Creating Viral Merch: Best-Selling T-Shirt Strategies

T-shirts are a staple of the fashion industry and a powerful form of personal expression. The T-shirt market is diverse and ever-growing, with new opportunities for innovation and reinvention.

If you're looking to create a best-selling T-shirt, there are several steps you can take to increase your chances of success. From finding your niche and understanding your target audience to designing, producing, and marketing your product, here's a comprehensive guide to help you navigate the process.

First, identify your niche and passion. What sets your T-shirt brand apart from others? Is it music-themed, art-focused, or making a fashion statement? Understanding your unique value proposition will help guide your design and marketing strategies.

Next, conduct market research to understand customer needs and preferences. Use online surveys, social media, and consumer trend analysis to gather insights that will inform your design choices and marketing approach.

Designing your T-shirt is where creativity comes into play. You can create the design yourself using software and tools like Canva, or hire designers and artists to bring your vision to life. Consider the style, colours, and any additional customisation options you want to offer.

Once you have a design, gather feedback from potential customers and influencers to refine and improve it. You can use social media polls, surveys, and contests to gauge interest and make any necessary adjustments.

After finalising your design, it's time to choose a printing method. Common methods include direct-to-garment printing, screen printing, and sublimation printing. Each has its advantages and considerations in terms of colour options, precision, and printing time.

Decide on your production and fulfilment process. You can manually handle printing and fulfilment or partner with print-on-demand services that manage printing, shipping, and customer service.

Establish your online store by choosing e-commerce software that suits your needs and integrates well with your fulfilment process. Don't forget to build a security and compliance framework to protect your customers' data.

Finally, market your T-shirts using social media influencers, retargeting campaigns, giveaways, and multimedia content. Collaborate with influencers who share your target audience, and create engaging content to build a community around your brand.

Remember, success in the T-shirt business requires creativity, adaptability, and a deep understanding of your target market. By following these steps and staying attuned to market trends, you'll be well on your way to creating a best-selling T-shirt.

Choose a niche

Choosing a niche is an important step in the process of creating and selling merchandise. It helps you target a specific audience and differentiate your products from competitors. Here are some tips to help you choose the right niche for your T-shirt business:

• Identify your passion and interests: Building a T-shirt business requires effort, so it's essential to focus on something you enjoy. This will keep you motivated and inspired throughout the process.
• Understand your target audience: Research and analyse what your potential customers are interested in. Use tools like online surveys, social media hashtags, and consumer research to gather insights.
• Solve a problem: Consider creating T-shirts that serve a specific purpose or solve a common issue. For example, Thompson Tee, a company founded by people with hyperhidrosis, offers sweat-proof undershirts.
• Narrow down your niche: Instead of choosing a broad category like "funny T-shirts," try to find sub-niches. For instance, you could focus on "T-shirts with slogans about doctors" or "funny T-shirts for dog owners." This will help you target a specific group of customers.
• Estimate the market value: Use tools like Facebook IQ Audience Insights, subreddit subscriber counts, and Google Keyword Planner to gauge the size and interest of your chosen niche.
• Analyse the competition: Look at what other successful T-shirt businesses are doing. See how they cater to specific niches and try to find your unique angle.
• Consider your interests and communities: Think about the communities you belong to and your own interests. Choosing a niche that aligns with your passions can make the process more enjoyable and help you connect with like-minded customers.
• Be specific: The more specific your niche is, the easier it will be to target your marketing efforts and engage with passionate customers.

Source materials and printing partners

The first step to creating a best-selling T-shirt is to identify your niche and target audience. This will help you understand what type of T-shirt your customers will want to wear and enable you to seek out the right partners for production and printing.

When choosing the type of T-shirt, consider whether you will be partnering with wholesale T-shirt manufacturers or working with a custom textile manufacturer. If you are creating an eco-friendly or sustainable brand, you will need to source materials that align with this. Ethical Tee Company, for example, offers a range of sweatshop-free, organic, and climate-neutral T-shirts made from sustainable materials.

