It’s a common dream among creative types to have their work adorn the bodies of others. But it can be tough to get started selling your custom merchandise. Fortunately, you can start selling on Shopify today with simple steps and the right tools.

Discovering Your Niche and Target Market

Now that you want to start a merchandising business, it’s time to dive into the nitty-gritty. The first thing you need to know about is the market demand. A PR Newswire report shows the custom apparel segment is growing at a CAGR of 7.22% from 2022 to 2027. This shows the market is good and in demand.

The next step in building your merch empire is determining your audience and how they want to be marketed. Also, take a look at the competition. Who else is selling products similar to yours? What do their designs look like? How much are they charging for them? Who buys from them and why?

This research will help inform which niches within your field are worth pursuing and give insight into what types of designs sell best. It also gives clues about which messaging might resonate with different groups within that niche.

For example, if one competitor has robust sales among teenage boys. Still, if another does well among young mothers with small children, there may be room for two successful businesses instead of just one.

Crafting a Strong Brand Identity

Building a solid brand identity is critical to success in any business, especially when selling custom merchandise. Why? Because the more people care about you and your products, the more likely they are to buy from you.

Brand identity is everything. It makes people care about your business, who you are as an entrepreneur, and how well-known your company has become. Branding also gives customers confidence in their purchase decisions because they know they’re getting something unique.

This is what many luxury brands do. They make themselves stand out from others so that the consumers know they are not buying just another Amazon or Walmart product but something different. For this same reason, luxury brand sales increased yearly by 20% to $63.3 billion in 2021, although there was a slump in the Covid times.

Designing Irresistible Custom Merchandise

Designing your merchandise is a great way to build your brand, create a personal connection with your customers and drive sales.

• Build Your Brand: Customized apparel can be used as part of your marketing strategy to help you stand out. Your customers will remember you and what you represent when they see the unique designs on their custom shirts or hoodies.
• Create a Personal Connection with Customers: Personalized gifts help people feel more connected with each other, which is why so many businesses offer them as part of their marketing campaigns and why it’s so essential for them to get these items right. You want these products to look and feel good when someone puts them on. They should make people happy every time they wear them.

Sourcing and Production

The next step is sourcing and production. You’ll want to find a good supplier but must also understand the production process to manage it effectively.

• Quality is paramount. If you don’t get quality products, no one will want them, and no one will buy them, even if they’re cheap. Ensure your suppliers provide high-quality materials, checking their certifications and not cutting corners with less expensive materials or processes.
• Learn about different manufacturing processes before deciding who will produce your designs. This way, when someone asks where they should go for “screen printing,” they know exactly what kind of answer they’re looking for and whether or not it’s even possible with their design.

Screen printing is a competitive space. IBISWorld data shows at least 12,407 custom screen printing businesses in the US in 2023. This means you must focus hard on quality to stand out. According to SignWarehouse, whether you rely on sublimation, laser transfer, or ChromaBlast, choosing the right heat transfer paper can impact the end quality of your products.

When you iron on heat transfer paper, all the prints should be easily transferred to the garments to avoid any quality problems. Hence, if the heat paper you select is not of good quality, it will lead to poor customer experiences.

When you iron on transfer paper, trim the transfer appropriately for the best prints. Ensure cutting all the edges precisely. Preheating the iron is also considered an excellent idea, as it allows for applying heat and pressure efficiently.

Marketing and Promotion

You need to be able to promote your brand, market your products and generate interest in them.

Marketing is creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers by developing mutually beneficial relationships. Marketing is about understanding what people want and using this knowledge to develop products or services that will satisfy these wants and needs.

For people to buy from you, they need to know who you are as a business owner. You also need to provide them with information about what makes your products different from others so they can make an informed decision about whether or not they want yours over someone else’s product or service offering, and if so, why?

Scaling and Managing Growth

Growth is inevitable. You’ll want to prepare for it because it will happen whether you like it. There are a few things you can do to ensure that growth doesn’t consume all of your time and energy:

• The first step in managing growth is planning as much as possible. Ensure that everything has been accounted for before jumping into any new ventures, especially when staffing up. It’s better to hire people slowly than quickly since this will allow you time to find the right talent and ensure they’re adequately trained so they don’t cost more money later on when mistakes happen due to lazy training practices early on.
• Keep customers happy through social media engagement/retention strategies such as:
  • Loyalty programs that give customers points for making future purchases based on their buying frequency
  • Sending out coupons via email newsletters
  • Offering special discounts through social media posts about upcoming sales events

Loyalty programs are vital for engagement and nurturing customer relationships. Once a person has bought from you once or twice, they become more likely to do so again because their trust has been earned through previous interactions. That’s why offering incentives like loyalty points toward future purchases and discounts on everyday items is essential. A McKinsey report shows that at least 64% of consumers will purchase more frequently if they get such programs.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve explored building a custom merchandise empire from start to finish. You may have noticed many overlapping steps and strategies in each process phase. While it may seem overwhelming at first glance, we hope our guide has helped you see how easy it can be when approached step-by-step with a clear plan.