Start your Clothing Store with $0 on your Smartphone! 

*Note*: This post contains affiliate links. You won’t pay a penny more, but I’ll get a small commission if you buy. Rest assured I only share SaaS tools I fully believe in.

*Note*: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy from the link, you won’t pay a penny more, but I’ll get a small commission that helps keep the blog up! Thanks. 

What if I told you that you can start a clothing brand FOR free, with zero dollars, in a matter of minutes? And that too right from your smartphone!

You’d think I’m crazy! But I promise you, i’m not!

BUT… 

“Don’t I need to study fashion design?…need patterns?…need manufacturer details?…need to source cloth?…need to hire a fashion designer?…need to hire a graphic designer”

Simple answer: NO!

Starting a clothing brand has never been this easy. And the best thing is, you can start with little to NO fashion design skills at all.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  1. HOW DO I START MY CLOTHING BRAND?
  2. HOW DOES PRINTFUL WORK?
  3. GARMENT TYPES
  4. EEK! CHOICE OVERLOAD!
  5. PRINTING SERVICES
  6. MOCKUPS
  7. WHITE LABEL
  8. QUALITY
  9. FULFILLMENT
  10. SHIPPING
  11. WHEN DO I PAY ANYTHING?
  12. PRODUCT PRICING
  13. STOREFRONT
  14. HOW DO I GET THE CUSTOMERS?
  15. WHAT’S MY CRED?

HOW DO I START MY CLOTHING BRAND?

Let me introduce you to your new business best friend, Printful!

Printful is an online Print on Demand (POD) service that allows YOU to make YOUR entrepreneurial dreams come true!

HOW DOES PRINTFUL WORK?

Printful’s “Design Maker” facilitates you to create designs on their online platform that you add onto a wide range of garments in their store’s product catalog. 

If you aren’t artistically inclined nor want to hire a designer, no problem! Printful provide you a range of patterns & prints you’re free to use on your garments. 

But if patterns aren’t your vibe, you can choose to have custom text on your garments. Printful’s product personalization tool makes customizing your garments very intuitive & extremely enjoyable!

GARMENT TYPES

Printful have a wide selection of garments you can choose to have in your store. From T-shirts, hoodies, biker shorts, skirts, dresses and jackets. 

What’s even more exciting is that they have excellent garment options for both men & women. This gives you so much freedom to curate exactly the kind of brand you’ve always wanted!

EEK! CHOICE OVERLOAD!

Sometimes too much choice can really daunting & be a bit confusing. You can easily get lost & struggle with what garments to start with! There’s SO MUCH CHOICE! 

So let me let you in on an insiders secret…

The most popular choice & the best ROI for an online clothing business are T-shirts. 

Everyone wears T-shirts, whether they’re in a hot or cold climate. They can be layered or worn as is. So tees are ALWAYS a safe bet when wanting to create a new clothing brand online. 

And Printful offer a wide range of excellent quality blank T-shirts you can have your unique designs on! They also offer a wide selection of blank T-shirts at different price points. You have excellent choices for both long and short sleeve tees. 

You can be economical with your products but not compromise on quality or truly opt for a premium product you won’t mind hiking the price up on. 

PRINTING SERVICES

Printful is truly ahead of its game when it comes to POD services because they offer you a wide range of garment printing services. 

Printful offer both DTG (Direct to Garment) & embroidery services, which gives you, the business owner, SO much leverage to create the perfect brand you’ve always wanted.

You can choose to embroider the left lapel of the T-shirt or the center of the T-shirt. Customization options are endless. You can keep the designs classy or trendy. The choice is yours! 

If embroidery isn’t the vibe you’re going for, choose DTG, which is Direct to Garment printing! The print quality is excellent & doesn’t fade even after several washes.

Not only can you have designs printed on the front center of a T-shirt & the sleeves, but Printful also have an AOP (all over print) option that allows you to print your design on the entirety of a T-shirt.

This grants you the highest level of customization available from any POD service available online. 

Printful also let you add inside neck labels with your logo, sizing details and washing instructions that are also DTG printed. You don’t have to worry your customers will receive your T-shirts with a Gildan tag still attached. 

MOCKUPS

Printful have you covered on another front too! You don’t have to stress about scheduling photoshoots at the inception of your business.

