What is Digg?64 Comments
- LucidParody, on 12/14/2007, -1/+24this author simply copied—verbatim—the threadless submission kit....
http://www.threadless.com/submit - junosama, on 12/14/2007, -1/+13Because its a nice option for people who don't have the time or money to start their own business and its just another option besides selling designs on sites like cafepress. It teaches you how to actually design for a large audience and come up with a design that is actually marketable.
- loopis, on 12/14/2007, -1/+12General guidelines from someone who recently did this;
1. Get creative and develop 10-20 good unique design ideas.
2. Create a cafepress store and upload ideas. They have a built in marketplace to help with traffic.
3. Create blogs, do marketing, google ads to try to get sales moving.
4. Continue shirt designs and keep adding to the selection. Be aware of what style is selling and not selling.
5. Create a base of designs 40-100 deep.
6. Establish stable month sales.
7. *Decision Point* Is the store doing well enough to copy the same model and start producing yourself at home?
7.1 No - Continue to work your designs and SEO.
7.2 Yes- Buy and inexpensive heat press, inkjet printer, and transfer paper from profits of Cafepress store.
7.2.1 - Set up your own paypal or yahoo store.
7.2.1 - Repeat steps 1-6
8 *Decision Point* - Sales good enough to upgrade to a direct to garment printer so you can do more than just white and light colored shirts?
8.1 No - Hold steady.
8.2 Yes - Use profits from Cafepress store and heat press store to by a direct to garment printer that does white ink.
8.3 Repeat steps 1-6
8.3.1 - Continue to add color options, styles, niches.
9. I'm not sure what the next steps actually (this is where I'm at now) but you are in a good money making position at this point because you have a high quality machine that can handle several different kinds of printing, wholesale type orders, and on demand printing that will you to easily try new designs and ideas with low overhead and risk. - D3koy, on 12/14/2007, -1/+11? = sell
- Jonjonjonny, on 12/14/2007, -3/+12Why post your design to a company who'll refuse to print your shirt when you can do it yourself and put whatever you want on it?
- dawood82, on 12/14/2007, -1/+7How can you print a flash animation on a t-shirt?
"Incorrect Frame rate on Flash Submission
The SWF of your piece must be published at a 30 Frame per Second rate if you are using Flash. Make sure your SWF is at the right frame rate by going to Windows, then Properties." - skabyss, on 12/14/2007, -1/+6I wouldn't buy your iron-on *****, even if it could cure ass cancer.
- loopis, on 12/14/2007, -1/+6Started here;
cafepress store - http://www.cafepress.com/totrocket/
Home Store is now here;
Home Store -http://www.pollytod.com
Also sold through here;
http://www.urbanbabyrunway.com
I didn't want to seem like a big ad for my stores just wanted to pass along some general info that may be helpful. But here you go. - inactive, on 12/14/2007, -3/+7i got one of these done... it's a picture of W and the caption reads "The Decider"
- lumbrical, on 12/14/2007, -0/+4I have a small t-shirt company. We make all of our shirts by hand. Relatively simple to start out, with very minimal overhead expense. Quality is much better than Iron on, but takes a bit longer. The basic idea is to create a stencil that you can then use to print onto a shirt.
Materials:
Frame (The Stencil)
Wood
Silk screen Material (can be purchased at most art stores)
Diazo Emulsion (can be purchased at most art stores)
Rope/Twine
Fabric Ink (can be purchased at most art stores)
Squeegee
T-shirt
Tools
Iron
Circular Saw and guide or Table Saw
Step 1. Using the circular saw or table saw, make a square frame out of the wood slightly larger than your design. Use the saw to put a groove on one side of the frame (going all the way around the frame).
Step 2. Cut a piece of silk to fit into your frame. Stretch the silk over the frame by using a screwdriver or similar too to compress the twine/or rope into the groove over the silk.
Step 3. Follow directions on Diazo Emulsion and "coat" your screen. Allow the emulsion to set in a dark room
Step 4. Print your design onto transparency paper (available at an office supply store or kinkos)
Step 5. "Develop" your screen stencil by following the directions on the diazo emulsion. i.e. putting your transparency onto your screen and then placing the screen in the sun for a few hours
Step 6. Wash your screen. (The parts of your screen exposed to the UV light should be set, while the parts of your screen covered by your transparency image will wash away with water.
