1. DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB!- I would advise anyone just starting not to fully quit what you do to make money to keep a roof over your head and food on your table. Just take it little by little, don't swallow the entire Big Gulp! In addition to creativity, it takes money to make it in any business. Sometimes starting up you just are not sure exactly what amount of money you will spend, but spend wisely. So keep your day job, make that money and take what you can and put it towards your newly developed line.

2. The Designs-Ok, so you love designing and fashion and can lay it down on paper but you don't know the next step. If you can lay it down on paper then you must be pretty talented and will come up with some original ideas, which is most important. What you will need is for someone to put them into Adobe Illustrator for you which is a vector based design program. Vector designs give you that really clean, crisp look and no matter how much you scale the size, it will not be pixelated. In addition to get some more effects you will need Adobe Photoshop and you can just go wild in there too. Some people use Corel Draw, I never have but whatever works for you then use it. What I did is I had a guy help me learn the basics of Photoshop and then every night I would spend x amount of hours on the computer just teach myself. In addition to that I found there are tutorials on line as well. See I told you the internet has everything you need and want. So do your research for anything that comes to mind and you don't know the answer to it. Once you get the basics down you should be good to go and then you can really get down to business with the computer based side of the designs. This is what is going to get your designs from your head to the computer to the screen printer or manufacturer that will print your designs. It is a must!

3. Manufacturing- If you are starting as just a t-shirt line then start with your local screen printer. Well some people ask how do I find them, ther is something called the telephone book or YellowPages.com, once again do that research. Go visit these screen printers in your local area and ask them questions and ask to see previous goods they have printed so you can see the quality and that they are capable enough to do your designs. Check to see what their minimum order quantities are, what is the turnaround time, what kind of shirts do they print on, how many color print are they capable of doing. From their just decide who will be best for you. You can always find people online but it may be better as a newcomer to the business to deal direct with someone rather than online.

Once your orders start picking up and you have the demand and it is growing rapidly then many you want to look for manufacturers that can do cut and sew garments exactly as you want them. Starting small allows yourself time to grow and if you mess up, then you don't have big costs to handle. When you deal overseas, you may look at you get what you want quality wise, printing wise, your own size chart etc etc but have you thought about the price may be alot lower, can you handle the quantities in the thousands, do you know anything about importing, custom fees and how to get your order cleared if it gets stuck in customs. Have you done your research on the amount of the customs fees, some customs fees can be 15% hypothetically plus other fees that are incurred with customs. Just say you got a shirt made for $4 and you had a 1000 pcs made and then customs fees are 15%, you are paying $4.85 including the customs and other miscellaneous from customs. Next, you have to look at shipping costs. So how fast do you need your merchandise? On the average you are going to wait at least 30-45 days just to have the product produced. Then it will be shipped. You have a choice by air or by sea. You know air is going to be an arm and a leg, but if you can afford it and still make product especially if you are just retailing, I don't see a big problem. If you are wholesaling and need it by air to get it quickly that is when your profit is cut tremendously. Shipping changes based on oil prices, so it should be a little less today to ship than about 4 months ago. Let's just say by air on 1000 t-shirts, none of this is accurate but may be close, you pay $3500. By sea it would be less. So in the end is it worth you paying to have it done overseas. So your $4.85 shirt just jumped to $8.35 each. It is a lot to take in, but it is all common sense. If you have a higher end line you still have good room for profit margins.

4. Consultants- If all of this just does not make sense to you and you really need help from some experienced individuals, you may consider getting a consultant to help you with various ends of the business. Just pay them a fee for their services until you learn a little bit more and can do it yourself. If you would like to use our consult services, please contact us at info@funkeyflashback.com for pricing.


If you did not read Part 1 here you go: Part 1

Stay tuned in about 2-3 more days there will be a Part 3