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July 26, 2014 at 8:48 am #1168851Up::0
Hi Ivy,
Warning in advance this post will make me sound like {some nasty word I can’t write on flying solo}, but I am writing this for your benefit, just minus the usual tact!
I personally cringe every time I see someone looking to sell children’s clothing online. Simply because the market is absolutely flooded. It pains me to say it, but over my 3 or 4 years on flying solo I’ve seen and given replies to perhaps 20 women wanting to start or who have started online clothing stores, even had a couple potential clients out of it, but are yet to see any success stories – the market is just too flooded. It seems to me (not being a mum of course) that for ever 10 mum customers online there is 1 wanting to start a store.
Not saying there isn’t potential, but there are so many competitors out there in this niche that the ONLY way you can succeed as I see it is by going big and going hard and doing it really really well – if you dip your toe in the water you will likely do your money.
You say you have the capital, I’m not sure what that means to you, but to do what you are talking about to the level where you are a chance of success, I expect a starting investment would be about $100,000 on the low end, ideally far more than that. If that’s what you are talking by capital, then it might be doable if you have a strong business plan. If you are talking $2000 or even $5000, then forget it, unless you have a source of really cheap stuff you can sell on eBay or the like. Leading sites would spend more than that on marketing every month (probably every week). Online retail is getting harder, and kids clothing is one of the most crowded.
As to why people can buy it cheaper – they are likely buying actual factory direct. Most you find on Alibaba are not factories, they are middle men. And Ali Express even more so. Companies like Boohoo.com (Adults I know, not kids) are designing their own clothing, cutting out the middle man, bringing it in by the container load, and selling it cheap.
In my opinion, online retail only works if you are selling brand names, OR are selling cheap stuff you import direct. Selling non brand-names bought through wholesalers etc isn’t a recipe for long terms success with the way online retail is going.
Then you have to have a modern, professional website. One you built yourself that your friends tell you is great but professionals can pick apart won’t cut it.
Once the site is up, advertising and SEO comes in. For your niche facebook advertising would be one of the best value options, along with Google’s contextual / remarketing graphic ads.
Again, I know I’ve sounded negative, but better off having someone be blunt than dive in head first without planning and do your dough. Once you KNOW you have all the sorts of stuff I mentioned covered, have a proper budgeted business plan with competitor analysis etc, then you will be ready to go.
Matt
July 26, 2014 at 8:28 am #1168575Up::0MH08 has given your far more detailed and specific advice than I ever could.
Just wanted to add a couple things.
1) Make sure you understand the difference between margin and markup. You used the phrase “wack on” then margin. May be a slip of the keyboard, but margin is a percentage OF and markup is a percentage ON – or in other words markup is what you put onto the cost price, margin is the gross profit percentage of the sell price. They are very different beasts, and if you are in negotiations that involve either, are setting RRP etc, it’s important to have your head around this concept forwards, backwards and sideways!
An example – $100 cost with 50% markup is $150 Sell price. But this would only be 33.33% margin – because 33.33% of the sell price ($50 out of $150) is Gross Profit. They also scale at very different rates. 5% markup 4.8% margin, but 500% markup is 80% Margin!2) I don’t think there is almost ANY business that works on 5% markup or margin. It’s likely that a business may be working on 5% NETT profit, which is the profit AFTER paying wages, rent, expenses etc, but even this wouldn’t be ideal – you could put your money in the bank for the same profit. If a business is in growth mode perhaps, but not as a goal. What you are suggesting at 5% markup is that they make 5% profit then pay all their wages and expenses out of that – not going to happen. And don’t forget GST when workout out your RRP’s.