Once you have chosen your T-shirt type, you can move on to selecting a printing method. There are three main methods to consider: direct-to-garment (DTG) printing, screen printing, and sublimation printing. DTG printing is similar to printing on paper and allows for extensive color options and precise details. Screen printing involves pushing ink through a woven mesh stencil, one color at a time. Sublimation printing infuses a layer of ink directly into the fabric, resulting in a larger print area.

If you do not have T-shirt printing experience, consider working with a professional printer who can help you determine the best approach based on your budget and desired quality. You can also look into print-on-demand services, such as Printify, which prints and ships items directly to your customers, eliminating the need for inventory and upfront costs.

Additionally, you may want to create sustainable choices whenever possible. Gen Z, in particular, is leading a growing movement of shoppers who are making more conscious decisions about their purchases. You can achieve this by communicating with your vendors and partners about strategies for carbon offsets, production efficiency, green energy, and materials selection.

Create designs

The design of your T-shirts is, of course, one of the most important aspects of creating a best-selling merchandise T-shirt. Here are some tips to help you create designs that will resonate with your target audience and, most importantly, drive sales.

• Know your audience: Understanding your target market and their motivations is key to creating a successful T-shirt design. Take the time to dig deeper and truly comprehend what is important to them. Put yourself in their shoes to create an authentic design that resonates with them.
• Brainstorm and create multiple design ideas: Start by brainstorming as many ideas as possible, and then narrow down your concepts to a more manageable selection. If you're new to selling T-shirts online, aim for at least five unique designs, each catering to your target audience from a different angle.
• Select the best ideas: Choose the strongest concepts that are most likely to appeal to your audience. Look for humour, puns, wordplay, or parody, depending on what would be appropriate for your target market. Keep in mind that simplicity is often more effective than complexity.
• Limit your colour palette: Using too many colours can make your design look less professional and aesthetically pleasing. Reducing the number of colours can also help your audience understand the message faster. Additionally, limiting colours can help communicate that the design is meant for a T-shirt, even when viewed in isolation (not mocked up on a T-shirt).
• Bring it all together: Cohesion is key to a professional-looking design. Introduce interactions and overlaps between text and graphic elements, and include background elements where appropriate. Avoid making your design look like a flat, 2D image unless that is the intended look.
• Keep it simple: While decorative fonts, intricate graphics, and complex designs might seem appealing, simple designs are often more effective in delivering a clear and quick message to your target audience.
• Light designs on dark shirts: Observe the T-shirts people wear in their daily lives. You'll notice that light-coloured designs on black or dark T-shirts are more common than the other way around. Consider creating two versions of a successful design—a dark version for light-coloured shirts and a light version for dark-coloured shirts.
• Chest-height graphics: Place your graphics at chest height, especially for adult shirts, rather than centring the design horizontally and vertically.

Mock up your t-shirts

Mock-ups are an innovative way to present your T-shirt designs to your customers. They allow you to showcase your apparel in different scenes and backgrounds, and in some cases, on models. This is a great way to promote your designs without the expense of a photoshoot.

There are several free online tools that can help you create mock-ups. These include:

• Smartmockups: This tool allows you to upload your image, pick a colour, and download the mock-up. You can choose from a wide range of models, including men, women, and children, in various settings. You can also select from different T-shirt styles and create both photos and 3D renders.
• Unblast: This website offers a selection of free T-shirt mock-ups in PSD format. These are available in high resolution and high quality, with well-organised layers. Some of the mock-ups include: Hanging Crew Neck T-Shirt, T-shirt in Plastic Wrap, Sport T-Shirt, Cotton T-Shirt, and Oversized T-Shirt.

When creating your mock-ups, it is important to consider your target audience and their preferences. Understand what your customers want and need, and tailor your designs to align with their expectations. You can use social media, online surveys, message boards, and consumer research to gather this information.

Additionally, pay attention to market trends and competitor offerings to ensure your designs are relevant and trendy. By combining customer insights with market knowledge, you can create mock-ups that accurately represent your T-shirts and appeal to your target audience.

