Viral Marketing Step 1

I printed out 38 pieces of paper to make a 6.5' long banner

taped them together and now i'm waiting till tonight to go put it up at Northgate. Which if you're not from here, it is the srtip of bars and shops north of campus with a giant cork board where people put flyers.

I'm going to cover it.

New "Oh the Huge Manatee" Shirt!

Our latest and greatest tee released today! Poking fun at Nature's sea cow, this t-shirt is 19.94 but if you use the Coupon Code "woot" you can take 25% off the entire order!

Using social media for marketing

So i have been an active member of social sites including, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc... The effectiveness of using these sites for marketing my t-shirt business has been less than poor. I realized today what I think I've been doing wrong.

I've always felt bad "spamming" my friends with bulletins or comments about buying shirts. So far however, it's only been friends that have been buying my shirts. Then it hit me... Don't use these social networks to sell my products. Use these applications to make more friends or better relationships. Make posts or comments that are interesting or informative.

I don't know, I haven't actually tried it yet but it is definitely worth a shot.

Now go to www.obstructees.com and BUY A SHIRT! (jk)

Well at least I'm getting better

I was checking this old forum i was apart of a couple of years ago and noticed my old signature with my first t-shirt company linked.

www.cafepress.com/pickupt

probably be deleting this shop pretty soon

Utilizing MySpace for a T-shirt company

1.) Free (unless specialized work is done)
2.) Can add friends like crazy
3.) Can reach all of those friends with a bulletin in seconds
4.) Targets different demographics

I had my MySpace set up about two weeks ago or something and it is pretty sweet.
I have over 1100 friends already and continually grow it. I post about one bulletin every other day so i don't spam everyone's news feed thing.

It was set up by a cool cat over at worriedmandesigns for I think $250.

He also did Bustedtees and Snorgtees MySpaces to name a few.

SEO for a T-shirt Company

Awhile back I started looking into SEO firms. That was a nightmare. I read into a couple of forums and said you should start out doing your own SEO so I thought I would do that, learn as much as I could about SEO, and then when i go talk to SEO firms again I would have a better understanding of what they are talking about.

I purchased some software called IBusinnessPromoter (IBP) it was like $261 with tax and definitely worth checking out. It will tell you everything you need to know about how to get your site listed in the top 10 listings of search engines for keywords of your choice.

T-shirt storage

So i went looking at some stores a couple of days ago looking for places that sell shelves for my shirts. I went to Pier 1, linens and things, Target blah blah blah and then recieved a kick of testosterone when I went to Home Depot and decided to build one myself out of pvc pipe.

(total cost for pvc pipe and spray paint was about $75, but thats nearly 350 shirts)

http://www.obstructees.com/

Website is Ready! Grand Opening Sale now!

After one year in the making www.Obstructees.com will finally go live!

Get your site listed in Google, Yahoo, and Bing

If you want to get listed in Google go here: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

If you want to get listed in Yahoo go here: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

If you want to get listed in Bing go here: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSUT

The Logloft are liars

So i'm still waiting to here about my website being complete. I call The Logoloft everyday and everyday they say it will be ready by tomorrow. Last week i talked to Lucy Carr and she said they have one web developer and he was sick all last week so that's why they couldn't finish my site. I called again today and talked to a guy named Michael or something and he said sorry it has been taking so long the web developer assigned to my project went on vacation and just came back. One of them, or probably both of them, are lying.

The website was supposed to be finished April 6, and today is April 28.

Please heed my warning and never put yourself through this mess. Stay far away from The Logloft.

Stickers are in!

I just recieved my stickers from Sticker Robot.

The Logo Loft Sucks

They told me last Monday that my website would be ready this Monday (yesterday). I waited and recieved nothing. I talked to them today and they said they would have it done by this Friday. There goes another week.

My stickers from Stickerobot.com will be in on Thursday.

I ordered a weight and scale from Encidia today, i'll post more on this when i get it in.

