Welcome! I'm Erica Douglass. I am committed to teaching you how to build an inspired, successful business. I would love to hear your opinions and help you grow your business. If you are motivated to change the world and want to learn from my successes (and failures!), please subscribe and join my community!
Why T-shirts?
So some of you have just read my previous blog entry and are wondering to yourselves, “Why in the world would Erica want to get into the T-shirt printing business?” There are several reasons, detailed below:
1) My biggest concern about my personal finances right now is making sure I don’t have all my eggs in one basket. To that end, I put aside some money this year to invest. (I also have an IRA that is slowly gaining funds, but for obvious reasons, cannot rely on that in a pinch.) In case Simpli goes under at some point (which is about 0.000001% likely, but still possible in some really far-out scenarios), I want to have some money stockpiled somewhere else (preferably in another business or two) so I can survive. I invested in a friend’s business earlier this year, and the T-shirt business is my second investment of 2005.
2) As far as investments are concerned, I can’t argue with $3000 for 50% of a business in which many companies legitimately make several million dollars a year. Okay, so I don’t expect our T-shirt business to be a multi-billion dollar business, but I figure if I can make enough to pay my rent ($1550/month), I’ll be doing pretty well.
3) I don’t want to take too much of a salary from Simpli at this point. Every dollar I don’t take for personal needs is a dollar that can be reinvested in Simpli to make it even more profitable. Plus, Simpli benefits from getting spiffy T-shirts at cost. (Guess what we’ll be giving away as freebies to new customers? Anyone care to guess?) 
4) Regarding FK’s comment “saturated/unprofitable” regarding the T-shirt industry (I swear I’m not picking on you, FK, as others have the same question on their mind.) I have two points to make about this: 1) That’s what everyone says about web hosting, too, and Simpli has been a great success there; and 2) we will have a steady customer base of frats and sororities if nothing else. I also plan to target non-profits, as well as print up some T-shirts of my own that I’ve already sketched out. Once we hire labor to do the work instead of doing it ourselves, it will become quite a profitable business. Most companies’ margins are well over 50%. Right now, we’re doing it ourselves to learn it. Soon, we’ll hire someone else to do it for $8-$10 an hour. Then it’ll be a much easier task.
It’s worth noting that the T-shirt business is certainly not an expansion or add-on to Simpli. It’s a wholly separate business, and will have a different corporation name (Twisted Tees is the working name until we file paperwork), different bank accounts, etc. I’ve talked previously about splitting Simpli into two divisions and will add separate blog entries for those two companies once I’m ready to post them on here. 
Twisted Tees is, right now, a weekend/side project for some extra money that could turn into some fairly nice recurring income. We shall see!
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8 Responses to “Why T-shirts?”
I didn’t mean to insult or anything, just wanted an explanation… so… umm… thanks?
No insult taken; I felt it was worth explaining.
You’re welcome!
Welcome to my world, Erica! I’ve never pulled a squeegie myself, but I’ve done design work for t-shirt printers and signmakers for over 25 years. I even got my start painting airbrush t-shirts, and still do that kind of work on occasion. It’s a lot of fun seeing it all go together and come out looking professional.
And who knew? I’m one of your resellers, BTW (northgeorgia.net).
Congrats, Erica! Many years ago (8+?) I hung out with a guy who went into the t-shirt biz, doing dragons n’ stuff. I saw one of his designs last year at RenFest, so I know he’s still going it!
One would think that the market is saturated, but if you find a nitch that appeals to enough people, I wouldn’t doubt you could make a good go of it.
What’s the minimum run for making a shirt? I’m guessing Twisted Tees wouldn’t do individual shirts, only series (10, 20, or more?)
I’m in the San Jose area, and I saw your saga of the launch of Twisted Tees.
I’ve been looking to have some individual shirts made, though my best shot is probably to do it with computer transfers.
Any thoughts?
Hi Satchel,
Yes, the minimum run is probably going to be 10 or so… the reason being that you have to make a screen for each color, which takes an hour or so to cure properly.
Iron-on transfers are definitely an option for small batches. You can find trasnfer paper pretty much anywhere on the Net.
Best of luck! BTW, how did you find my blog?
Thanks to everyone else who commented…welcome, Jamie.
Lol your such a Silk-screen noob. Iron-on transfers are crap. I dont know what emulsion process takes an hour to cure but its not the right way. Find a local print shop with the professional emulsion unit; they shouldnt charge more than $20 for the film and emulsion a color and if you`re real cool they`ll do it for free. You can probably get away with whatever shitty process your using now with low detail
designs. 10 shirt minimum pppfff..I used to get kicked back light weight in the day..the print shops minimum was 300 i think; my minimum was 50 since it was sometimes peewee leagues, peewee leagues gets jipped alot on jerseys; so if they know you`re fair they come back with the other coaches.
Now I dont do orders. If you got good designs
they`ll sell themselves and you make more money even wholesaling; than printing. Dont get discouraged its not a get rich quick scheme, alot of retailers wont acccept you until your shit hits the fan. and if your ink falls off prematurely prepare to have to get plastic surgery and change your name. Make sure that inks fresh and it gets cured properly. Its alot of hard work with a big pay-off
keyword ther HARDWORK not some pick up overnight and immediatley pass off to daylabor you got to be a master craftsman. Theres alot of stuff to learn like tricks of the trade; that you`ll never pick up unless you`re in the club.
Like theres this shit called bean-e-doo for cleaning ink off shit and you can take out accidental inkspots on shirts while the inks wet, by squirting it through the shirt onto a balled up piece of junk fabric; dont do the dry and shoot with acetone thats for fags. same idea though.
Here`s a good tip also. printers usually help each other out
because of mutual benefit through outsourcing; like if the big shop needed a bunch of small fry work done or wanted to help some small order they didnt have time for they would kick you down the work; and do a 10% mark up on your price to pocket. Then if you ran into a huge order you couldnt fill you could outsource it to them and scrape 10% eventually you`ll be telling people you can get golf balls,when you just order them out of a catalogue and mark up the price. everybody does it. Some businesses do absolutely nothing but take orders and outsource; to catalogues and stoned kids in there garage, and paint a professional face on it; which entitles them to 10%+ these
guys are sharks so they do everybody dirty; but outsourcing
isn`t inherently evil when done fairly. 10% is fair 500% mark up is highway robbery.