There are businesses such as Retail IT that work on about 15% margin (aka 17.65% markup), and others such as some cosmetics where they work on up to maybe 80% margin (aka 500% markup). But what’s more common for most businesses I’ve experienced is anywhere from 33% margin (aka 50% markup) to 50% margin (aka 100% markup). When you are working on this, use ex-GST amounts then add the GST. So if someone wants 50% margin/100% markup and the item was $30, it would sell for $66 which is ($30 x 2) x 1.1
Hope all this maths hasn’t scared you off, but wanted to explain this as otherwise you could come a major cropper when when discussing this in a negotiation if you aren’t able to work it out. There are online tools and the like to do the calculations for you, but those in high powered negotiations re retail margins and the like may need to think on their feet with all this!
Matt
July 26, 2014 at 8:05 am #1168287Up::0Others have some good answers here, but a couple things I wanted to add.
1) This $75k mark we are talking about, it’s being talked about as if that were PROFIT or some sort of INCOME. Hence the discussions about people being happy with $75k. The test has nothing to do with income or profit – it’s based on sales dollars / total invoiced amounts, ie REVENUE. Most businesses would be lucky to make 50% Gross Profit if it’s a physical good being sold (services are of course different), let alone Nett profit. If you are selling something physical as you appear to be, $75k in sales may only net you about $30k in Nett profit at a guess, hardly a full time business, but fine for a solid hobby business.
To answer your initial question as simply as possible.
1) If you import something over $1000, you have to pay GST. This is regardless of whether you are the end user, a business, are GST registered or not.2) If you are registered for GST, you charge GST, but you then claim back all the GST on your costs. What you submit to the tax department is basically GST collected (from sales) less GST paid (on purchases).
Generally this means that if you are paying a lot of GST, you want to be collecting GST as well. Otherwise you are basically wearing the GST amount. The only reason this wouldn’t be best is if you could get as much without GST as your competitors do with GST. In a B2C situation this may well be possible, in B2B almost never.
Personally I was importing goods at over $1000 per import, I would want to be registered for GST right from the start.
If on the other hand you are NOT paying out much GST, you might be best to put it off for as long as possible, depending on many other factors. If your costs are imported goods without GST due to being under $1000, or if it’s primarily your own time/labour/service you are selling, then you won’t have much to claim back.
One more thing – don’t forget that as well as GST, there will likely still be Duty on a lot of imported good. Never make the mistake of underestimating the real cost of importing bulk items, it’s usually considerably more than price of the item from your supplier.
Hope this helps, and doesn’t muddy things further for you!
Matt
June 3, 2014 at 12:21 pm #1165133Up::0Hi Qunnie, thanks for your reply, good to have some genuine discussion. But please don’t let me dissuade you from a certain path, I think your site is great and I’m only pointing out the Fair Trade stuff to make sure you are aware.
Also want to mention my brother’s site is 95% his own and his business partner, so I can’t take credit there – all I have done is provide some SEO advice, which has started to have some good results but still early days.
The whole Fair Trade thing is a minefield when you get into it – my brother knows more than I do re this, although I have spent a little time looking into the economic models of the industry.
And I totally take your point re certifications since I still can’t personally understand why so few products have certifications, but suspect it’s due to the strictness of the supply chain rules. For example, something made of tin or iron, how do you track back to ensure the mine workers, or those at a smelter are treated well – it’s neigh impossible. Therefore Fair Trade in the strictest sense may always be limited, and will probably develop (or maybe already is) into a broader ethically sourced product industry. The problem then is that as soon as rules are relaxed, there will always be people who push the boundaries and use products for their own benefit.
Then the other limitation is that Australian brands like Cetton which is both Australian Made and Organic can never be certified Fair Trade even though it’s in many ways better – simply because Fair Trade only applies to providing an above living wage in developing countries.
The big problem I see in Australia and possibly other places is that the message is so fragmented in the marketplace, with terms like Fair Trade vs fairtrade vs Earth Positive vs WRAP Certified vs Fair for Life certification or things like Oeko-Tex vs generic terms like “sweatshop free” “organic” “carbon neutral”, . The environmental industry has a lot of what is known as “greenwashing” and the risk with this industry is “fairwashing” if I may coin a term.
What is needed is one main term, the equivalent of the “Made in Australia” which replaced everyone done their own thing. Fair Trade is trying to do this, but there are of course limitations as noted.