Step 7. After your screen dries, Place it on a shirt. Put some ink on the screen and use the squeegee to push an even amount of ink through your screen.
Step 8. Depending on the type of ink used, you can used an iron to "set" your design onto your shirt using either a piece of paper or a scrap shirt between your iron and design.
I know this is kind of a quick and dirty explanation, but feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions. Also, if you need some shirts printed, I have the capability to print small orders for relatively low cost (one color only though) and I prefer to use American Apparel shirts.
micah@dickeyshirts.com
http://www.dickeyshirts.com - brjndr, on 12/14/2007, -0/+4They have special technology to print the animation to the shirt, but it only display at 1fpm (m=millennium)
- FedexPope, on 12/14/2007, -1/+4the only problem i have with threadless is they print on the most uncomfortable tshirts known to mankind
- WhatsUpWithJack, on 12/14/2007, -2/+5I like www.spreadshirt.com for my t-shirt customization needs.. they actually print *most* anything you submit. I work with mostly text.
- h3lx, on 12/14/2007, -0/+3How to design Ts that sell 101.
Step one. Got to work for a screen printer and learn the business.
Step two. Give a neat booklet of your designs to an outside sales rep with a ***** of buyer contacts.
Step three. Listen to the sales rep and the buyers and follow their instructions to the letter. If you're doing it right, you're too busy to go on site and investigate all the trends that were set 6-8 months ago when it went to production in Guatemala, China, and Phukyu, Thailand.
Step four. Continue to work your ass off because the business is fairly paced. - dezmo, on 12/14/2007, -0/+3OMG AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!!!!
- Cmain, on 12/14/2007, -0/+2Send out some free samples to popular t-shirt blogs and they will (hopefully) make a nice post about you. http://www.addicteed.com is a pretty popular one.
- ehalasey, on 12/14/2007, -1/+3If someone is actually concerned about whether their design is marketable, they've already put more time into creating their design than it would take to screen the shirts. Meanwhile, the supplies aren't all that expensive, especially given that you can easily make/ get at the thrift store half of what you need, and the other half can usually be found in places like the craigslist free section.
- inactive, on 12/14/2007, -0/+2How is his shameless plugging any different than submitting a digg article plugging other sites?
- OwdenBowden, on 12/14/2007, -0/+2I am in the business and I can tell you - It costs MONEY to print up shirts that you don't even know will sell. I supplement my income but sometimes I think it would be a lot easer to CafePress (those censorship bastards) it than spend the bucks.
- smotheredinhugs, on 12/14/2007, -0/+2http://www.bountee.com plus http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/ ftw (and some cash).
- junosama, on 12/14/2007, -2/+4Yeah thats a little unexplained sorry thats for submitting your shirt some sites allow you to do a flash presentation to showcase your shirt design for voting.
- brjndr, on 12/14/2007, -1/+3So what's your site?
- danqueca, on 12/14/2007, -0/+2Threadless FTW... i have like 8 shirts from them, all awesome....
- r3bol, on 12/14/2007, -0/+2She sounds like a lot of fun ;)
- MikeMitchell, on 12/14/2007, -0/+2Its true, I'm starting a t-shirt company soon!
http://www.sirmitchell.com - dvandewalle, on 12/14/2007, -1/+3what like "your the best i've ever had?"
- pault107, on 01/05/2008, -0/+1I'm wearing one right now, it's the most comfortable tshirt I own.
- theOster, on 12/14/2007, -0/+1i was thinking of the mo-town song "the great pretender"
- skabyss, on 12/14/2007, -1/+2I promise you, she doesn't, and overall, the shirts would completely blow.
- ManufactrsDfect, on 12/16/2007, -0/+1what?
- taketheleap, on 12/14/2007, -3/+4buried for plagarism.
- KingGorilla, on 12/15/2007, -0/+1threadless will pay you for it?
- svirsk, on 12/17/2007, -0/+1And if you have your shirt shop running it might help to plug it at one of the 65! shirt blogs http://hideyourarms.com/2007/11/12/lists-65-t-shir ... (including mine http://www.shirtlog.com )
- inactive, on 12/14/2007, -1/+2Much like her.
