What to know before you sell a single shirt
Selling merch online is less about the store than about the decisions behind it. Production sets your costs and your calendar: the blank, the decoration method and the quantity decide what each unit costs and when it can ship. Your audience sets the ceiling on price and the size of a realistic first run. The store, the photos and the emails then turn those decisions into sales.
Two habits do more for a young brand than any store feature. Price from the true unit cost, including the costs that never appear on the printer's invoice. And build a list of people who want to hear from you before launch day. Both are covered here.
The order to read these guides
- Start with the whole path. How to start a clothing brand runs from audience and first designs through blanks or cut and sew, decoration, samples, pricing, the store, quantities, fulfillment and launch, with links into every part of the Library.
- Get the numbers right. How to price your merch builds a full unit cost line by line, explains margin versus markup and wholesale versus retail, and includes a margin calculator for your own figures.
- Make the page do the selling. Product pages that sell apparel covers the photo shot list, size charts and fit notes, fabric facts, care, the disclosures clothing sellers must make, variants and reviews.
- Plan the release. How to launch a clothing drop works backward from launch day, compares launch formats and ends with a launch-day checklist and a restock framework.
- Reach people directly. Email and SMS for merch drops covers building a list, email and text consent rules in plain terms, a five-message drop sequence, segments and what to measure.
Where the rest of the Library fits
Store setup lives in its own sections. For choosing where to sell, read choosing an e-commerce platform for merch or, for bands and creators, selling band merch online. If you use Shopify, the Shopify guides cover setup, variants, pre-orders and shipping.
For the product itself, start with the blanks section and types of shirt printing, and read cut and sew when you need your own fit and fabric. For getting orders out the door, the fulfillment section covers who packs and ships, pre-orders versus stock, size runs, packaging and shipping zones.