I believe there IS a market of people who want to buy fair, but there are three barriers:
1) Price Premium (usually more than I personally think it should be)
2) Lack of Range (go into an Oxfam store – most products are not those you would actually buy if there wasn’t a “story” behind them.
3) Marketplace confusion due to above mentioned messages.I don’t think there is anything at all wrong with you focusing more broadly on ethical clothing, but just need to ensure you don’t put yourself at risk through trademark infringement.
I wish you the best of luck with it. In my brother’s case it’s only a side business, but looks like this is your main gig, so hope it goes well for you. Sorry for getting off track from your original question.
Matt
June 3, 2014 at 11:56 am #1160665Up::0Cesar – TV & Radio were only examples mainly for comparison, I also mentioned Facebook ads and Google display advertising including their remarketing feature as two others that are online.
There are many more also of course. My point that saying X is best without a clarification or knowing the product to be marketed being a flawed mindset still stands.
And $8000 a month for radio sounds hectic! I guess depends where you are – I’m in a large regional area with 4 or 5 very active commercial radio stations competing for advertising spend, and the costs certainly aren’t that high!
Re your overall point, you say most of Flying Solo will be looking at Pull methods, and you are perhaps right many are, but not exclusively. One example that comes to mind without even looking is the lady with the very niche and unique “undies clips” business (or whatever they are called) which are actually a great idea for old people, but not one that pull marketing would be any significant part of.
Nothing it best all the time, a skilled marketer will analyse the business including it’s budget, product, market etc and work out who best to get there. I’m glad you have found what works best for you, but don’t be naive enough to link you have found some universal law of marketing. Adwords is fantastic in some cases, and I have certain clients I wish would take up my recommendations to use it, and others who already do successfully. But your “Adwords good, SEO bad” mantra you have been going on with for at least 3 years is getting a repetitive and tired.
Matt
June 2, 2014 at 2:15 pm #1165131Up::0You have been offered some excellent advice, but I did just want to add a couple things given I do have recent experience in doing a small amount SEO work in the Fairtrade area (see link in my signature).
One of the biggest problems I see is that unfortunately the fairtrade market is just not big enough yet. I also see it as a product that a lot of people may buy as an impulse buy in retail (eg Oxfam shops, at a market etc), but the amount of people actively searching for Fairtrade product online is quite limited, particularly for something specific like cushions. So push marketing such as Facebook may in theory work better for you, provided you can determine a suitable demographic to target.
The other question I had isn’t search engine related, but I was just curious regarding your use of the term “Fair Trade”. This, to the best of my knowledge is a trademarked brand rather than a generic term that can be used for anything you want. Among the niche market it’s also becoming more accepted, and I don’t see any evidence of this branding on your website. More info on the Fair Trade branding is here: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/what_is_fairtrade/fairtrade_certification_and_the_fairtrade_mark/
In fact I suspect that what you are selling *IS* ethical and you have put a lot of effort into artisan sourcing directly, but it may not be technically “Fair Trade”. The first thing that alerted me to that is the fact that some of your product comes from China – when in fact that as far as I know there is not a single Fair Trade certified supplier the whole country. Reason being is that to be Fair Trade Certified, the product must be able to be tracked right back to the material source (eg Coffee Plantation, Cotton Field etc) and all workers treated fairly, paid an above market wage, and have money put into community development not just in the manufacture of the product, but also right through the supply chain. Being that most raw materials in China go into a common market and it’s near impossible to identify the farm let alone the knitting mill, there has (to my knowledge) been no certifications in China. India is the biggest supplier of Fair Trade items outside of Coffee.
Whether this is affecting your sales, probably not, but who knows. Could it get you in hot water, possibly. But as much as you may not want to hear this, calling something Fair Trade doesn’t make it so – you have to use generic terms like “ethically sourced” etc, which makes your SEO job harder.