Stay Organzied

Starting any online business your going to have alot of websites to sign into. Then when you start trying to market your website the list goes on. What I did a couple of weeks ago saves me a lot of time trying to find passwords to my gmail, facebook, myspace, twitter, t-shirtforums, bank accounts, gateway, photobucket, web server, go daddy, usps, logoloft, and the list goes on.

Anyways I opened up an Excel sheet with five columns titled Name, Url, User Name, Password, and Notes. I put all my info in there in alphabetical order. Under Notes I put any special instructions signing on to the webpage, mainly for my bank account which requires a clicker, or my taxes which requires more than a username and a password.

My computer saves most of my passwords for me but i stuck this thing on my thumbdrive so when i switch computers its easy to access anything I want. I suggest doing this early on so you don't get overwhelmed and have to reset passwords every a couple of weeks like i did.

Stickers from Sticker Robot

I just ordered 1000 stickers from StickerRobot.com. Fairy priced, the set up file was kind of a pain but only because i'm getting mine die cut.

For 1000 die cut stickers 6.75" by 2.5" it is going to cost 49c a sticker.

I plan on putting these on my car, friends cars, laptops, and around campus. Most importantly i'm going to put one in every order, and try to build my name up. It's pricey, but a good way to get more exposure and make customers a little happier.

Website Progress

A couple of changes from last time

Building a better t shirt business

Entering into an already saturated t shirt market is hard.  It's even harder when you look at big companies that have been doing it for years, and think there is no way i can compete with that. Always remember that they started small time too.

Check out this website I stumbled across.

It is an internet archive website where you are able to look at websites when they first opened up for business, and every month afterward.  Search for your favorite t shirt companies and see how bad they looked when they first started.  If this doesn't give you inspiration, nothing will.

My website design (unfinished)

I'm nowhere near done with it, but I wanted to show the difference in a professional looking website and a not so professional looking website (logolofts).

Website Try 1 from TheLogoLoft

This was the first revision that i received yesterday...

I'm not going to lie i was disgusted by this.  This was thrown together in probably less than thirty minutes, and took them four days to get to me.  The red behind obstructees contradicts with logo, the newsletter and shopping cart are the most prominent things on the page, the banner is smooshed up in the right corner, the shopping cart links are obviously taken from a template, the "this week... only 15.95" is a trainwreck, it looks like the shirt below it is for sale.  There's about five different fonts being used... The list goes on but i figured thats all i was going to change for now.

I wrote them everything i wanted different, but as soon as i got done i opened up Photoshop and started making it myself.   

Oh they also sent me a business card design that looked like the top of the website... i'll end up redoing that too.  So if you're reading this blog looking to start your own website, i DO NOT recommend TheLogoLoft.

Final Logo

Finally got the logo done. I recieved the last design today and opened it up in Illustrator as soon as I got. Changed the colors around and tweaked some gradients. Overall i'm happy with it. When i first saw it after my changes and thought it looked like a mix between the GameStop and GuitarHero logo. Oh well it will work.

Building the website starts tommorow!

Logo Revision #3

Well a new logo in just one day. It's close but not perfect yet. I asked them to take the shine/shimmer off the symbol and grunge it up. Then take off the black fill inside the symbol and just make it clear. I also liked the sheep on the right and asked them to put a white stroke around it. So this should be the last revision and I can't wait to see what the final revision will look like.

New Logo

So i got my new logo in today and they have been working on the wrong symbol...

I like the text and colors but i wanted a different symbol instead of the shirt and the O. Oh well thats fine, i have unlimited revisions. Another 3-5 business days until i have another revision.

....AH SO CLOSE.

Off subject, but i started posting pictures of me and my friends in my shirts on facebook. It's creating quite a buzz and getting people curious about what i'm doing.

SHIRTS!!!

Well I just got back from College Station and picked up my T shirts from CC Creations!


They look absolutely incredible, and I couldn't be any happier with the quality of the shirts and the printing. I spent the majority of the weekend taking pictures of my friends and I in the shirts, and imported them all into Adobe Lightroom. If you don't know about Lightroom, it's an awesome program that is used to catalog pictures. Not to mention you can edit RAW images.