Their product personalization tool lets you create and save realistic mockups that you’ll be proud to market on your store & social media. 

You have the choice to create mockups of just the T-shirts or see them on models; both male and female. 

They also give you two file options for your mockups; JPEG & PNG. JPEG’s are better for your store since their file sizes are smaller & help your site load faster.

PNG’s are excellent to use for your marketing material since they are bigger file sizes with better image quality & transparent backgrounds. 

WHITE LABEL

But I actually buried the lead! The best feature about Printful is that they’re a WHITE LABEL SERVICE

Add your own branding to the packaging

That means the end-user aka your valuable customer, will NEVER know you’ve used a POD service (unless you tell them). 

None of the packaging your customer receives has any Printful logos, nor do any of the invoices your they receive in their order! Invoices will have YOUR logo on them once you’ve uploaded the design on their dashboard.

QUALITY

As a customer of Printful for almost a decade (9 years!), I can testify that their quality of garments is far superior to any other POD service you’ll come across. Even the most economical T-shirt blanks have excellent quality that will last your customers a long time. 

From my personal experience , Printful has been extremely reliable & have excellent customer service. They always take feedback on board & actually implement suggestions into their business. 

FULFILLMENT

When I started using Printful close to its inception 9 years ago, orders were only fulfilled from the United States. Nearly 10 years later, Printful now has 6 fulfillment centers across the globe that truly enable your brand to be a global success!

Fulfillment centers are in the United States, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Spain and Latvia. 

SHIPPING

Printful prints, packs and ships all of your orders so you don’t have to lift a finger! Shipping costs depend on which region you’ve received your order from. 

When it comes to shipping rates, you can keep the default shipping rates Printful has or customize them to suit your needs. 

Once Printful prints, packs and ships your order, they provide you with tracking information you can pass on to your customer. This not only establishes you as a professional brand, but is good customer service too.

WHEN DO I PAY ANYTHING?

The beauty of Printful is that you don’t pay a single penny to Printful until you receive an order. 

That’s because you’re not holding any stock, making your house into a warehouse nor paying exorbitant fees for a warehouse to hold your stock. 

All you pay for at Printful is the base price for the blank garment, fulfillment charges and tax.

Tax depends on the region items are fulfilled in. For instance, due to British Law, products fulfilled out of the UK will be charged with tax and VAT (value added tax). 

In this regard, some regions offer a better ROI than others. You just have to trial and test and see which regions and price points work the best for you and your brand!

PRODUCT PRICING

You have complete freedom to adjust the pricing of your product from their online platform. The Printful system calculates exactly how much profit you can make based on the Retail Price you choose to have for your product.

You can choose to adjust your profit margin by percentages or a custom monetary amount. 

Honestly, I’m not just raving about Printful for no reason. They REALLY look after you in every possible way. 

Every aspect of starting an online store is carefully looked after and their entire platform is intuitive from start to finish. 

STOREFRONT

Printful is compatible with a number of ecommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace & so many more. Printful also integrates with online marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon & eBay. 

And you can also take one step further and integrate your store with social media sales channels like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and others.

The potential to gain customers through Printful is honestly exponential!

HOW DO I GET THE CUSTOMERS?

This requires some elbow grease; or should I say “finger grease”! Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. I cannot stress this enough.

You can have the best products out there but if you don’t market them, how will your target audience know you’re out there?!

So market your heart out! The customers WILL come. 

WHAT’S MY CRED?

I’ve personally started and sustained 2 businesses through the Printful platform over the past 9 years. A clothing brand (www.kryptikrose.com) and a wall art business. I’m currently working on different projects which is why KryptikRose is on hiatus.

I’ve tried and tested a number of other POD services online, but I faced extreme difficulties with them. Either their quality was severely compromised or their shipping times were preposterous or sometimes products never reached my customers! 

Yet I’ve never faced any issues like this with Printful. Products ALWAYS reached my customers in a timely manner (depending on global shipping conditions). 

And the one time there was a printing defect on a product, Printful sent a replacement product to my customer free of charge to both me & the customer!

This is why I fully support Printful and want you to benefit from this platform too! With uncertain working and global conditions, working for ourselves has never been more important AND easier!

So give Printful a try! You have NOTHING to lose but EVERYTHING to gain!

START YOUR BRAND FOR FREE

I wish you every success! 

xoxo

Mia

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