How to Start Your Own T-Shirt Brand from Home

How to Start Your Own T-Shirt Brand from Home

Here at Stay at Home Mum, we already talked on things you should do before starting your online business. However, sometimes the hardest thing is to find out what kind of online business should one do as there are countless possibilities. You might also wonder if it is even possible to have a great business career while being a great mum. We can guarantee that it is possible because plenty of stay at home mums are doing exactly that.

Today, we are going to share with you one online business idea in detail that you might pursue in the comfort of your home.

Image credit: Keagan Henman

You should think of starting your own online t-shirt store. This business idea is especially good for you if you have a creative personality. Because it allows you to express yourself as you can create your own t-shirt design.

Also, this might give you a great possibility to spend time with your children as you can involve your kids in the t-shirt design process and even ask them to come up with their own design. There are limitless opportunities for that.

So, here is a thorough guide on how you can start your own t-shirt brand.

1. Create a Website

Obviously, to sell-shirts online you will need a website. There are various content management systems you can use such as Wix, Squarespace or Joomla. However, almost third of the World Wide Web operates on WordPress so this might be the best choice for you. It is easy to use, has thousands of plugins to make your e-commerce business managing easier and there are numerous tutorials if you become lost in it.

Image credit: José Alejandro Cuffia

After you have created your WordPress website and customized your theme. You should install the WooCommerce plugin which is a robust e-commerce platform built on top of the WordPress CMS. It will allow you to easily import t-shirts that you are prepared to sell into your store and it has all the possible options that online store might need.

2. Choose your T-shirt Supplier

If you chose to go with WordPress and WooCommerce, the recommended options. Then there are various ways how you can get your t-shirts done. The most manual and hardest way would be to buy plain t-shirts in bulk and print the design on them in your home. This might be a good activity to do with your kids, however, depending on the way you are doing that it is not advisable.

Image credit: Fancycrave

The easiest way would be to use print-on-demand services. Timothy Ferriss in his book “4-Hour Workweek” recommends outsourcing as much as you can if you want a successful and easy-to-run business. It is a smart move to do while you are a stay-at-home mum. You might use Printify because this print-on-demand service supports WooCommerce so your time running the business will be reduced even more.

3. Marketing and Customer Support

Good marketing strategy and superb customer support are essential for a successful online business. Firstly, let’s talk about marketing. If you have some free time during the day, you might read an article or two and maybe even complete an online course on how to perform a successful marketing campaign. The best thing to start your marketing from is SEO, you should optimize your website for search engines. The good part is that most of the time WordPress websites are already optimized for that (it depends on a theme you use) but you should still check your SEO score with free online tools.

These days, the most popular marketing strategy is called influencer marketing. You find Facebook, Twitter or Instagram persona with a good like-follow ratio in your niche and you pay them money for the praise of your brand. If you succeed in finding the right person, it might generate a lot of sales for you. Another popular marketing strategy is social media advertising. One starts a flash sale or runs a discount promotion on his social media accounts and then sponsors the posts about it.

That’s the short introduction to popular ways to market your brand.

Image credit: rawpixel

Now let’s talk about customer support. Probably word-of-mouth marketing leads to the most conversions and for that, you need not only good quality products but also a superb support for customers. You can use live chats for that as well as wordpress contact form plugin to collect not only complaints or questions but also feedback. You should try to collect as much feedback from your customers as possible that you could improve your online store further.

Conclusion

Here is pretty much everything explains in a short manner that you need to know on how to start your own online t-shirt brand. This is a great opportunity for artistic stay at home mothers who would also like to involve their children in the fun activity of designing t-shirts.