Matt
June 2, 2014 at 12:42 pm #1160663Up::0Cesar, post: 188293 wrote:The only true guarantees in life, are “Death & Taxes”…Aidan, all that you have said is spot on. I still don’t understand though, why individuals can’t grasp the idea that Adwords is the best way to determine if they have a profitable online business.
Anyone claiming that something in marketing world is “the best” without a “for situation X” has me worried.
Both Google Adwords, and organic search results in general are “pull” marketing. Someone is actively seeking what you sell, and the aim is to be what they find when they look – they stick their head up, and you pull them in. Kind of like yellow pages for the 21st centuary. It’s great for products or services people know they want, where they are looking to find a supplier or evaluate options.
On the other hand, if you have an exciting new product people are not looking for because they don’t know it exists yet, search is useless. If people don’t know what you sell exists, they sure won’t be searching for it. This is where “push” marketing comes in – getting front and centre in their face saying “hey look at what I have”, to push it to them. In traditional media this is everything from TV ads to Billboards, online it’s things like display advertising, including Facebook ads. The problem with “push” is targeting which is more challenging. In TV land basic strategy might be which program to put the ad with, or online it might be demographic targetting via Facebook, or Google Ads remarketing feature, or even what website you put your ads on.
If you are comparing SEO vs PPC, that’s one thing as they can be directly compared. But claiming Adwords it’s the be all and end all online is flawed as it simply doesn’t work for some products, and isn’t the best strategy for some others.
Matt
May 6, 2014 at 12:23 pm #1157971Up::0Craig_Longmuir, post: 189884 wrote:how much would you expect to pay for a full on/off site SEO audit?
im interested to get one done by a decent seo guy…I have been wary of getting one done which is somehow biased by the person doing it, in that they suggest I only need the services they offer/can make money on…ideally what I would like is an seo audit with actionable list of what needs doing(by me)
Hi Craig,
Thanks for the question in response to my earlier post.
I do this type of thing and if purchased you are under no obligation to use any other services from me – in fact I quite enjoy this type of thing as the analysis side of things and finding all the little hidden (or not so hidden) problems is probably the part of SEO I enjoy most.
This can be a one off as is, it can be followed by ongoing support as you complete the work, or work can be completed for you in any combination, it’s up to you.
Generally for most small business sites that are either static html, WordPress or similar, I would charge around the $250 for this, which would include both general recommendations as well as some specifics (eg Change Title Tag of this page to “XXXXXXX”) together with instructions on how the same logic or thoughts processes can be applied to other pages. It will generally also include analysis of incoming links and recommendations in regard to these.
If the site was an eCommerce site or built on some other content management platform, I would have to quote based on the specifics of how your site is built – older osCommerce or Zen Cart websites for example have some unique SEO challenges re duplicate content.
Obviously large and complex sites would also need to be quoted individually, it’s also relevant as to whether it’s a locally, nationally, or internationally targeted site. – for some really big sites there could be days of work involved just in analysis, although i’m guessing that this is probably not the case here.
The idea overall is generally that I would provide all of the “What to do”, a fair chunk of the “How to do”, but only a small amount of the “Do”!
Note that a lot of companies will provide a “free website audit”. This, as it appears you have already recognised is more often done with the purpose “what can we sell you” than anything impartial or actionable.
Hope this helps, and please feel free to contact me.
Matt
March 18, 2014 at 2:04 pm #1161492Up::0When I have a look at the site and get PAST my initial reaction (more on that in a sec), I can see that the information is clear, clean and well presented. It has an appropriate amount of pages for this type of business, good structure, and an appropriate amount of text per page, clear fonts, clear to read etc.
However that all said, my initial reactionary visually was not good.
Basically the green colour at the sides along with the use of very very subtle grey gives is a look thats very shall we say subdued. Then you have these really vibrant photos of yourself with bright out there clothing, that doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the site. They also kind of just sit in now mans land in the middle of the site, and don’t look like they are “styled” or like they line up with anything.
