"How hard and expensive is it to start your on line of designer t shirts focused on young adults 18-30"

CafePress is an excellent option for you to try out your ideas, designs and grow your business as a first step. You can design any t-shirt (or other clothing items) by simply uploading the image directly. The cost is quite reasonable as well. Personally, I have used this site to do shirts for various organizations (non-profit usually) and have been pleasantly surprised with the quality of work. This is likely not a long term solution for you but might be a perfect way to try your hand out at the clothing business without too much up front costs, etc. As you business grows, you can move on to other avenues.

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CafePress.com is an online marketplace that offers sellers complete e-commerce services to independently create and sell a wide variety of products, and offers buyers unique merchandise across virtually every topic. Launched in 1999, CafePress.com has empowered individuals, organizations and businesses to create, buy and sell customized merchandise online using the company's unique print-on-demand and e-commerce services. Today, CafePress.com is a growing network of over 2.5 million members who have unleashed their creativity to transform their artwork and ideas into unique gifts and new revenue streams.

Our members have created over 35 million unique products on customizable merchandise ranging from apparel, home and office accessories to music and data CDs and books to prints, posters and cards.

Powering independently-run shops as well as syndicated and corporate stores, we manage every aspect of doing business online, including storefront development, site hosting, order management, fulfillment, secure payment processing, and quality customer service - enabling anyone to open a free shop with no upfront costs and no inventory to manage. CafePress.com is a privately owned, profitable company based in Foster City, California.

CafePress.com Services

CafePress.com® Marketplace: In the CafePress.com Marketplace, a dynamic online retail experience, visitors will find over 35 million unique products created by members around the globe. No matter what your passion, there's a product for you.

Create & SellSM: Through the CafePress.com Create & Sell service, customers are able to open an online shop to transform their artwork and ideas into new revenue streams and diverse products - all with no upfront costs and no inventory to manage.

Create & BuySM: The CafePress.com Create & Buy service empowers people to personalize their own gifts. Customers can add their own personal touch to more than 80 products - all with a few clicks of the mouse.

Independent Shopkeepers & Major Accounts

CafePress.com is a global and growing network of over 2.5 million independent shopkeepers and members in addition to syndicated and corporate stores. CafePress.com has over 50 major accounts, including March of Dimes, Dilbert, Wikipedia, Noggin and STARTREK.COM. In addition, CafePress.com has strategic agreements with licensors that include more than 90 properties.

Fun Facts

* What's Your Passion?TM — politics, babies, music, pets, sci-fi, knitting — there's something for everyone at CafePress.com
* The CafePress.com web site averages 9 million unique visits per month
* Approximately 1500 new, independent shops join the CafePress.com network each day
* As of June 2006, over 3 million orders had been shipped to customers spanning the globe
* Roughly 45,000 new, unique products are added each day
* The most popular item is the white T-Shirt; over three-quarters of a million standard white T-Shirts were purchased in the first six years
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At CafePress.com, you can create and sell a variety of customizable products with zero upfront costs and zero inventory investment.

You can sell

* Merchandise you design including t-shirts, posters, mugs, bumper stickers and much more.
* Books printed on-demand. Learn more
* Audio and Data CDs. Learn more

What CafePress.com does

1. Gives you a FREE online shop to promote your products
2. Produces each item when ordered using our unique print-on-demand technology
3. Handles all payment transactions including major credit cards
4. Ships your products worldwide
5. Manages all returns/exchanges
6. Offers customer service via toll-free phone and email
7. Sends you a monthly check for your earnings on sales!
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Can I really make money?

Yes! Some of our shopkeepers earn over $100,000 a year. Premium Shops earn 10X more than Basic shops on average. Plus thousands of members earn a steady stream of income through their CafePress.com shop.

Read how one shopkeeper generated higher revenue and built more buzz for his art work by upgrading to a CafePress.com Premium Shop.
How it works:
Each product has a Base Price that includes all fees associated with selling. You simply set your retail price above the Base Price. When you sell an item, we keep the base price and we send you the markup.

For example:

* Value T-Shirt has a base price of $8.99
* You decide to markup the price to $13.99
* When you sell one shirt, you generate earnings of $5.00
* We send you a commission check for your total markups once per month
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How much does it cost?

With our Basic Shop, you can start selling for free. And, there are no inventory costs associated with selling products through either a Basic or Premium Shop.

Each item you sell has a base price. You simply markup the base price by the amount you wish to earn for each product you sell. When you sell a product, we keep the base price and you earn the markup.

If you are serious about making money on CafePress.com, we suggest you check out our Premium Shops service. Premium Shops cost $6.95 at the monthly rate, or as little as $4.99 per month at the yearly rate. There are additional benefits associated with a Premium Shop to help you sell more. Learn more
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If you're looking for some tres-fancy type of cotton or three-quarter sleeves trimmed in gold and amber, maybe not, but CafePress.com is the place for you. You can create your own designs, sayings, whatever your heart decides.

The best part is that you have no inventory carrying costs and your customers choose what they want to create, based on the settings you allow, of course.  Be careful of infringing on people's trademarks.  Check the federal trademark office (USPTO).

If you're talking about something entirely different, you're going to have find a promotions company (there are literally hundreds, if not a thousand, of them).  They have an association, the Promotion Marketing Association, that has some good, free information.  If you didn't go the CafePress create-on-demand method, you would have to purchase the shirts, pay to have them printed, promote on the web or elsewhere and then ship them yourself or you could sell to stores.

My advice?  Start slowly:  use CafePress and promote your work there.  See if your ideas sell.  If so, you may choose to go the second route to lower your price.  If not, you're not out big money.

Try selling stuff at Cafepress.com or Esty.com  both specialize in newbies.

 

Then, of course, there's Ebay.  Once you have a base, some other sellers may pick up your designs.

 

Get your own website as well.

 

And send samples to stores that you want to carry your stuff!

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Starting a Clothing Line Business Part 2

Apparel manufacturing is one of the most in-demand businesses today. Find out how to start and run a clothing business.
by Jenny Fulbright
PowerHomeBiz Staff Writer





The First Step
Knowing Your Market
How to Enter the Market
The Question of Production
Financing the Business
Resources

(article continued below ...)




How To Enter The Market

Before you begin creating a sample product, you must first identify your potential clients and how are you going to sell to them.

There are several ways of meeting potential