Hello dear readers. This article will be devoted to one of the proven and profitable ideas for small businesses, namely, applying images to t-shirts (printing). Of course, I'm not going to claim originality, after all, this trend has been developing in our market for more than five years. I can only say that there are development prospects, including in terms of profit growth.

T-shirt printing - how it became popular

Perhaps those who are older will remember how back in the early 90s, the youth of that time used “foreign” fashion drawings that were applied to a T-shirt with an iron. Some even got involved in commercial activities for the first time, selling them in schools. The quality of the “print” at that time left much to be desired, and the very first wash destroyed all the results of labor. Of course, even this fact could not stop people who wanted to show their individuality, and the demand for products only grew.

Now, technical progress has radically changed the situation, and images of dubious quality have been replaced by high-quality thermal film with various effects, special ink, the iron has been replaced by a high-pressure press, and many other “bells and whistles” have been introduced, which will be mentioned throughout the article. Advertising also had a positive effect on the increase in the number of customers. Not only individuals, but also corporate clients began to order T-shirt printing, and the business is no longer limited to T-shirts alone: ​​the image can now be applied to hats, dishes, ceramic, glass and metal surfaces, which has made printing an integral part of the gift industry.

T-shirt printing as a business

Suppose that I managed to convince you, and you no longer doubt the relevance of the proposed idea. Now is the time to look at the process of making and selling T-shirt printing.

First of all, you will need to get a computer and install a functional graphics editor on it. I would advise first of all to pay attention to CorelDraw and Adobe Photoshop. Then (it all depends on the transfer technology you intend to use) you need to purchase the right equipment: a direct-to-fabric printer - the best option would be an inkjet with the ability to refill cartridges, a cutting plotter and a heat press. A small print station could well be operated by one person with imaging skills. Professional skills, except perhaps for the learned simple safety rules, will not be needed. To verify this, we will analyze the two most common ways of applying drawings.

Thermal application

The film of the desired color is cut using a plotter, the remnants are removed by hand. Then multi-colored images are assembled as an appliqué. The prepared pattern is glued to the product under the pressure of a heat press. That's it, the T-shirt with the “print” is ready. The main advantage of this method is the possibility of using materials of absolutely any color. The disadvantages are the time-consuming process of assembling and cleaning images. It is recommended to use iron-on when printing simple pictures.

Sublimation

First, the pattern is printed with sublimation ink on special paper, after which it is pressed against the product under the influence of high temperatures. As a result, the dye passes into the fabric. You can no longer feel such a picture with your hand, since the fibers are directly stained. The resulting pattern is much less prone to wear, the T-shirt can be twisted in the washing machine without any fear that cracks will appear on the image or it will suddenly fade. On the other hand, sublimation technology imposes restrictions on the material used - the product must be made of polyester.

The whole process in both cases will take no more than half an hour, even if you select a drawing for a long time and fiddle with the settings of the graphic editor. And for the “trained hand” workers, printing will take much less time. As soon as everything is ready, you can immediately transfer the finished product to the client and receive your money. Not surprisingly, this and a number of other features have made T-shirt printing a popular business.

T-shirt printing - why is it profitable

Firstly, to organize a workplace, you will need only 20-30 square meters (and this is still with a margin). That is, there will still be a lot of free space to place mannequins on it, on which ready-made samples will be hung, and other additional “devices”.

Secondly, printing images on T-shirts, in terms of the process, is very simple. Even an inexperienced worker will be able to master all the subtleties of this art in just a couple of days.

The third thing to mention is the high margin. If we add up the cost of the drawing itself (the average prices will be given below) - about $ 2, the wholesale price of one T-shirt - $ 2-3, it turns out that the production costs are two, or even more, times less than the profit from the sale. Clients are willing to pay for a good "print" from 10 to 15 dollars. As you can see, even the lowest margin allows you to provide 100-150% profit.

And the fourth point, the last one on the list, but not the last in importance, is business diversification. All the basic components that you use when applying designs to T-shirts: a computer, a plotter, your own knowledge in the field of graphic design, all this opens up a lot of additional possibilities for you. You can print cups, print banners and billboards. In general, there are plenty of options.

Business cons

There is a fly in the ointment in every barrel of honey - there is no escape from this. This type of income, like all others, has its drawbacks. I will list three of them, so to speak, in contrast to the above advantages.

The most obvious thing that can scare off aspiring entrepreneurs is the need for a considerable initial investment. A thermal press alone with a printer will cost you $1,000, and you shouldn’t forget about consumables, rent for the premises (you can, of course, install the equipment at home, and create and promote your own online store instead of a point of sale, but then there will be difficulties with its promotion, and the income will be several times less) and other mandatory components of the T-shirt business.

