Wanna launch your own apparel brand? With well-executed prints/embroidery, high quality clothing and unique branding, running your own successful apparel brand is a more realistic goal today than ever before. It’ll be hard work, but this article will introduce you to the process.
Finding Your Brand’s Voice
What is your brand all about? To make your company stand out, it needs a clear voice. The name, the logo design, the website and the apparel design have got to work together to speak to your niche audience.
What audience is your brand catering to?
We’ve printed hoodies for a skateboarding company with a unique street art style. We’ve printed underwear for a body positive company with a focus on girl power. We’ve printed Ontario pride themed tees with a focus on local patriotism. Each brand has found an audience built a relationship and a growing customer base. They’ve all found their niche!
Find your niche and love the work
The most important thing about your brand is that it’s your brand. Base it around what you love. What are your interests? What is your aesthetic? What inspires you and excites you out in the world of fashion, art or whatever?! Your brand’s voice should come from your own voice. Here are a couple good articles on making a brand.
Scope out the scene
Take a look at the existing market. Google around to find out what else is being made for your audience and by your audience. Don’t feel like competitors are adversaries! Build a friendship with other companies and collaborate on new projects, it’ll only help build your audience and it makes the whole thing way more fun.
Creating Your Designs
This is the fun part. Fill up a notebook with ideas, sketches, doodles and slogans for your customized apparel. We can embroider the back of hats, the sleeve of hoodies and all over the place so don’t feel limited. Check out my guides to designing sweet t-shirts or popular lapel pins.
Consider colours, fonts and designs that mesh together. Select your favourite designs and turn them into digital files with a drawing tablet, with the help of a graphic designer, or with the design online tool on our website.
We recommend limiting the colours in your design to lower costs, and if it’s an embroidery, consider the size of your design to save some money.
When your design is ready, contact Artik and a dedicated sales rep will make sure everything is on budget and on schedule, and our graphic designers will confirm that your design is perfect for screen printing or embroidery.
We can put your design on pink visors, doggy bandanas or kid’s hoodies, so pretty much anything is possible, but some products are more profitable than others.
10 Most Profitable Products
#1. Custom Screen Printed Sweaters
Sweatshirts, hoodies and zip-up hoodies are the perfect branded apparel product. The trifecta of looking great with a custom screen print on them, fitting well / feeling super comfy and customers won’t mind spending $40 or $50 dollars on a great hoodie or sweatshirt.
Customizing sweaters is more expensive than making t-shirts, but they justify that price bump with their higher retail price. Check out different sizes, styles and colours on our custom printed sweatshirt page.
#2. Custom printed t-shirts
Screen printing and pressing vinyl transfers on t-shirts is one of our expertise here at Artik. We’ve printed tees for many small apparel companies in Toronto, the reason custom t-shirts are so popular is their low price and relatively high retail value.
We recommend starting with a small order to see how the t-shirts sell. If those all go quickly, come back for a reorder and you can begin producing a whole lot of profit from t-shirts alone.
Let us know if you want a crisp screen print with vibrant colours, or if you prefer the distressed, aged looking style. Browse our selection of custom t-shirts screenprinted in Toronto.
#3 Custom Embroidered Baseball Hats
Another apparel item with high resale value is the custom embroidered baseball cap.
Choose your baseball hat style and colour and plan your design around the hat. Do you wanna embroidery on the front? Back? Side? Don’t worry about using multiple colours, at Artik we price your caps based on the number of stitches. 10,000 stitches are included in the price tag, so a smaller design will save you money.
If you’re thinking of ordering custom baseball hats, read more about embroidery over on this page.
#4 Custom Woven Socks
Unique socks have taken off recently, with entire stores opening across Toronto. Check out Floorplay Socks, Yo Sox and other shops where you can buy and sell your custom designed socks.
Browse our sock selection if you’re interested in making your own custom socks. Choose sock length and colour, then contact our staff to make the order happen. Socks justify a high retail price, they look great on social media and they sell reliably well making them our fourth most profitable apparel item.
#5 Custom Embroidered Jackets
When Fall and Winter come to Toronto, a ton of people go looking for new jackets. Adding your design to windbreakers, jackets and coats gets you in on that profitable market.
Jackets and coats can be a costly initial investment, but they are can be sold for well over $100, making them a big earner for your company. Browse our selection of custom embroidered jackets here.
#6 Custom Printed Underwear
Underwear can be fully screen printed with your design, making them match your brand and aesthetic can attract a lot of attention. Custom printed undies sell well as gifts around the holidays and can be sold at a considerable profit!
#7 Embroidered Winter Wear
Winter accessories are pretty popular and uniquely designed gloves, winter toques and scarves can make a killing on those chilly November/December/January days.
Check out all these winter toques and beanies. Our staff can embroider your design, slogan or logo on these winter hats, turning them into awesome branded apparel for your company.
Touchscreen gloves are super affordable and come in a load of colours. Gloves can be paired with a beanie and scarf for a complete winter apparel package.
Of course customized scarves are awesome too. Try embroidering your brand name along a cozy black scarf or an elegant maroon scarf. When winter comes along to Toronto, customers and retail stores are looking for warm merch like this.