A little tip when taking pictures of people. Take LOTS of pictures. I took 600 pictures of only three shirts. From those 600 i'm using 15.

IRS

This is something i forgot from the last post.  While i was setting up the my checking account at CitiBank, the lady asked me for a EIN number.  I had never heard of it and she told me that if you have employees or are doing a partnership to file for one.  It was easy and gives the EIN number instantly.  Here's a link to acquiring one.  This is also a good checklist provided by the IRS to see what all you have and what you need to start a business. 

PayPal vs. Merchant Account

Yesterday i went to CitiBank to set up a business checking account. If you're like me, you had no idea there was a difference between a regular checking account and a business checking account. I got set up with a flexible checking account that allows 200 transactions a month for 15 dollars a month. Luckily I knew the lady's son from high school and she waved the 15 dollars a month for a year. It's all about who you know.

Before i could get this set up however i had to go get a DBA (doing business as) at the county clerks office. This took like five minutes to do and cost only 15 dollars. The only problem i had was finding a notary who worked there because most of them were out to lunch. Ah i am now legal to start selling shirts.

NOW brings me to PayPal vs. a Merchant Account. I've always heard that unless your selling alot of items, like a whole lot, to use paypal. This is because a merchant account will reduce its rates the more you sell. PayPal takes 2.9% from every transaction plus 30 cents on top of that. Pretty busted if you asked me. So while i was at Citibank I asked the lady about the rates they charge for a Merchant Account. Since I had been with Citibank for awhile they gave me the deal of 2.4% and 19 cents per transaction. I don't know what the rates would of been had i not been a customer there for so long. The only catch was, there is a 199 dollar gateway fee and i think it was a 99 dollar set up fee. These were all one time fees, and the gateway fee could be used for any website i set up from now on.

I obviously chose to use a merchant account instead of the PayPal account. Primarily because I'm in it for the long haul and this will save me a lot more money over time. If you're setting up your own website however check with your bank to see what kind of deals you can get, before you decide on getting a merchant account. And always always always ask them to waive fees. There are a million banks opening up everyday and they are trying hard to keep your business. It's like paying sticker price for a car... DONT DO IT. Hope this helps anyone trying to decide. As always feel free to leave questions or comments.

LOGOS!!!!

I got my first set of logos in... Here they are

Not to bad, but not exactly what i was looking for. Luckily TheLogoLoft offers unlimited revisions. So i told them i liked logo six, but the color scheme from logo number 2. Not only that but i wanted to add a symbol i made a while back of a black sheep.

We'll see how it comes out and i'll post the results as soon as i get them.

Oh yah all the t-shirts are printed and are ready to pick up. I wont be able to pick them up until wednesday of next week though. Everything is finally coming together.

Progress

This past week has been slow.  I've designed a couple of shirts, but i'm waiting on the website to be made and the t-shirts to be printed.  

The next step is to start figuring out how to keep books and do taxes, all the boring stuff i'd rather outsource to someone.  Don't worry though, i'll let you guys know everything i learn about it and what i end up doing.

Website / T Shirt Shopping Cart

Well it's been awhile since my last post, but I've got big news for the T-shirt company.  We just had our first 12 t shirts printed at a local screen printer.  And yesterday we called a company TheLogoLoft.com to start setting up the website.  

This will probably raise alot of questions so i'll go ahead and start knocking them out.

1.) How much did the t-shirt cost to print?

-Well the minimum order for each shirt was 24, and the price of each shirt cost between 8-10 dollars.  So yah big investment here.

2.) How much did the website cost?

-TheLogoLoft offers an Ecommerce package for $1500. This includes a professional logo, business card and stationery design, a five page website layout, and an awesome shopping cart called Magento. 

This leads me to what this blog is really about.  What shopping cart to you use.  I've read about a  hundred forum entries over at T-shirtforums.com about shopping carts, and people recommend different shopping carts.  As far as i've read Magento offers everything they want and then some.  It may sound like I work for Magento, but I don't.  Magento is an open source program so it's free.  

