Custom Merchandise With No Money Upfront

Custom merchandise can be:

• Tees, Hoodies, and other garments
• Water bottles, backpacks, and custom shoes
• Stickers, canvas, and mugs

Custom merchandise has been around forever – being sold by bands, organizations, clubs, and businesses. There’s a wide variety of options with custom merchandise, and we’ll go over some of the basics in this chapter – so you’ll be armed with the knowledge of what you’re getting into before you get into it!

First, let’s talk about the lay of the land. Then we’ll talk about who is operating in the landscape, the product journey of the merchandise product, and finally, we’ll talk about how to choose a distributor for your products.

Custom merchandise tech advances

There have been a lot of advances in the technological world of fashion and what’s called “print on demand” merchandise. We’ll get into the ins and outs of print on demand later in the guide, but for now, we can think of this as “products that can be sold by anyone”. But – not just any products – amazing, cool, and interesting products created by you and for your audience! We know that these are exactly the types of products you hope to make and that’s exactly why we’re in this business, to bring your vision to life and to help you to be as successful as you know that you can be.

Lay of the custom merchandise land

In a bit, we’ll talk about the types of products that you can sell and what’s widely sold online by people just like yourself. What’s the landscape of the custom merchandise market?

We Have:

• Clothing lines
• Distributors
• Printing companies 
• Sole proprietors 

Clothing lines or clothing companies, or even merch or accessory manufacturers – make “blanks”. A company like American Apparel will have a store and sell directly to the public, but also make their clothing available for printing or printers. These “blank” clothes become the basis for printed products that can show up in stores or on websites of influencers. These blank products are just that – ready to be printed on and to 

Other large companies may even manufacture a separate brand of clothing – marketed differently and under a different name – to supply for the print and custom merchandise market. These clothing lines aren’t necessarily of poor quality – a lot of times they can be just as good as many of the designer brands that you find in stores! Accessories can also be high quality and don’t have to be knocked off or dollar store level products. Of course, large clothing lines are not the only ones in the custom merchandise field. There are also many accessories and product manufacturers outside of clothing that is also very active in the industry.

The custom merchandise journey

Choosing a custom merchandise distributor

For this reason, it pays to investigate the type of custom merchandise distributor you’d like to work with. Shipping times lead times and inventory are some of the biggest concerns for custom merchandise sellers, and this can all be heavily influenced by your choice of distributor. If your band is just starting in Austin, it may be wise to choose a distributor located to Austin simply because your initial range of customers will be there, though you may end up selling to the entire world! 

Choosing a distributor, consider:

• your customer base
• availability of product at the distributor
• quality
• cost

With Printify, you can always easily change this later. If you can only find the type of custom merchandise distributor of the product or products you want to sell far away from where your customer base is then you must include this information when selling the items. 

It does not do any good to choose a distributor based on cost alone when many other factors can influence your business’s profitability. From the type of products sold to the shipping time the reputation of the distributor and also the price there are many factors to consider when choosing which distributors to work with. 

Simple sells

However, would you believe us if we told you that some of the best selling, effective products are the simplest? Many of the highest selling products from our largest vendors and influencers are simple slogans and catchphrases printed on black or white t-shirts.

This does not take a lot of design skills that will walk you through all of the steps necessary to make your custom merchandise.

1. Choosing a custom merchandise design

The first step is to have an idea of what you would like to sell. If you are an influencer or other well-known internet personality, then you should put your brand front and center in your products. Your products should promote your brand. It’s one of your fans purchases your products and is seen in the street by another one of your fans, they should recognize your signature catchphrase design logo or other call-back to you and your brand. In fact, these are the number one sellers among influencers and other marketers.

If you do not have a brand and I trying to operate in a niche or other market, you need to choose your design wisely. What inspires you, what inspires those that you want to buy your products? These are the first questions you should ask yourself when thinking about your design. The next question to ask yourself is what type of products you going to put your design on. We’ve analyzed the most popular placement for Logos and phrases on the most popular products sold by influencers on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. You should have a look at those articles to give you a great idea of the types of things that are selling to the same type of audience you’re hoping to sell into.

2. How to make a custom merchandise a design

Self made vs freelancer

If you’re not particularly gifted as a creative or artistic person, the next thing you need to do is consider who can help you to make a design. You want to first talk to friends and family as they’re the ones who can sit down with you for a long time and hash things out and typically won’t charge you a lot of money to do so. 

Tip

You can save a little by hiring a new or less experienced freelancer and they may be just as talented and creative as a more established freelancer.

Custom merchandise design placement

So, where are we putting this cool logo on your products? The placement of your design is important, and also covered in our analysis, so take a look at the successful sellers out there and how they’re achieving their success. 

The Most Popular Placement for Designs on Garments:

• Front and Center
• Back and Center
• Front, Center and Sleeves
• Breast pocket

The Most Popular Products Are:

• Tees 
• Hoodies
• Mugs
• Hats
• Stickers

This is great news for the new seller like yourself. It means that you can get off the ground and running with very little effort on those first few designs if your brand allows for this.

Another design idea is the all-over-print or AOP. Take a look at how you can adapt or create new exciting designs for all over print shirts, and let your creativity shine through. These shirts or other products are trendy and can do very well for store owners. Other areas of placement are the back and shoulders and also along the sleeves. Depending on your design, all could be appropriate, but it depends on exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your clothing or product lineup. 

Lessons learned

We’ve taken you through the types of designs that are successful, how to create your first design or how to find a designer if you’re unable to do it yourself. We’ve also emphasized that you do not need a highly creative or amazing design to be a successful merch seller – the most successful sellers have very simple designs or slogans. We also went over the placement of the design and how you can mimic.

Now let’s take a look at what custom merchandise and print on demand can do together, read on to the next section to find out!

