If you’re on Reddit, Twitter or any number of other places on the interwebs, you probably heard about Sujan Patel and how he made a half million dollars with free t-shirts. It’s a great story! You can check it out here.
You don’t have to give shirts away for free to make some serious dough with t-shirts, though.
After reading this, you’ll understand how and why custom t-shirt printing is the way to boom your revenue.
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Little Marketing Budget, Big Return
From its earliest days, Starbucks has given away free cups of water. That might not sound like a big deal, but places like McDonald’s would charge people 10 cents per cup.
Starbucks saw the value in brand recognition. Any logo-imprinted merch out there increased brand recognition.
To this day, Starbucks gives free cups of water away, gives reusable cups as part of certain marketing campaigns, and sells all kinds of branded cups as part of their business branding saturation model.
Even small promotional products campaigns can have a big impact!
Okay, so t-shirts do cost more than a plastic cup of water. However, they also have much greater longevity.
Comparatively, an apparel advertising campaign is still a very inexpensive marketing campaign. T-shirts are like a walking billboard! A physical billboard costs as little as $400/month in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or as much as $3 million/month in Times Square, New York City. Your home market probably lands somewhere in between those two figures. But even at the low end, you can print lots of t-shirts for $400/month!
Brand Engagement = Brand Ambassadors
Consumers have changed.
You could blame the internet and then social media, or Netflix without commercials, or constant advertising and a loathing of pop-up ads. Whatever. The point is, that advertisers have had to learn to adapt to a changing landscape and consumer reception to perceived advertising.
The largest generation in the US is the millennials. They’ve also been subjected to more advertising than any generation before them. As a result of some of the factors named above and other cultural shifts, they interact with brands differently.
Individual messaging, brands with purpose, authenticity–these are the kinds of things Millennials value.
Millennials are also generally super savvy about quality.
Fortunately, t-shirt marketing fits this demographic well. A t-shirt can be anything from totally casual to super professional–throw on a blazer and they are meeting-ready.
You can get your t-shirts inexpensively and dress your employees in them, sell them to customers or give them away. However you distribute your apparel campaign, the cool factor of a great t-shirt is a wonderful way to meet a large demographic market and then build them up as brand ambassadors.
When they wear your shirt, they do your advertising for you.
These are Not Your Mama’s Custom T-Shirts
Here’s another way the world has changed: t-shirts are so much better than they used to be!
The stiff, hot, itchy shapeless t-shirts of the past that only a brand loyalist would wear have been replaced by the best custom t-shirts your high school self could have ever imagined. Today’s custom printed t-shirts:
- Come in a practically limitless number of fabrics.
- Can be epically comfortable, like wear-every-single-day-because-you-love-them comfortable.
- Can be printed, embroidered, or otherwise custom-created to exactly match your specifications.
- Can have a perfect design, done by computer and custom machinery, which comes out just right every time.
- Can have your own private t-shirt label.
Depending on the company you can also get custom t-shirts, no minimum order.
That’s the way we do our custom t-shirt printing: made to order with your exact specifications with no minimum.
We even offer YouTuber merch drop shipping services. Drop shipping and fulfillment mean you do not need to keep an inventory. We connect directly with your sales system and handle everything from printing to delivery for your customers. It’s become a super popular option because then you get just what you need, when you need it, directly into the hands of your customer.
So whatever happened with Sujan? Not only did he ultimately make a total of over $980 million with his t-shirt marketing campaign, but he sold that company and went on to take his apparel branding campaign to his next company.
Be like Sujan and use t-shirt printing to boom your revenue.
Contact us to get started!
