3 ms·

What's the actual business model?

by bliti 13y ago

davismwfl 13y ago
We started with two goals one to help people replace those old shirts that are not easy to find anymore and two, provide some pop-culture and slightly off color shirts (not unlike others), that are unique and custom designs. Not sold by hundreds of resellers. Our value proposition beyond custom designs is that we stock almost all our shirts and you aren't being asked to pay shipping and handling fees etc. We just do a flat cost for the shirt shipped to you (INTL orders do have an added shipping fee). Although I see an A/B test lining up over this, given a couple of comments about cost.
- bliti 13y ago
  If you are experiencing low conversion numbers, then your model might be incorrect. Have you tried selling the tshirts offline? If people will buy them from you, then you will have designs that people will buy online. Another member made this point, but I'll repeat it. The design of the site is not very usable, and looks outdated. You should look into that, because tshirts fall inside the fashion industry. Where design is #1.
  - davismwfl 13y ago
    So we do sell offline but we target the audiences based on location or an event etc, and a few of the designs are brand new so we don't have a check point on those 3 yet. I think you and the other member(s) are right, conversions are suffering because of the design. Hence job 1 is to change it. The odd part is looking at the other t-shirt sites that are popular and doing well their designs seem to be only so-so, and overall look like they were stamped from a mold. Also most are not mobile friendly at all, we are at least mostly responsive and operational on a mobile device too. This is not to say we made some radically cool design that is better, obviously, plus we used a template to save time for the initial launch. We were trying to do some things differently, like not cramming shirt designs with no whitespace and hiding prices until you get into the details of the shirt, or in a lot of cases until you go to checkout. I was trying to not do that but obviously these other sites design must work. And since ours is lacking a conversion rate I would call successful, we have to adapt. I also evaluated price again today when I was bouncing around other sites. Someone else brought that up, which to me is always worth evaluating. Overall for those sites using the same quality shirts, once you checkout they we are all within a few dollars of each other, with us being middle of the pack usually. There are some shirts that are high discount mass produced tees that you can get for 19 shipped. I am thinking we are also suffering though because we don't call it out in a bold way saying shipping is always free in the US. That could make people see a $18-25 shirt and they mentally do the math of another 6-8 dollars and say hell no thats way too expensive. So I think we need to figure out a much clearer way to communicate our value prop on that front. I always appreciate feedback, and the fact people here are generally direct and don't load each other with BS . Thanks again for taking the time.
    - bliti 13y ago
      Good luck!

What's the actual business model?

by bliti 13y ago

What's the actual business model?

We started with two goals one to help people replace those old shirts that are not easy to find anymore and two, provide some pop-culture and slightly off color shirts (not unlike others), that are unique and custom designs. Not sold by hundreds of resellers. Our value proposition beyond custom designs is that we stock almost all our shirts and you aren't being asked to pay shipping and handling fees etc. We just do a flat cost for the shirt shipped to you (INTL orders do have an added shipping fee). Although I see an A/B test lining up over this, given a couple of comments about cost.

bliti 13y ago
If you are experiencing low conversion numbers, then your model might be incorrect. Have you tried selling the tshirts offline? If people will buy them from you, then you will have designs that people will buy online. Another member made this point, but I'll repeat it. The design of the site is not very usable, and looks outdated. You should look into that, because tshirts fall inside the fashion industry. Where design is #1.
- davismwfl 13y ago
  So we do sell offline but we target the audiences based on location or an event etc, and a few of the designs are brand new so we don't have a check point on those 3 yet. I think you and the other member(s) are right, conversions are suffering because of the design. Hence job 1 is to change it. The odd part is looking at the other t-shirt sites that are popular and doing well their designs seem to be only so-so, and overall look like they were stamped from a mold. Also most are not mobile friendly at all, we are at least mostly responsive and operational on a mobile device too. This is not to say we made some radically cool design that is better, obviously, plus we used a template to save time for the initial launch. We were trying to do some things differently, like not cramming shirt designs with no whitespace and hiding prices until you get into the details of the shirt, or in a lot of cases until you go to checkout. I was trying to not do that but obviously these other sites design must work. And since ours is lacking a conversion rate I would call successful, we have to adapt. I also evaluated price again today when I was bouncing around other sites. Someone else brought that up, which to me is always worth evaluating. Overall for those sites using the same quality shirts, once you checkout they we are all within a few dollars of each other, with us being middle of the pack usually. There are some shirts that are high discount mass produced tees that you can get for 19 shipped. I am thinking we are also suffering though because we don't call it out in a bold way saying shipping is always free in the US. That could make people see a $18-25 shirt and they mentally do the math of another 6-8 dollars and say hell no thats way too expensive. So I think we need to figure out a much clearer way to communicate our value prop on that front. I always appreciate feedback, and the fact people here are generally direct and don't load each other with BS . Thanks again for taking the time.
  - bliti 13y ago
    Good luck!