If you want to check it out more google it or check out this bit on TheLogoLoft website.

Alright more on this later when i get more familiar with it.

Progress

Well it's been awhile since i've posted last, but thats good news since i've been so busy designing shirts and talking to a local screen printer.  I've spent the last two weeks designing shirts in Adobe Illustrator and converting old shirt designs into vector, since that's what the screen printer requires.  

We've also managed to find some very pretty girls to model our shirts, so in the next two weeks we'll be printing some shirts out for them and schedule a photo shoot.  These pictures we'll be used for advertisements and front page pictures.

Next weekend I'm going to travel to San Antonio to talk to a web designer/graphic designer to start designing the website.  Not only will he be making the website but he's been an animator for ten years and is going to help with designing shirts.  Which will take some pressure off of me and will allow me to allocate more time to other aspects of getting the site up and running.

Whats the best software to design t shirts?

I'm currently a student at Texas A&M so i have access to Adobe Photoshop CS3 as well as Adobe Illustrator CS3.  These are my tools of the trade, and honestly you cant go wrong with them.  They are pretty pricey but don't forget if your a student... get the student discount.  If you can't even afford it well that's ok too.  Go to Adobe's website and download the 30 day trials.  

Another program i've heard nothing but good things about is CorelDraw.  I can't speak much on it since i've never used it, but its supposedly one of the best pieces of software for designing shirts.  Hopefully we can get some comments from people who do use it.  

Any program you choose, you want it to produce vector images.  In this case CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator.  If you don't know, vector images allow you to resize images or text to any size without losing resolution.  

RECAP

1 Find a way a to a good program and learn it, there are thousands of tutorials online 

What's better heat press or silk screening

Using a Heat Press and using a Silk Screen are the two main ways to get a design on a shirt.  

If you are thoroughly interested in it, i'm going to give a link to a forum thats beaten this subject to death. Just go here and try to wrap your mind around all of this
HERE

At Obstructees were doing screen printing. For one simple reason... Its what professionals do. The bottom line is that you get a better t shirt and it lasts longer.

Screen Printing Pros
1 better quality
2 lasts longer
3 looks better

4 cheaper when buying in bulk

Heat Press Pros
1 You only make as many shirts as you need
2 You can print more than just a couple of colors
3 Its something you can do out of the basement of your house

4 With increased technology using a heat press is not as looked down upon as it used to be

RECAP
1 Pick heat press or screen printing depending on the types of shirts you plan on making
2 Having your shirts screen printed doesnt mean you have to buy a screen printing machine,
we're set up to have our shirts printed locally and just pick up an order every week

Week 1

Well I guess this is where I explain where i'm at in my current business

http://www.obstructees.com/ (not currently active)

First things first, I'm currently enrolled full time at Texas A&M. I'm a senior about to get my bachelors in Visual Science. In other words, i have almost no time to get the obstructees site up and running. What i have been doing in the meantime, besides reading almost every post at http://www.t-shirtforums.com/, is designing t-shirts because lets get real if you dont have good t shirts... your not going to make any money. Well i guess thats not true if your doing an affiliate program, but thats another day... maybe even another blog.

This next semester i will be opening up Obstructees.com for everyone's viewing pleasure.  

RECAP
1 Join T-Shirtforum.com!

2 If your interested in starting an online t shirt company... SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

Getting Started - How to launch a T-shirt website

So this blog will serve as an outlet for me, Matt Nolan the creator of Obstructees, and hopefully one day as a guide to any T-shirt entrepreneur.

 The goal of the blog  is to write about where i'm at in my business and where i plan to go. I encourage anyone and everyone who has walked down this path before to comment with tips and tricks that you've learned about opening up a t shirt company. I'll be writing hopefully at least one post a week, and dispersing any knowledge that i know.

I'm starting and building from the ground up.  So while this blog may not be the most glamorous, it will definitely be one of the most informative.