Another point re the photos, from a design point of view the way you have put the text on those photos and the choice of font style, font colour, and positioning of the text looks really amateur and detracts from the site. I personally wouldn’t put text on images as links or menu options anyway, but if you do, it needs to be done better than this.
The other main point is that you really need a professionally designed logo. The “logo” in a plain boring old font, with green on green just doesn’t pop out at all, and again is a significant detraction from the site. Of course if you do get a logo, make sure it fits in with the green style of your site – if it doesn’t work with it and clashes another minor redesign might be in order.
Only final thing was that the “Links” tab dropping down from under “Preparing for Mediation” is just a bit odd in terms of placement – and I didn’t realise at first that the main link was actually clickable. This should be moved elsewhere, maybe to the footer rather than the menus, and then just linked to also from within the content if applicable.
Sorry if this is all a bit blunt, but hope it helps a little.
Matt
March 15, 2014 at 6:32 am #1161298Up::0I would stick with it and not worry too much.
Having been heavily involved in one business that rebranded and considering suggesting a rebrand to another (co-incidence, i’m not a “rebranding guy”!), I can say that there are often good reasons for a rebrand and benefits of this, but downsides as well.
Good reasons to me may include
1) Where the brand is damaged (eg new owners buying a business out of administration, or major PR problems), but ONLY if the business has also been reinvented or significantly changed as this can backfire also.2) Where the name of a business is confusingly similar to another and it’s causing problems.
3) Where the name doesn’t match the business at all due to poorly chosen original name – ie a city name in a business name (I hate this), or where an industry or trade is in the name but you have grown beyond this.
There are of course many other reasons, but the above are the main ones I can think of where i’d consider a change.
Reasons not to change:
1) Some people think it’s weird (especially if you are in a creative industry!)A brand is what you make it. And unique is good – I often think my name is too generic and is more like a description than a name. For every person who thinks it’s weird, there will be another who thinks you sound nice and fun and easy to work with and will be attracted to that!
Just my thoughts!
Matt
March 15, 2014 at 5:14 am #1157967Up::0John Romaine, post: 182481 wrote:Here’s one of your pages description tags.Pack includes;
1 Parlour 
Fab, post: 182558 wrote:Thanks John, that HTML code is meaningless to me, however I know it’s important for SEO.Hi Fab,
Just wanted to add one thing as I don’t think anyone picked up on your above comment at the start of your reply to John Romaine’s good advice…
You aren’t expected to understand that HTML code, that’s the point. A description tag (otherwise known as a “meta description”) should be a description of the page, in normal text, something like “Purple Spoilz offers an extensive range of juicers at Australia’s best prices, including Widget, Gadget and Thingy brands”
That’s not well written by me, but you get the point. The fact that code has ended up in a description tag basically says that they are being badly autogenerated from somewhere using some faulty code, rather than (preferably) human written, or if not grabbed from some of the content of the page. It doesn’t show on the page, but will generally show as the page description in Google search results, together with it’s friend the “title tag”.
Yes getting the content right and writing for humans is important as Cesar will tell you, however it’s this sort of thing a legitimate SEO specialist will find in an audit, then fix or advise to fix. The fact that stuff like that is there is an indication in the direction that your previous person may have been taking your money without doing much of the real stuff that’s important, provided of course this wasn’t an isolated incident.
Hope this clarifies this one small point that I think had been missing from the discussion.
Matt
March 15, 2014 at 2:12 am #1160640Up::0flower-child, post: 185425 wrote:I’ve been paying upwards of $1000 per month.I’m surprised to hear you say we have poor content, as that’s what we were working on with the last company. All of our product descriptions are written by instore staff, aimed at our target market. There are few products with cut and paste descriptions from the suppliers website.
We also have info pages for our main products. Our pricing is RRP, and product choice, well, that can always be debated, but we choose our products on a strict set of guidelines (do they meet our mission of simplifying sustainable parenting?) and ethics.
Our traffic and conversion rate are pretty consistent. Conversion rate sits between 1.7 and 2%.
