often the best way forward, for anyone who is creative. I’ve seen many creative people startup businesses based around their artwork, designs, photos, creative slogans and so on, which quickly grow into successful businesses.
I’m not saying this is for everyone, but if you have a creative talent, I would think this would be the most obvious choice for you. If you’re not, then setting up a business working with other people who are creative, would make sense, but if you’re a designer, an artist, a photographer or whatever the case may be, then you may find that in the long term, focusing on your own creative works would be the best way forward.
If you’re not creative in this way, but you want to build a brand – another idea is to find creative people to work with, either by hiring designers to create one-off designs for you or by going into partnership or coming up with some form of licensing arrangement. Thanks to the web, the world is really quite a small place now, and you can easily find designers via places such as Fiverr.com, elance, freelancer.com and so on.
Having said that, own brand businesses don’t necessarily even have to be all that creative, by latching onto buoyant existing markets, entrepreneurs often do well with brands based on really quite basic ideas.
I’ve seen brands based on really simple slogans, for example, which have become successful, usually by focusing on particular markets. An example of this would be T shirts with slogans particular to a certain sport, such as fishing, running, cycling or rowing, and targeting their products at these markets.
I’ve seen a startup brand do well based on very short simple positive affirmation type slogans aimed at the self-improvement market. I’ve seen similar with businesses focusing on particular music genre’s, popular pets, hobbies, and so on.
If you’re thinking of printing your own brand T shirts, see: The Best T shirt Printing Equipment for Own Brand Printing.
Bulk, Trade or Wholesale T shirt printing
This kind of garment printing involves printing in larger volumes, for trade customers, and it’s generally higher volume and lower margin than the others.
In my humble opinon, starting up a trade T shirt printing business isn’t for beginners. If you’re completely new to all of this, cutting your teeth with trade garment printing may be a bit too much.
You’ll likely be dealing with trade customers who know a lot more about the business than you do, and you may find yourself feeling that you’re way out of your depth. Sure, you may be able to blag your way through this, hit the ground running and pick up everything you need to learn quickly enough to make things work, some people can – I’m not sure this is an experience I would relish, though, but each to their own.
To run a business like this, you’ll need the ability to generate and convert trade enquiries, or to employ sales staff to take care of this. You’ll be competing against some professional and experienced outfits, so you’ll need to put in some time, money and effort into marketing to gain the leads, and you’ll need to be able to work the leads and convert them into new trade customers.
This is generally a much longer and more involved process than taking an order for a personalized T shirt or for a T shirt printed with your own design. Yes, the average order is much larger for wholesale printing, but it does take a lot longer, generally speaking, to convert from a lead to a new customer, with trade printing.
I’ve been involved quite heavily in this market too, and I’ve found that the average time from enquiry to first order, is roughly two to three months – and it takes quite a bit of persistence too. It’s unlikely a trade customer will phone you, and order there and then. It may happen occaisonally, but it’s not the norm. You’ll probably find you have to quote them, answer some questions, and then follow up a few times, maybe send a sample, and eventually, hopefully, you’ll take their first order.
Also keep in mind that when your business is brand new, all of your leads will be cold, you won’t be getting recommendations, you won’t have a reputation to lean on, you won’t have tonnes of testimonials and Facebook or Google reviews and so on, so you can expect it to take longer and be a bit of a harder slog initially, than when you’ve been going for a while.
If you’re a beginner to T shirt printing, and a beginner to business to business selling, then I would think this would result in a particularly steep learning curve.
If you’re an experienced T shirt printer, but you’re new to selling to the trade, then maybe this isn’t too much of a stretch – you could take on a salesperson, or just do a bit of learning, selling isn’t all that difficult, you just need to find a way to generate the enquiries, and then do a good job of responding and following up.
If you’re experienced when it comes to business to business sales and marketing, but you’re new to T shirt printing, then again, probably not all that much of a stretch, you could hire someone to run the printing, and handle the sales yourself. If you’re completely new to garment printing, and you’re thinking of getting into this completely on your own without hiring someone who knows about T shirt printing, I’d think twice, personally – or spend some time learning about garment printing first.
If you’re completely new to selling to the trade, and to T shirt printing, and you’re thinking of starting a trade T shirt printing business, then I think you’d be well advised to re-think your plans, unless of course you have the budget to take on printing staff and sales staff.
If you think trade T shirt printing is the right business for you, see: Best T shirt Printers & Equipment for Trade T shirt Printing.
Conclusion
Hopefully you have a better idea now of which kind of T shirt printing business is right for you.
If you’re still not sure, generally speaking, most people who’re looking to set up to print T shirts would be better off focusing on either personalization printing or own designs/own brand tshirt printing.
Setting up a wholesale garment printing business usually costs quite a bit more, involves more expensive printing equipment, premises, production and sales staff, and isn’t the right kind of business for most people.
Also, many people looking at T shirt printing as a business, are looking at setting up a business alongside their full time or part time job, also known as a “side hustle”, if this is the case, personalization printing, or printing T shirts using your own designs, would probably be a much more appropriate idea than wholesale garment printing.
If you have ruled out trade printing, but can’t decide between personalization and own brand printing, here’s a few questions for you:
- Do you class yourself as a creative person?
- Are you an ideas person?
- Are you a photographer, designer, a poet, a writer?
- Or – are you an entrepreneur, who can work with someone who one of the above is relevant?
- Are you particularly passionate about any particular niche, whether this is a sport, a hobby, or any other kind of interest?
If any of the above are true, then setting up to create your own brand may well be the perfect idea for you. If you’re an artist of some kind, or if you’re a marketer who can work with someone who is, or if you’re heavily involved in (or at least very interested in) some particular niche, then this kind of business could be great for you.
- Do you consider yourself to have good customer services skills?
- Do you have the time and patience to create lots of listings, on your own website and/or on platforms such as Etsy, Amazon etc?
- And/Or: Do you like the idea of attending craft markets and other events where you can take orders in person?
- And/Or: Do you have access to a retail outlet with a good footfall?
- Are you prepared to operate a fairly seasonal business, where certain months are likely to be particularly quiet, while months leading up to the biggest seasonal events are likely to be hectic?
If you’re answering yes more to the above questions than the questions relating to own designs, then personalization may be the business for you.
The reason I say the stuff about this being a seasonal business is that personalization tends to be fed by the main events of the year. For most people in this business, Christmas is the number one event of the year, although there are other busy seasons too, and of course you can aim your business at particular markets.
It’s true that all the above kinds of printing businesses are likely to be busier in the run up to the biggest marketing events, especially Christmas, but I find it’s especially the case with personalization printing, as personalized gifts are so popular as Christmas gift ideas.