Validate your designs

Before investing in your new business idea, it is important to test the popularity of your designs. Here are some ways to do that:

• Reach out to your personal social networks: Post a preview of your designs on your social media accounts and ask for feedback. However, be careful when asking friends and family as their opinions may be biased.
• Reddit: Despite the community's general aversion to marketing, Reddit is one of the best places to get honest feedback.
• Crowdfunding sites: Launching a crowdfunding campaign can be time-consuming and requires preparation. However, if you have a novel t-shirt business idea, this could be a good strategy.
• Facebook Groups: Join groups related to your particular area of focus or interest and collect feedback.
• Online communities: Mainstream social media networks aren’t the only online communities out there. Find and join relevant niche networks to share your designs and source ideas.
• Pre-sell your t-shirts: If your company already has an online marketing presence and established customer base, communicate to your customers that you’re testing out a new t-shirt concept and making limited sales.
• Poll your email list: If you have a marketing list and email subscriber base, you can tap into this channel to collect feedback through a survey or poll.
• Run a paid channel advertising campaign: If you have a budget for running ads on Facebook, Instagram, or Amazon, you can set up a portion of your spend to test out designs.
• Work with social media influencers: Collaborate with influencers to host polls, conduct surveys and collect comments. You can also create a contest or sweepstakes.

Mock-up your designs

Once you have final designs, the next step is to produce mockup images. Mockups help you and your customers visualise what the final design will look like when it’s printed on a shirt. You can create mockups using web software or with an image editor like Adobe Photoshop. There are also web-based mockup software that will let you create similar images without having to download Photoshop, such as the Printful Mockup Generator, Placeit Mockup Generator, and Printify T-Shirt Mockup Generator.

Source materials and printing partners

The next step in starting an online t-shirt business is to source your inventory. You’ll need to partner with suppliers or manufacturers that can provide the type of clothing your customers will love. If you plan on selling shirts made by brands and designers, you’ll want to work with a wholesale clothing supplier. If you plan on selling tees with original, unique designs and graphics, you’ll need a custom tee manufacturer.

Create your designs

Your designs don’t need to be complex—in fact, many of the bestselling graphic tees are simple. However, they do need to be unique. If you’re struggling to come up with t-shirt design ideas, try browsing graphic t-shirt marketplaces such as Skreened Trending Shirts, Zazzle Bestsellers & Zazzle Popular, Kickstarter T-Shirt Campaigns, and Redbubble Popular. You can also use Google Trends to see which topics people are currently interested in and use these as inspiration for your t-shirt designs.

Find your niche

Choosing a t-shirt niche can help your online shirt business attract motivated customers. Generally, niches like “t-shirts with funny slogans” are too broad for a new business to successfully compete in. It’s more effective to look for sub-niches and use keyword research tools to find phrases that your target audience is searching for. For example, sub-niches in the funny t-shirts category might be “t-shirts with slogans about doctors” or “funny t-shirts for dog owners.”

Register your business and write a plan

Typically, you don’t need a business license to sell t-shirts online. But, you may need a resale license to buy clothing from a distributor without sales tax. Registering your business is a way of formally recognising your t-shirt store as a legal entity, which can protect your personal assets and provide tax benefits.

Set up your online store

Setting up an online store might sound daunting, but it’s a series of simple steps that anyone can follow. Think of a domain name like your home address on the internet—it’s how your customers find you. Choose a name that’s short, catchy, and easy to remember. Once you’ve picked a name, register it to make it officially yours.

Make your first sales

With your business model in place, you can start generating sales. Here are some simple yet powerful pathways to help you kickstart your customer acquisition engine:

• Work with social media influencers: Collaborate with influencers to create useful content instead of ads.
• Run retargeting campaigns: Once people start visiting your store, run retargeting campaigns on platforms like Instagram to bring them back.
• Host a giveaway or contest: Create a fun social media campaign in collaboration with an influencer or on your own channels.
• Publish multimedia content: People are spending a lot of time online, so reach potential shoppers through digital content and multimedia.
• Start a brand newsletter: Keep audiences engaged by launching a regular newsletter.

Frequently asked questions