What makes a t-shirt a top seller?

What makes a t-shirt a top seller? - if we knew the answer to that how easy would it be to have successful lines? Is there some secret formula to what makes a t-shirt a hit, some broad similar characteristics that unite the heavy weights of the t-shirt sales world?

Well, as far as I can tell I don't think anyone has actually tried to study it - to nail down if its colour, design, t-shirt used, marketing, ease of website use (number of clicks until a buy), payment options available on site or whether a design just hits a topical theme on the head...

Also, wouldn't it be nice to actually have some numbers, some cold, hard data on what it takes to have a top selling t-shirt..With your help out there I will do the donkey work (and the arithmetic) to try find some results..because, well, this is some info I'd like to have to aid me in running LadyUmbrella womens fashion tees and I would hope that it would help some others out there...

So, please, what I need from, the t-shirt sellers of the globe:
- Name of your top selling design
- Length of time you've been selling it for
- Website where its available
- Number of tees sold
- Marketing effort made, ie, a brief synopsis on what you have done to market your shirt/brand (just like 2 or 3 lines, no need to go into detail).
- Spread this onto those you know who sell tees please...really, this is the crucial part, get the tweets on, bookmark, facebook it, shout about it, whatever..I hope to get about 50 "data-sets" to try give some useful results...

You can e-mail me at ladyumbrellaltd [aT] gmail.com or just post your top selling t-shirts info in the comments section...Also, any suggestions on how I could improve upon this idea are of course welcomed...

Heck yes...

SWOT Analysis for a t-shirt company

In this blog I'll deal with SWOT Analysis (Stengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for a t-shirt company...These are things that I have thought about whilst getting LadyUmbrella womens fashion tees up and running.

I'll start by saying focus on what you can do not what others are doing...by all means, monitor your competitors (once you establish them) and do some good old SWOT analysis...

Strengths - what does/will your company have that your competition won't be able to do, or how will you be different/better than them..focus on this element and make sure that when marketing yourself you make your key strength clear from the get go..

Weakness - how is your competitor than you? in what way? I think its fair to assume that initially the main advantage that all your competitors will have is brand recognition (to a certain degree at least depending on how successful they are). How can you improve on your weakness? before launching get the word out, work, hustle (Gary V style), post, comment, blog, social media yourself to the brink of death so that when launch day comes at least some people will know about it..reducing your weakness...the other key thing competitors will have will be trust from customers that the product/service is reliable so from day one ensure you have everything in place to ensure timely delivery of quality goods so that you can quickly earn customer trust...happy customers talk nicely about you and get you more customers - unhappy customers shout angrily about you and end your business..

Opportunity - what has your competitor overlooked? What area of your niche or market have they not successfully reached out to? how can you reach out to them? what is your USP (unique selling point) that will give you the opportunity that your competitor doesn't have..this may not be an actual tangible betterment of any good or service that your competitor provides but market it differently, bundle it nicely, present cleverly..

Threat - what is your achilles heal? where can it all go wrong? what other company or competitor can compete in your niche? thing of worst case scenarios and how you will be able to turn them into positives or bounce back..always have a reliable plan B..or C..that could be if trying to sell online and it just doesn't work out yet you have a load of stock do some research on potential retail outlets that may stock your tees (or whatever)..figure out how to approach them and start working on associated materials to give to them upon meeting them...and, if plan A (selling online) does happen to take off there is no harm in getting another revenue stream going too..

I've been setting up my brand for the last 3 months or so now and these are things I've thought about and worked on...I can't say it will guarantee anything (I don't even know myself as we are still to launch) but at least you'll give yourself the best opportunity to succeed and be satisfied that, even if it all does go wrong, that you did all you could and weren't half hearted and so will have no doubts or regrets...or thats my hope anyway...

P.S. I'm not a business head at all so my above SWOT could be complete garbage, willing to stand corrected and learn if that is the case...

Facebook Fanpages - How to make them grow..

Hey, we kicked off our fanpage for LadyUmbrella Ladies Tees at the start of August (the 8th of August to be exact) and have done a few things to try promote it..I'll now share some of the things we did with you, hopefully it will be of some use..

- Competitions run via the fanpage
You want people to comment on your page and become fans. Then their friends might check out your fan page as they will see that someone they know has "fanned up" or left a comment..To do this create some competition where people have to leave comments..we did this and it has been quite successful..has gained us about 350 fans or so I think..I have a blog post you can check out where I talk about what we did..

- discount for "fav t-shirt is.."
Instead of 30% for joining give them a discount for letting you know which t-shirt of yours is their favorite. Then again you'll get a comment which their friends might see except it will be the best advertising you can get "My favorite t-shirt is your XYZ design - give me my discount" - imagine if you were getting a few of these a day how many people would be checking out your page to see what its about and how many new fans you might get

- Keep interacting
Try engage your fans, again, more comments = more fans..it will also help you maintain your activity rating which I think increases your chances of your fanpage appearing in the right hand side ad section, where it says "Friend Y has become of fan of Fanpage X"..You don't want to go overboard though, try find the balance, if you notice that you lose fans when you post too much then check yourself before you wreck yourself...