- Colonel45, on 12/14/2007, -0/+1What steps did you take to create the designs for your slogans? I have a tons of one-liner slogans that need images to go with them.
- inactive, on 12/14/2007, -1/+2Wow...when does the hilarty ensue...err...stop?
- loopis, on 12/14/2007, -0/+1istockphoto.com is a good place to start. You can also find free fonts online that have that have themed images. These are especially good because the can be resized as large as you need. You need photoshop and some creative motivation.
- Colonel45, on 12/14/2007, -0/+1Do you make your own drawings? I'm looking to get some images created for some of my t-shirt slogans, I'd pay for any work done of course.
- starkraving, on 12/15/2007, -0/+1The problem with the carasel type press is that it's actually very time-consuming. I actually worked as an inhouse designer for a T-shirt printing company and they could only handle runs of about 350 a day. So if you really hit it then you might be in for more work than it's worth. The next step up are the machine presses, but their quality drops because they have to thin out the ink considerably so that the shirts can go through the dryers faster.
- inactive, on 12/14/2007, -1/+2No gradients? Web 2.0 "designers" are screwed!
- RecoDesign, on 12/14/2007, -0/+0With all the tshirt companies out there, how do you compete. do you advertise or do you just rely on search engines. i want to start selling tshirts but the market seems so saturated.
- edrift101, on 12/14/2007, -1/+1Actually she does, here's an example, "Let's go play in the super fluffy bunny dream land." It was snowing...
- skabyss, on 12/14/2007, -1/+1You have some alright stuff there. Next time, just save the shameless plugging for the bedroom.
- ntgcleaner, on 04/08/2008, -0/+0Alright ladies and Gentlemen. Here is the best kept secret (at least in California)
If you want to learn how to Screen Print and you have NO experience. We all know, this will not get you a job. A job where you can learn how to do all of this. If you are really interested in learning how to Screen Print, Talk to your local SCHOOL! I am a teacher in the high desert in California. I run an R.O.P. (Regional Occupancy Programs) class in one of the high schools here that teaches screen printing and machine embroidery. Guess what? It’s FREE.
If you head to www.rop.cc (that is the California ROP website) you may see different ROP courses throughout each county that may teach screen printing. If you do not live in California... Well, I’m sorry, I don't know if there are courses like this one where you live, but check with your local school anyways. Just go into the main office and ask if there is a screen printing class being taught there and ask if you would be able to speak to the teacher.
This is my best advice for people wanting to start out and actually learn to screen print. I have been doing four-color process (CMYK) Screen printing for a while now, and i teach starting with the basics of one color, then we work our way up to the big times. I tell my students, “If you get a press and your designs look good, you can easily make $2000+ in a weekend if you know where to sell. You don't need to be a great marketing agent to sell your things out of a booth at a local venue.”
Head to http://www.412customs.com/2.html to see a couple examples of my work (This is an incomplete website, please do not be critical of the lack of content)
please remember, if your designs don't look good and do not appeal to the audience, you will fail. - doubleagame, on 12/14/2007, -0/+0does anyone else have any cool cafepress stores? Any cafepress horror stories or negative points?
- loopis, on 12/14/2007, -0/+0Cmain is has a good idea. I pay a ton in google adwords because my site is new, but starting a blog and getting on t-shirt review site is a good way to build links. Search engine optimiazation is huge part of getting traffic. Finding a niche is good too.
- DifferentTrends, on 02/27/2009, -0/+0Just spreading the word that you don't have to learn screen printing and buy expensive equipment to start your own clothing line. I have all the equipment. Just sit back and design what you want, stay in the creative mode and let me doing the printing. http://www.differenttrends.com
- smurf22, on 12/14/2007, -1/+1I do this already, you can look at my default pic to see a shirt I made.
- murrydan, on 03/29/2008, -0/+0step 1. go to https://www.designandprinttshirts.com/
step 2. design your own t-shirt online
step 3. pay for your shirt
step 4. do something else for 3 or 4 days
step 5. wear your sweet new shirt -
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