#8 Tote Bags
Okay, it’s not technically apparel, but tote bags had to be on this list. They’re super affordable and regularly sell for over $20 bucks. We can screen print your logo on all kinds of tote bags, but I recommend the classic canvas tote. Tote bags are great to sell at merch shows and retail spaces where customers can use them as a day bag.
#9 Screen Printed Baseball Tees
Baseball tees (AKA shirts with coloured sleeves) aren’t just for baseball teams. Long sleeve baseball shirts look amazing with a screen printed design – keep it simple and save some money or add a ton of colours and make the shirt stand out!
Consider the colour of the sleeves when designing your branded baseball tees.
When you’re ready, send your design to Artik and we’ll screen print your tees, getting them back to you ready to be sold online, in outdoor markets and events or in consignment stores. Baseball tees are a super attractive piece of apparel that can sell for more than a standard t-shirt without costing much more.
#10 Embroidered Patches and Lapel Pins
Why stick to apparel? Let your brand spread into accessories like custom embroidered patches and lapel pins.
Custom patches can be ironed on or sewn onto clothing, or sell them solo. Bringing a box of patches to your next sale is an easy way to make some extra money, offer to sew or heat press the patches on right there for free and people will bring you jackets and hats in droves.
We’ve got a whole lot of custom embroidered patches for you to mess around with. Contact our staff for pricing and think about getting more quantity to get that sweet sweet price break!
Customized lapel pins are the other essential accessory to sell! Pins can sell for a solid profit, offer bundle deals to sell more quantity! Browse our selection of custom lapel pins here! Choose between hard enamel, soft enamel and other printed pins. You can read our article on making trendy lapel pins for more advice and tips!
Building a Social Media Following
Choose your Platform
Promoting your brand on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms is essential, but don’t try to do all of them at once. Focus on one platform to stay authentically engaged with your followers.
Load Up
On Instagram, it can be hard to build that initial following. Focus on putting out great content on a consistent schedule. Do some photo shoots and build up a ton of photos and content that you can post over time using a free app like Later to schedule some posts.
Stay Authentic!
Stay Authentic!Don’t get lost in all the likes, hashtags and statistics. Keep talking to your audience, follow interesting accounts and post regularly (but spend time offline too!) Let your voice really come through and have some fun with it!
Paid Promotion
On Instagram/Facebook you can pay to promote your posts to relevant audiences like a specific demographic in your city. For example if you’re selling hoodies for dogs, target People in Toronto between the ages of 18-65+ who like Dogs.
It can be way more effective to pay fellow social media people to share your content. Feature accounts like @PatchGame will take Paypal transfers to promote your account to their followers. Find the big accounts in your demographic and pay them for a share! You’ll get a ton of real, relevant followers and you may get some sales too.
Point Them to Your Online Store
Include a link to your website where you sell your apparel! There are a ton of services to launch your own store, including Shopify, Etsy, Squarespace, Wix and more. Choose a site that doesn’t cost too much and doesn’t take a huge cut of your sales.
Once you have a website setup with your company logo, your products uploaded and your Paypal or bank connected, you’ll be ready to make online sales! Head to your post office to be sure that you charge shipping rates that will cover your costs.
Get into Stores
Consignment shops will put your stock on their shelves and give you a cut of the sales. A shop taking 40% is acceptable in many places, but if your products sell well you can negotiate better rates. Read this article to dodge the common pitfalls of consignment shops and always keep track of your stock! It’s too easy to forget to collect your monthly rate or lose track of inventory.
Wholesale shops are a simpler alternative to consignment shops. Wholesalers will buy your products in bulk at a discounted rate and you’ll never have to think about collecting monthly fees. Build great relationships with your wholesalers and help promote their store with your social media accounts and ask them to do the same for your brand.
The shops you get involved with are your partners. Always get your apparel to them on time and with clean invoices, your professionalism will help you get reorders. Good stores will pay you on time, keep track of inventory and help expand your customer base.
Going to Events
Keep your ear to the ground and you’ll find a ton of pop-up markets, festivals and other events where people are ready to buy clothing and unique apparel. It’s usually worth the cost to book a small table if the event has your crowd attending. Hand out free stickers or buttons with your design and company handle on them.
Keeping Track of the Numbers
As you establish your apparel brand, you’ll spend money before you make it. In the meantime, ysou’ll need to keep track of revenue streams, costs, profits and inventory. It sounds obvious, but many companies fail to stay organized, leading to wasteful spending and lost sales.
Hiring an accountant or speaking to a business consultant can help you get your head in the right space. Using a spreadsheet to track expenses and income will allow you to make smarter business decisions, understand how effective your employees are and ensure that you pay yourself!
This article will help you brush up on financial terms, while podcasts like Startup give incredible insights and first-hand accounts of the business world. Come back to Artik’s blog for more entrepreneurial advice or reach out on Facebook to speak to the Artik staff for advice. We’re happy to talk!
Starting and maintaining an apparel company takes drive. If you really care about your company’s success and you keep creating unique products, you’ll find your audience. Stay on top of the dry business side of things, you’ll be able to take a paycheque home from your own creative work.
Like we said, Artik has been printing and embroidering since 1985 so we’ve got a ton of experience when it comes to this stuff. Reach out to our staff with any questions and like the Artik Facebook page for more articles.