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I think you are right about the niche. We started off trying to target and launch some of the Halloween Horror Nights shirts, and hence we rushed to launch a l

I think you are right about the niche. We started off trying to target and launch some of the Halloween Horror Nights shirts, and hence we rushed to launch a little earlier than I would have normally liked. But you nailed it, we aren't trying to be a large reseller and have hundreds of active designs, although I think donkey tees only has a small resale side now. We were shooting more for a niche of some slightly off color, but mostly pop culture topics. The idea was to only keep around 40-50 active designs for order, and to make them a better quality than most others. I'd say its probably an easier road to be a reseller because you can pick designs that have a track record of selling and then just compete on price and service. In our case we are trying to hit a harder target I think, not that the t-shirt business isn't already crowded as hell anyway. And I think a couple of people nailed it, we aren't communicating clearly through our design about what we are doing and why it looks like we are charging more but really are the same price as others because we don't have shipping charges in the US. Thanks for taking time.

hardwaresofton 13y ago
I'm no expert, but to keep down inventory costs, I would think you'd like to keep less than 40/50 designs actually in stock (for example, 10 of every design would make that easily 400/500 shirts, and at maybe $5 a shirt, that might be more expensive than it needs to be, given that you don't know what will sell yet) So maybe you can leverage the social aspect of the internet here to keep your inventory costs down (with a slight hit to speed of delivery?) Also, are you guys looking to custom print? Because I could argue that the money that you were going to spend to purchase inventory could maybe be better spent with a machine that could quickly produce prototypes for the first, say, 50 orders of a new hot design, and then if it escalates, you can get more production. What I guess I'm trying to say is that you could be more elastic with your inventory by sinking your startup cost (or what you were going to pay to GET those initial quantities of the current designs) with a screen printing setup that could print modest qualities (allowing you to iterate faster), and then hook up with bigger printers when necessary

hardwaresofton 13y ago

I'm no expert, but to keep down inventory costs, I would think you'd like to keep less than 40/50 designs actually in stock (for example, 10 of every design would make that easily 400/500 shirts, and at maybe $5 a shirt, that might be more expensive than it needs to be, given that you don't know what will sell yet) So maybe you can leverage the social aspect of the internet here to keep your inventory costs down (with a slight hit to speed of delivery?) Also, are you guys looking to custom print? Because I could argue that the money that you were going to spend to purchase inventory could maybe be better spent with a machine that could quickly produce prototypes for the first, say, 50 orders of a new hot design, and then if it escalates, you can get more production. What I guess I'm trying to say is that you could be more elastic with your inventory by sinking your startup cost (or what you were going to pay to GET those initial quantities of the current designs) with a screen printing setup that could print modest qualities (allowing you to iterate faster), and then hook up with bigger printers when necessary