Hi Flower Child,
I’m really late to the party, and notice you haven’t posted for a while in response to the replies, and I imagine are feeling a little frustrated at the fact that no-one will “back themselves” given what on the surface looks like quite a reasonable request – a store with a decent range, a decent looking site, bricks and mortar retail experience (not just a mum in her spare room like many of your competitors), and an actual budget.
I’m unfortunately not in a position to take on your project so probably just adding to the “noise” sorry, but did just want to give a few thoughts that I hope may help you – these have been discussed by others in some form, but wanted to make the point more strongly.
PRICE
No-one sells online for RRP in eCommerce world.
One thing people do successfully is have a unique product that others don’t have exactly the same (selling differentiation – eg clothing retailers with their own unique range) where RRP then doesn’t even exist basically. If the differences aren’t obvious from the general market, they then push these differences hard.
Or if your product is not unique (most people’s aren’t), you then have to compete to some level on price. It’s not 100% price driven, and don’t have to be the cheapest on everything, but selling non unique products at RRP will rarely work.Personally I think this sucks about online retail. But reality is, eCommerce is great because a world of customers is open to you, that that mean so is a world of competitors. Most products tend over time to find a “level” that people are willing to sell at online, in my current main project that’s about 20% to 30% GP on average, also after taking advantage of all standard bulk discounts (eg if a wholesaler gives a better price for box lots, you HAVE to buy in box lots and pass on the saving, because the competitors are). This is vs about 40% to 60% GP in the B&M store, so about half the profit margin. The only time better GP’s are available if you do something like see a clearance sale from a wholesaler on a particular range, ring up and say “ill take the lot” so you have a deal others don’t have. Or of course import your own product etc.
If you were willing to fix the above point, then I don’t see a reason why someone couldn’t take on your project. I unfortunately can’t myself right now but if you were still looking in say 3 months, it would be a project and deal I would seriously consider. But if and only if this was fixed. Otherwise anyone being judged on sales in on a hiding to nothing.
EXPERTS
No matter what title people give: SEO, Copywriting, Conversion Optimisation, these are all things that you basically want a person of group of people to fix and handle on your website to get it humming as a sales engine. If I took on the project, would i do it all myself – probably not. But it can be argued that’s the job of the person taking on a project to worry about that – you don’t hire a builder of your house just to have them try to tell you that you need to hire a tiler and a bricklayer and a painter and, and, and… you want them to manage it. You could argue that the developer should have done that but unfortunately unlike a house, there isn’t a set level of standard expectations. But I do think that you need one business to handle the lot in some form other than the actual development. This is in part a symptom of where you have asked (Flying Solo) – while I love the soloist approach, the disadvantage is that many are either a “jack of all trades”, or are a genuine specialist. What you don’t tend to get are “groups of specialists with complimentary skills”. Some of us solve this by getting input from or working with others, while some clients become “owner builders” in that they hire all the parts separately. Either can work, but need to be aware of the difference – either someone takes on the whole project or people take on the bits – doing on part like technical site fixes vs copywriting won’t be enough.The final thing I wanted to add was that while your previous SEO work has included some good stuff (eg writing of unique product descriptions, presuming they are done well), there is plenty of other things they have missed, and also some things that will make it harder for whoever takes it on than if they had started from scratch – eg bad links. So to be fair to whoever you work with next, constantly thinking “but I’ve already spent $X on that” won’t help. As tough as it is, rather than thinking “this should be an easy project because so much has been done already”, think of it as what you would expect if starting from scratch, as the good stuff already done is probably equal to the bad stuff.
I’ve written more than I meant and you may already have given up in frustration at not getting the answers you want, but hope this clarifies some things. As I said, not in a position to take this on right now as the complete project but more than happy to have a chat if you would like someone to talk through with verbally. You can grab my details from my website if you would like.