The second point is quite serious competition. Now everyone who is not too lazy to use this simple and profitable idea. It is enough to go to any copier / printout and with a probability of 95% you will see an advertisement for this service there. In general, if you are not able to organize a competent advertising campaign to attract customers, then the idea will not work out.

The third disadvantage is that high profitability is negated by small sales. Some people are simply not interested in images on T-shirts, some decided to order from competitors, and so on. If you serve two or three people a week, you will make a ridiculous profit.

Conclusion

T-shirt printing is a great start-up opportunity for entrepreneurs on a tight budget. To organize such a business, you will need an average of 2-4 thousand dollars (it is a lot or a little, everyone decides for himself). In any case, due to the high profitability, the initial investment will pay off very quickly - in just a couple of months. Of course, for this you will need to try: to find a good place for a point of sale, to include additional services in the price list.

Reviews

I offer an option to make money on t-shirts, which will be even cheaper than described in the article: create an online store website with all the necessary stray things - accepting online payments and other things, fill it with content (in our case, these will be print samples on mugs, t-shirts, posters, etc. further), promote the site and start accepting orders from users. Then you go to the nearest copy center, where there is a printing service, and print out the orders. Send finished products to customers. Then, if things go uphill, buy additional equipment and print yourself.
Of course, prices need to be raised by 20 percent in order not to remain at a loss.

The payback period for this business is a little confusing: About 3,000 bucks must be invested (and this is not counting the rent of staff and hiring an employee), at a time when the net profit from a T-shirt will not exceed $ 4-5 (let's be realistic, for 15 bucks no one will no matter how unique it is! And it’s unlikely that more than 10 T-shirts will be ordered a day, even in the most “passing place” (again, let’s face it). doesn't come right away!

Another disadvantage of this business is seasonality, in winter a couple of months and summer vacations ...

Seasonality is just not as strong here as, for example, in the ice cream trade. In addition, there is a link to dates and occasions (birthdays, etc.) that occur throughout the year, gifts are often bought “for future use”, sometimes vice versa, the deadline for ordering a print is “burning” - there are many nuances that need to be calculated very difficult!

The disadvantages of this technology are the unjustified high cost of equipment, a high percentage of defects, the inability to work with all sizes of T-shirts, the high cost of printing

I think that this idea is long gone, suitable only for fans, if sold at concerts, well, of course, suitable for football fans. Any other sports competitions, but on a massive scale this is no longer very popular.

And I want to support this idea, but with some reservations. We must focus on the rhinestones! Aunts love it when everything sparkles and shines. They are willing to pay money for it.
The main thing is to promote these T-shirts as an exclusive. Make articles with pictures of show business stars wearing T-shirts with rhinestones and sparkles. By the way, you can print not only on T-shirts, but on pajamas, baseball caps, handbags, bandanas, etc.
The main thing is to be bright and original.

Polina,
Well, what glitters is sold ready-made from China and especially from Turkey. We must try to shine very beautiful and original. And very noticeable, but with taste, that is, it is necessary to compete with the Chinese and Turks in originality.

Tatyana, so the joke is in uniqueness and exclusivity. Imagine if you create a service "photo of your dog in rhinestones." This is chic! Few glamorous aunt can resist such a temptation.
True, the clientele will be specific, it is known who loves everything shiny and flashy. But these are details, the main thing is that the goods are sold.

Yes, this niche has been occupied for a long time, I think everywhere. There are several people in my city who do this. One shop for printing on t-shirt mugs was opened. others print and sell products on the market under the banner of the most unusual and cool T-shirts

In my city there are also several salons with such services. The first is a T-shirt store with cool inscriptions and, accordingly, they make custom-made T-shirts and also make such inscriptions in the Fujifilm salon, as well as on cups and other surfaces.

Well, you know, again, such a business should not exist by itself, here we should already be talking not only about printing on T-shirts, but on printing in general, maybe on mugs and other accessories. But it’s just that printing on T-shirts is too narrow, I print myself on T-shirts at home using thermal transfer paper.

Starover, after all, t-shirts are the most popular product, and the technique of drawing a picture is different from applying, say, mugs. I think that this circumstance forces entrepreneurs to deliberately “narrow” their business: it is better to do what happens quickly and always has a demand!

Maybe the competition is big, but I personally have seen few T-shirts with really cool and original inscriptions, so everything is in your hands, if you have good taste and imagination there is no limit, then you can print something on them that people will like, then I think they will tear off their hands, people like to stand out and be original, they are ready to pay a lot for it.

Well, this is certainly good, but someone should also do it :) Do you mean that you would buy ready-made ones? Or would you order with your invented inscriptions? If the latter, then there is more or less sense in this, but if the former, then this would simply be mediation.