- Create a poll
Get people to vote on things...You can create polls that appear on tabs on the fanpage where people can vote on whatever..make the poll interesting and relevant to you niche and then set about marketing it. On the likes of twitter "link bait" it to a degree so that people want to click on the link to see what the poll is about..the poll is housed on your fanpage so you might get more fans that way..Don't limit your tweets to polls though - tweet til the cows come home...

- Ask your friends to join
Really, invite them all...to your good friends ask them to invite their friends as well..this can have unprecedented jumps in numbers...Also, importantly, when a friend joins your page leave them a comment to say "thanks for joining the XYZ fanpage - spread the word" or something like that..now anyone who visits your friends page will see a comment saying that they have just joined a certain fanpage and us humans are curious creatures so they might just check it out...

- Fanpage Exchanges
Know someone who has a fanpage? How about you suggest their page to all of your friends and vice versa..again, you don't want to do this too often or you'll annoy the crap out of your friends but it can be a good way to get some fans..

- Facebook Ads
Facebook ads can be a good source of a steady stream of fans..you might not get dizzying numbers but done well the costs can be kept down and you'll get steady growth..also, for every person who joins you don't know how many of their friends might also join...you can just hope that some do and that the circle of fans keeps extending...I recently ran Facebook ads and had some success with it, I'll detail in a later post how that worked out for me and what I learned..

- Targets
Set targets for what you want to achieve. Be realistic, break it down into the number of fans you want to get per day and what you can do to get them...Work hard to get these fans..

- Blogs
There is no harm in having a blog, perhaps not for growing a fanpage but for keeping fans happy. Give them a place where they can find out more about the company etc..they may send a link to a friend and then you might get another fan - make it easy to join straight from the blog..also, blogs are a useful tool in the never ending SEO battle so the sooner you start the better..

- Website
On your webpage make it easy for people to join your fanpage..use the "facebook badges" that you can get which are really handy..again, tell them that if they join they can get a discount or find out about competitions or the latest product news..

After doing all that our fanpage has grown to a little about 1260 fan (hehe, and I don't have that many friends).. Not stellar by any stretch of the imagination but a nice start. A prime example of a successful fanpage is Rizzo Tees fanpage which is the type of active fanpage I want to have somday...

Hopefully some of the above will help you and feel free to ask any questions you may have...would also love to hear how any tips you have or what you do to try keep your fanpage buzzing...

Hi...I'm Rob, a t-shirt nut...

This is just a short introduction post to say hi to whoever may read this (although I'll probably be my most frequent reader) and let you know what this blog aims to be about..

I'm currently starting a t-shirt company making LadyUmbrella womens fashion tees and are due to launch in late November or early December. Over the last few months I have become a recluse and done nothing but research all I can about the t-shirt world. This blog will chronicle the things I have learned and hopefully will become a useful resource for some other budding t-shirt designers...

And, I'll leave it at that...you can find out more about LadyUmbrella quirky ladies tees at our site or else on my other blog about LadyUmbrella t-shirts..If that doesn't exhaust you you can also have a look at the LadyUmbrella Facebook fanpage and by all means feel free to become a fan...

Laters...

Give people the "scent" for better sales conversions..

Giving people the "scent"...

The "scent" is something that I hadn't heard about before but as part of my nightly googling for online marketing/sales/etc I came across the following:

Bryan Eisenberg on Using Trigger Words to Boost Landing Page Conversion

(note: at the end the guy does a bit of promo for himself, I don't know him at all but the video is good - I highly recommend it)

Basically, the scent is when someone finds your page via a google search/ad you want to instantly make them feel that they have arrived at a place they want to be..what the video suggest and what I think is a great idea, is to have tailored landing pages...for example if some one searches for "t-shirts in new york" and comes to your page have a title of "You've come to the right place for T-Shirts in New York" - straight away you are letting the potential customer know that they are at a site they want to be on and creating a link between what they searched for and now what they have found - doing this dramatically increases conversions...to 72% I think...

Now, once you have given the scent to the customer that they are on the right page you want to anticipate their next question and answer..again, following on from the New York t-shirt example your landing page could contain "So, now you've found us would you like to buy one of our t-shirts [and have pictures with buy now links] or just cruise around our site...either way, have a good time"..

By doing this straight away the person who has searched for you, has been welcomed, given the "scent" and called to action to do something that is relevant to what they searched for and has a much better chance of increasing sales...

I know a lot of people have their t-shirts on display on their homepage and may say "whats the point?" but I think if you have a tailored landing page to what people search for then you will have a better chance of conversion...any ads I run with keywords will all have tailored landing pages anyway...generally, homepages are more about who you are or what your company does (whilst also, in most cases, containing pictures of t-shirts and buy now links) and not about reaffirming a searchers belief that they have found something that they have looked for...

Anyway, thats my summary, no substitute for watching the video but hopefully some will find it useful...

Tee Talk

A place to talk tee shirts...