Why You Should Pass on That T-shirt Company Idea

Spreading like Wildfire

Lately, everywhere I look it seems as if opening up a t-shirt printing business is the modern way to make online riches. To be honest, these companies have been popping up for some time, and some have really cool designs that have been commissioned by artists. Usually, they have a nice website set up with all kinds of printable products for purchase. Everything from t-shirts to mugs, posters, and hats you name it and they can print it for you. Now, you might have considered jumping into this business model and giving it a try.

The business looks good up until you realize that you are not the only one doing this. In fact, it seems so popular, that everyone is trying it out. Let’s imagine that you start out building your own t-shirt printing business. You then find out that your cousin started his own last week. You share your idea with your friend, and now he’s starting his own as well.

You even go online, and read some forums, and everyone on there seems to be in different stages of deploying their own t-shirt design company. What the hell is going on here? With the very low cost of entry to get started, there is virtually nothing to stop a person from jumping into this. Not only that, but most are probably using the same fulfillment services. These days one of the most popular names that I keep hearing of, is a company called printful.

Joining the Herd

So now, everyone is using printful to process their orders, and have t-shirts made, and sent out to their customers. Well, that would be great if you were actually getting enough sales. Now, I don’t know about you but i’m not willing to spent $30 dollars on a t-shirt with just some basic writing on it. Especially not when I can get something a lot nicer locally, and get it today. And while your t-shirt design is a pretty clever idea, I could have sworn that I saw another site selling something similar, perhaps for even less.

On the back end it’s not uncommon to stumble upon posts of t-shirt business owners not doing so well. The most common complaint I see is of the profit margin being minuscule, and competition being so high (I wonder why!). It seems that the only winners out of this business model are the t-shirt fulfillment companies themselves. Sure there are those that claim to be making a killing selling t-shirts, and other printable media but who knows what the truth really is. At the end of the day it all comes down to one simple piece of advice.

Listen to your Elders

It’s the same advice that your parents have given you since the beginning. “If it’s too good to be true, than it probably is”. There will of course always be exceptions to every rule in the book, but in order to be that exception, you must be exceptional at what you do. Be honest with yourself, are you exceptional with what you are doing right now? Selling t-shirts?

Using a third party fulfillment center that’s taking most of the profits? Leaving you with just enough to maybe continue to run your store, and send the fulfillment center orders? Aren’t you fed up with your competition ripping off whatever clever idea you are able to come up with? Why are you putting yourself in such a position with such low profit margins, and such high stress loads? There are plenty of other, better ways to create an income using the internet.

Conclusion

In my opinion starting a t-shirt company is not a viable long term option. A quick visit to google, and searching for “start a tshirt company” will bring up plenty of reasons why you should pass on this idea. Most of the results display something like this “How to start a tshirt business in 24 hours with very little investment, and with less than $100” Why would you want to waste your valuable time on something that anyone with a little know how, and less than $100 can do? There is already immense competition, and at the end of the day you aren’t going to make much profit out of it, if any at all. As with many business opportunities, there is usually a very profitable period of time in the beginning before anyone else catches wind of the idea.

After that the sector gets saturated with competition and profits normalize. That’s where we currently are at with this idea. So if you are considering going down this path, I strongly recommend passing this one by.

What are your thoughts on starting a t-shirt printing business? Please leave your comments below. I read each and every one.