Yes, this is undoubtedly a good business idea, but is it worth it? How many buyers do you think can be found in this area? In my opinion, very little. If there are, they will not order in large quantities and by itself this business does not justify itself.

I have already published several tutorials on making money selling t-shirts from foreign authors ( ), but this time I will talk about my experience.

Finishing the New Year's Olivier, I started testing a service selling T-shirts with various prints.

Its working principle is very simple:

1. Create a T-shirt design
2. You get a special link for this product.
3. If the goods were bought through your link, you get 25% of the cost of the goods
4. If the product was not bought through your link, you will receive 5% of the value of the product

The first stage of creating a print

You should start by working out the niche in which you will work.

It’s possible to simply create a beautiful design on any topic, of course, but there will be problems with selling it.

The design of the print should be related to a specific theme.

For example, I am interested in cryptocurrencies. This topic is close to me, I know what is in trend now. I can create a print that will be of interest to this audience.

I know where this audience lives, so I know where you can sell your designs.

But if you create a beautiful abstract design, then I don’t even know where you need to advertise to sell it.

As you may have guessed, there are countless themes for creating designs.

For example, work (police, firefighters, doctors, etc.), hobbies (fishing, hunting, coins, stamps), sports, etc.

It seems to me that most often ladies buy T-shirts with prints for their gentlemen as a gift by a certain date (February 14, February 23, DR). Although I could be wrong, the guys unsubscribe in the comments if you bought yourself t-shirts with prints.

Therefore, I would create designs specifically for the male audience.

When you learn how to create and sell your products, then you can consider the niche of hype news.

The speed of creating and distributing advertisements for your products is important here, and this requires some experience.

Image search and preparation

Do you already have a grand idea and are you eager to fight? Ok, let's move on to the design process.

To do this, we need Photoshop or its equivalent and a little imagination.

For design, large and high-quality images of 3500 px in size are used on the smaller side.

Therefore, if you do not know how to draw, you can create a design from other people's drawings.

It is quite difficult to find a high-quality image of such a large format, so it is better to use vector images that can be increased to any size without losing quality.

Vector images can be downloaded from freepik.com. I use them to create the main background of the t-shirts.

We go to the site. We drive in a request in English, select the vector and psd format, download the images you like.

Open it with Photoshop. Set the resolution and color mode to CMYK.

If the colors suit you, then go to the Image - Mode tab and change the CMYK mode back to RGB.

Save the image in JPG format.

Thus, we collect and prepare all the images we need.

Creating a design in the constructor

I'll show you with an example.

I decided to create some designs dedicated to the popular game Clash of Clans. I want to note that some topics are prohibited for use. You can read in detail

We upload all images to the site.

Design moderation takes a lot of time, about 5 days, so you need to do everything clearly in accordance with the instructions. Otherwise, your design will be wrapped up for revision and you will have to wait another 3-4 days.

Of these, only 2 designs interested buyers.

As a result of the experiment, it was possible to earn 411 rubles. Completely passive income.

This is a reward for the sale of my designs, if I myself sold these t-shirts through my referral, then the earnings would be more than 2000 rubles.

But it turned out that in VK and Yandex, this topic is prohibited, and in Telegram there are sky-high prices for advertising.

I had to abandon this idea, but as you can see, even without advertising, T-shirts are sold completely automatically.

conclusions

If you are not such a crooked designer as I am, then your work will sell much better.

Correctly define your target audience, it will help in sales.

To do this, the Print Bar has all the tools. You can create your own store, on your own domain, with statistics and traffic tracking systems.

If you are not interested, then you can simply create designs for your pleasure. They will be sold on the site, and you will receive passive income.

Individual souvenirs have become an integral part of our lives. This means that the business associated with printing on mugs and T-shirts has a good prospect. Investment costs for piece production are minimal. But the level of competition is high, so you can’t count on profit without much effort. Let's get acquainted with the calculation of the payback of thermal printing on mugs and t-shirts using the example of a small outlet.

Summary

The purpose of this business plan is to create an enterprise "Souvenir for memory" in the city of Voronezh. As part of the project, one retail outlet will be opened in the city center on Revolution Avenue, where there are always a lot of tourists. Potential customers should be not only guests of the city, but also Voronezh residents. According to market research, products will be in demand:

• tourists;
• enterprises of the city that purchase souvenirs to congratulate employees on the holidays;
• Voronezh residents who want to please themselves or loved ones with an unusual present.

The main advantage should be the speed of work, which is important for tourists, as well as the variety of creative ideas that will allow you to create products that are unlike competitors' products.