Matt
March 14, 2014 at 11:46 am #1153671Up::0Cesar, post: 183396 wrote:At the “End of the Day” Nick, it’s not about the “Title”, and individuals must always use “Due Diligence” when hiring any services. But, just like the Internet is evolving for the better, sometimes it’s better to leave “Tarnished” things behind, or avoid using them as your prominent attraction…“Mud Sticks”We haven’t always agreed in the past Cesar, but you are right on the ball here.
Interestingly all the generic spam I used to get from people in India and similar countries used to say “This is Fred, SEO Specialist” now they say “This is Fred, Internet Marketing Specialist”.
Does anyone else get all this junk or is it just me. Interestingly I in my former day job I used to get a tonne more of it once the site was ranked well overall, than when it wasn’t – guess they could find me to offer me services once I did the hard yards!
Matt
PS: Without making any judgement on how tarnished I think the SEO term is, we no longer call ourselves “websmasters” do we!
October 3, 2013 at 3:08 pm #1009609Up::0Good luck with it, and if you would like to keep me updated how you go and/or ask for any advise feel free to message me. I come from the bulk end of the printing market in my main job, but have also experienced the “how do I get started and build up” thing with my own business. My brother is also in the process of starting a t-shirt brand, not privy to the full details but I’m sure he will come across similar issues to you.
brendamarita, post: 174339 wrote:I don’t know how people can get started…Unfortunately as i’m learning the hard way, a nice smooth scaling up is rare. It normally takes some significant investment of capital or leap of faith type thing to get going and even more so if you are talking about selling any form of physical product (rather than just your services).
– For me, that would be the step of quitting my day job to focus on my web design business full time. It’s never going to get to the stage where I’m making a go of it by slowly scaling up. OR I could investing all my time into creating something for no return until it’s done and then market it – in this case there is still the leap of faith in the hours invested before you see anything.For physical products, most stories I hear of success don’t gradually scale up – they are stories of “first I was selling stuff on eBay almost at cost, just to build up my reputation and test the market, as I had no buying power at that stage. Then when I saw it worked, I somehow found the money and went and bought a whole container of stock in. Because I bought a whole container worth I now had good margins and was making money but lots of work and time was short… so I had to make a decision if I could afford to quit my day job or not, it was tough but I did it and….” and so the story goes on. They involve risk and a grandiose commitment at some point such as either quitting your day job when it’s touch and go, or spending a big amount on stock from money the was NOT originally generated by the business to get it going.
I would love to hear a success story that goes like “I started slowly selling product X, but was getting great margins and had good profitability right from the start, even though I was only buying a few at a time. This allowed me to comfortably and gradually scale up my business, to the stage that I could afford to quit my day job – not that I had to, as there was plenty of time in my life for job, business and fun. I then kept buying slightly bigger quantities as I needed the, took no risks, and ended up rich” Such stories if they do happen usually involve something so innovative that no-one else had though of it, and demand that goes like crazy. A good idea that’s just a bit “me to”, which lets face it most of us have including myself and you as well, needs that leap of faith to make it happen, if it can at all. Or, settle for doing it for the love of the art as many on Etsy do.
I actually feel like I wrote the above for me as much as for you, been doing a lot of thinking about my own business and find writing it down helpful. I hope it’s not too negative and is of some use to you as you consider business plans.
Matt
October 3, 2013 at 2:26 pm #1009607Up::0brendamarita, post: 174334 wrote:Hi Matt,Thanks for the response. Yeah- I know I’d have to definitely play on the safe side. I’ve been looking mainly at sellers with certificates and ones that are verified sellers with positive feedback on alibaba.com. They mainly do large quantities for wholesale but I have found a few who are willing to consider smaller quantities (eg 40 initially as a trial run). Screen printing in Australia is just so costly… most people have a minimum of 25 per design, and I don’t think my designs would look as effective if I cut the colours down. DTG printing seems to have a bad rep although I have had a number of places try to send me down that line because screen printing is so expensive in set up costs. I thought perhaps there was a different type of printing that I could use but screen printing seems to be the most durable and industry standard.
