Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Great Resources for T-Shirt Businesses

Some of you out there might think that running a t-shirt business is exactly what you are looking for in a job. If that is the case, I would like to offer some great resources I have found useful for my business.

The web is my greatest resource. You can type in just about anything you are looking for and find it! It's not always easy to understand (I'm still figuring out the licensing/tax paperwork parts myself), but it's there.

Here are some sites I can't live without:

http://www.gotfreefax.com/
- a great resource for anyone like me who is too cheap to own a fax machine! You can scan items in on your printer and fax them for free with this great site! And they don't put advertisements on the cover page, so you don't have to worry about your fax being tossed as spam.

http://www.coastalbusiness.com
- while their prices aren't always the best, their service is second to none! They have decent sales, and their turnaround is INCREDIBLE - I often receive items I ordered less than 48 hours after I placed the order! I like their wide selection of heat vinyl, too.

http://www.t-shirtforums.com/

- this is the ultimate website for anyone considering running a t-shirt business. you can get any question answered here, research different shirt printing methods and vendors, learn more about the technical aspects, review software, etc. It's the most comprehensive authority for the entire industry in my opinion!

http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm
- this one is kinda goofy, but every once in a while you run across a transfer medium that has temperatures in Celsius, or you may have a machine that needs to be set to Celsius but you only have Fahrenheit instructions, etc.

http://www.mywishes.net/
- though I stopped using it for the time being, this is a great resource for your e-commerce site that allows your customers to create a wish list from items in your store. I didn't get a great response from it but it might work better for you.

http://www.usps.com/
- I only ship via USPS, and use this constantly to determine shipping rates, etc.

http://www.advancedartist.com/tutorials.html

- Because we use CorelDraw, and because I suck at learning new software, I like finding site such as this that offer easy to understand tutorials. This particular one also has a lot of other great resources on it for the t-shirt entrepreneur.

http://www.zamzar.com/

- this site is really awesome when you need to convert files from one format to the next! For example, if you have a pdf that you need to make into a jpg, you can use this site! I also love that it's free, since I don't have a large budget.

I'm sure there are a lot of other sites out there, several of which I also use, but this is a great starting point for anyone considering the industry. There is a lot to factor in - equipment, software, time, products, etc - but it can be a very satisfying line of work.

1 comment:

  1. I would also like to suggest you add http://www.conde.com/ as a link, they are the premier supplier of sublimation and heat transfer equipment and substrates in North America. The folks there are very helpful and their tech support is superb. Plus, check out their 90+ videos in youtube, search for condesystems.

    By the way, I have a blog myself about the trials and tribulations of starting a tee shirt and tile imprinting business in Dauphin Island, Alabama.

    Good luck to all who try to better their economics!

    ReplyDelete