The enterprise "Souvenir for memory" is planned to be opened in the TSUM supermarket, where there are a lot of other souvenirs. A small point will take only 7 meters, 3 of them are enough for a showcase where the mugs will be displayed, and the workplace of the master, who should be able to show the preliminary result of the work on the display. The remaining 4 will be used as a photo studio and thermal printing room.

Business environment

More than 50% of the market is occupied by large companies that produce souvenirs in large quantities. 30-40% of the market belongs to enterprises providing a wide range of services (trade, advertising), incl. thermal printing. Such companies accept any orders, but large print runs are reordered by manufacturing enterprises, since they themselves do not have sufficient capacity. The remaining 10-15, along with souvenir products, are engaged in the sale of souvenirs in small print runs. And only 3% belongs to small enterprises specializing in thermal printing.

It is planned to take its place in the market of printing on T-shirts and mugs due to interesting creative finds. For example, guests should like the series "Voronezh in the past centuries", and the series "Funny corners of the city" will be of interest to everyone without exception.

A marketing study of the activities of image printing companies shows that at least 8-10 products can be sold per day. Given that the price of a souvenir mug is 300 rubles, and the price of a T-shirt is 400 rubles, the Souvenir for Memory shop will be able to earn 90,000 rubles a month. As a result, the department's income for the year will amount to 1,080 thousand rubles.

The success of this business depends on the quality of the advertising company. First of all, when starting a business on T-shirts and mugs, you need to make a noticeable and enticing sign that will be clearly visible from the prospectus. Next, it is necessary to prepare and print booklets with the most striking product samples, which should be distributed to passers-by during the first months of work.

operational plan

First you need to choose a room for rent and conclude an agreement. A lot depends on the successful location of the point, so rent will become the most costly item of expenditure.

Next, you need to purchase fixed assets and inventories. The company will not accept large orders for the production of mugs or T-shirts for promotional purposes, so equipment designed for large volumes will not be required. An unassuming computer and an ordinary digital camera will suffice for us. It is also tedious to buy a printer, scanner, and heat presses. Such a simple and inexpensive equipment for printing on mugs and t-shirts is enough.

Workforce plan

Of course, anyone can cope with this simple job, but in order to maintain your position in the market, you need to constantly come up with new ideas. To do this, the employee must have design and marketing thinking. After all, new stories can attract a new category of customers. The process of creating drawings should be ongoing. Therefore, an employee must be hired with the proper skills. But teaching how to apply images to mugs and T-shirts is not difficult at all.

Taking into account the fact that customer service takes 15-20 minutes, for one point we need only one person who, in his spare time from visitors, will be able to develop new ideas. In order to understand the structure of demand and other features of this business, it is advisable for the investor himself to work with clients for the first month.

Before opening a t-shirt store, there are a number of things to think about.

Target segment selection

At the preliminary stage, it is important to clearly understand the future concept of the store and determine the target segment. The choice of business direction should be based on marketing research and identifying the most promising niches in the market. For example, a store may be focused on the sale of children's t-shirts, youth t-shirts with bright prints, sports t-shirts, t-shirts for fat people, t-shirts made from natural materials, etc. The success of the business will largely depend on knowing the needs and interests of target consumers. On this basis, the marketing promotion of the store will also have to be built.

Store assortment

In the T-shirt store, you can resell ready-made T-shirts from third-party brands, as well as sell products with your own prints. But it should be borne in mind that the popularity of the store will depend on the originality and creativity of the assortment. And selling generic products produced in huge quantities in China will lead to the fact that your store will simply get lost in a hundred others.

To bring the idea of ​​creating your own t-shirts to life, you need to have graphic design skills, or outsource the image development function to a freelance specialist for a separate fee. You can make your own catalog of images and apply them to order from a specific client. If you are planning to create your own T-shirt store with designer prints, then you need to find a supplier of plain T-shirts of various colors and sizes, on which the design will be applied with high quality.

It is worth noting that only T-shirts are rarely sold in the store, as a rule, this is one of the products in the assortment of clothing outlets. But if you focus on the sale of T-shirts, then they should include a wide range of models and sizes (the most popular sizes should always be available).

Choice of store format

You can sell T-shirts through a regular retail store or online. You can also combine work in both of these formats.

The success factors of a retail store include its location, as well as the availability of qualified staff. The interior of the store is also important, which should meet the interests of the target audience. When opening a retail store, the key criterion for choosing a location for opening is the traffic of the outlet. The downside of a retail outlet is the high cost of renting, repairing the premises and paying for the work of sellers.

The advantage of selling via the Internet is the ability to expand the geography of sales, as well as reducing the cost of renting retail space. To organize online sales, you can create your own online store, or sell T-shirts through free electronic platforms (auctions, bulletin boards, catalogs).