I’m trying to play on the safe side and make sure I don’t fork out a massive amount in printing and then it fails miserably… I’ve tried printing locally and they did a heat transfer but to be honest it doesn’t look very good- more like a glorified sticker on a garment. Not very professional.
In a bit of a predicament. Didn’t want to go down the DTG printing line, even that is quite dear, and not quite what I was after. Hard to know how to sensibly trial a products reception without spending a lot to start off with.
Brenda
Hi Brenda,
Firstly best of luck in your search, I can only help based on the knowledge I do have. I’m also someone who tends to be a bit “brutally” honest rather than sugar coating it, so hope that’s ok. I’m also in the process of learning more about the short run market including how sites like Zazzle (and about 1000 others) work, where they have an almost infinite range and basically only print each t-shirt one by one as it’s ordered.
Firstly you are right about transfers – they aren’t ideal in most cases. There are some really expensive brands that do use transfers, I’ve just got a mental blank who, but it’s more for selected designs where they WANT a like boxy design in a square on the front. Doing them based on price for designs that should be done another way isn’t ideal.
That said there are massive variations in quality of transfers. A digitally printed transfer done by a signwriter on the wrong stock will be terrible. A litho-offset transfer like those done by someone like this company https://www.facebook.com/tshirtworld are actually pretty good. Digital ones are never as good, but the ones by http://www.proprintgroup.com.au/services/ are much better than most.OK,
So back to the ways people do this.The print on demand crowd, people like zazzle and their smaller competitors who do one off prints as they are ordered, do one of two things:
1) Direct to garment printing. They print one of each design as it’s ordered, but run software that batches all the different orders together and just prints all the different designs one after the other. In fact their website links to the printer, and the chosen standard design or a design uploaded by the customer. They make it work by doing tons of individual orders making big volume overall, and cutting out almost all human design work – it’s almost totally automated.
2) One colour plotter cut transfers Some smaller operators specialise in simple one position one colour designs, usually white on a coloured garment. They do this via a transfer that basically cuts out the symbol/lettering on a type of plotter, and it’s then ironed on. There is no actual printing in this case.Most commercial t-shirts you see in shops are screenprinted, in bulk. Designers will trial or test a design via a transfer or DTG system, but not in commercial quantities – they will do test shirts etc, but for commercial quantities for sale will be screenprinted. They basically back themselves and do enough to make it work.
If you are considering importing, make sure you take into consideration all the costs. On an order of 40 shirts you mention the freight cost may be half the cost of the shirts, and it suddenly isn’t as cheap as you think! Re the factories you are talking to, they may be willing to do that as a trial run, but they will quickly lose interest if by your third order the sizes don’t increase. I’ve got away with telling factories something is a “trial run” because I want a small order of something obscure for a client, and it’s a one off. It’s a game you have to play. But hoping they will do it more than once or twice for you is unlikely. And the more often you change factories, the more risk you put yourself at.
Also buying from China, be prepared that something WILL go wrong if you do it often enough, particularly if you are just relying on alibaba factory reports. At a minimum we will get a pre production sample to check before mass production (sent to Australia to physically check), and then in most cases hire an inspection company like asiainspection.com to do a physical inspection before they are shipped. But at $300 a day, it’s not viable on once off small orders. Generally for a 1 colour print I tend to print anything 2500 or less in Australia, and for say a multi colour print, anything under 500 in Australia. Of course you may get lucky and find an awesome factory who wants to deal with you, has good price, good quality, reliable, will do small orders etc. If you do, foster the hell out of the relationship – they are few and far between.
Perhaps you need to rethink your distribution model. Can you partner with an existing site or online retailer who has their own DTG equipment and prints to order? Because going it alone without owning a DTG yourself, but not willing to do decent batches, I don’t see working.
Or in other words – lots of 1 by 1 orders can work. Big batches work. I don’t see anyone being successful doing tiny batches (and 25 is TINY, anything under 250 is a small order even though it may not seem to be to you).
Matt
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