The reigning champ – unisex heavy cotton tee

If you’re looking for the number one seller across all stores and industries, then look no further than the unisex heavy cotton tee. It comes in many flavors, with color and sizes combinations totaling in the hundreds, we’re certain that this is one of the best places for you to start. After all – thousands of store owners selling tens of thousands of shirts every day 

Challenger – unisex jersey short sleeved tee

If you’re looking for the number one seller across all stores and industries, then look no further than the unisex heavy cotton tee. It comes in many flavors, with color and sizes combinations totaling in the hundreds, we’re certain that this is one of the best places for you to start. After all – thousands of store owners selling tens of thousands of shirts every day 

White ceramic mug

The coffee mug. Simple, basic, and popular! This is a great addition to your collection if you’re putting clever or witty graphics onto your merch. It’s also the perfect way to spread a message or to give as a funny gift to colleagues. It’s no wonder is so popular, and it’s a wonderful addition to your store and your bottom line if you use it correctly!

Sublimation socks

Ever see a fun pair of socks on someone and think, I can’t believe they made that? Well, believe it, because socks are big business! Our all-over-print or sublimation socks are also an extremely popular item. Versatile and cute, they’re a comfy way to showcase playful, active designs. If your brand is all about fun, active and playful messaging, this is a great product for you.

Unisex heavy blend sweatshirt

The classic hooded sweatshirt perfect for warming up on cool nights, and also a fantastic addition to any merch store. This is one of our most popular selling products, and with good reason, it’s a wardrobe staple for nearly everyone! Your design can fit in the front center, back, or along the sleeves. It’s a versatile garment for almost any type of store, catalog or influencer marketer. We recommend taking a look at this for your store!

How to sell custom merchandise?

Now you have your designs, you’ve chosen your products, but where will you sell your products? You have a few options, a lot of them depend on your technical prowess and how much effort you’re going to be able to put into your store. If you’re an influencer or you’re a Youtuber or similar internet brand, you might consider a platform like Etsy or Shopify to sell your platforms. If you’re established and have a web presence and are using a platform like WordPress, the easiest thing to do might be to add eCommerce functionality with the Woocommerce plugin. 

Selling without an audience

How do you get started selling custom merchandise? Two options:

1. On a platform

Etsy and eBay provide you with a great opportunity to take advantage of the traffic and clicks that these large companies generate. These are good choices if you do not have an audience already that you’ve built up from Instagram, Youtube, or another platform because they will provide you with traffic. It’s an important consideration – if you don’t have customers, you won’t be able to sell. The built-in, free traffic these platforms provide make your job of selling a lot easier. The downside is that you’ll be paying commission rates to the platforms, which can be steep. Etsy charges a flat 5% commission rate for everything sold, plus a 3% + 25¢ commission if you use their payment platform. eBay charges a 10% fee for most categories of goods, up to $750 total, plus a listing fee after your first 50 listings in a month. 

2. “Self hosted”

Your next option, if you don’t want to use these platforms, is using a platform like Shopify or WordPress with Woocommerce. Keep in mind that you’ll still have to pay a fee for these platforms, but it will be a transaction fee based on the purchases with the payment provider. With Shopify, you’ll have a flat fee of $29 plus the transaction fees for their basic plan. 

Selling custom merchandise with an audience

If you have an audience already, you can save yourself a lot of money by using Shopify or by using Woocommerce with WordPress. This is the usual solution for Youtubers or influencers that have a built-in audience and are looking to expand their online earnings with some merch sales. If you’re growing your audience and want to start to monetize it, you can dip your toe in the water with just a few items, or launch a whole series of products based on several designs. 

You’ll need to settle on your designs as we talked about above. However, we can tell you the best bet is to stay on brand. If you have a catchphrase or other associated logo or design that your followers will instantly recognize as your own, that’s what you want to lead with. Another thing you’ll want to do is order a sample of your merch product, get it right, and then show it on your channel or to your audience. A lot of Youtubers have even started to wear only their merch in their videos, for example. 

We’ve also published guides for how to sell best with platforms like Shopify, and what the top-selling Youtubers are selling. Another great resource is our Youtube potential earnings calculator, check it out if you are wondering how much your audience could start to earn you. 

Using advertising

Still, a third option is to buy traffic and send it to your site. This is the most difficult strategy because you have to get the “conversion rate” right, meaning the number of people that you pay and subsequently purchase your products. A standard conversion rate for eCommerce is 5%, meaning only about 5% of your visitors will purchase what you’re selling with advertising. 

PPC ads

Using pay per click search ads like Google Ads, or social media ads like Facebook ads can generate a lot of traffic for your site. It’s also important that it’s the right kind of traffic – traffic that will buy your products. It’s very difficult, if you have no experience in online advertising, to get your audience right – that’s what professional online marketers do, and sometimes it can take months to get it profitable. 

Social media ads

Social media platforms are great for advertising and present a low-cost option that helps you get a very targeted audience. If you are selling mainly to online gamers, and especially a specific game, then Facebook will help you reach that audience quite easily. Some Instagrammers have also had success in selling custom merchandise with Instagram shoppable posts. While platforms like Facebook and Instagram are great tools for selling, agin it comes down to knowing how to use these platforms in order to make the most of your budget.

 One thing to be careful about with social media platforms is that the goal of the platform is to maximize your time on the platform – so the platform itself and the users don’t like things that take them away from the platform – like your site! That’s why conversions can be difficult with social media.

Do your research

For these reasons, you shouldn’t dive into paid traffic sources without doing a lot of research first, and also determining if your profit model can sustain these types of expenses. It’s possible to waste a lot of money on advertising before you even sell your first product – so be careful and make sure you fully understand your strategy and costs before you dive into online advertising!