Have any of you had to start a business all over again for any reason(s)? People don’t really talk about their failed business ventures too much. But I feel that there are valuable lessons to be learned from those failures. I prefer to learn lessons second hand.
27 Comments
Perudoesitbetter said 2 months ago
32 clothing...ask trey deuce
He’ll tell ya.
t.rupp said 2 months ago
I did...
its hard to explain
just gonna say you can’t get anywhere without having at least one big band buying your design!
Random said 2 months ago
One thing that I can add is make sure you know who (audience) your designing for.
Time Without the E said 2 months ago
yuppp
i had a brand with about 6 shirts printed at 100 each and found out someone else took the name a about 5 months after we printed our line. We had no money to fight it at the time so we had to start ALL OVER. And we had about 25,000 myspace friends and this was 3-4 years ago when noone did.
Random said 2 months ago
^^ Wow. What did you guys do with all the shirts?
wes_allen said 2 months ago
yea me and robert are still in the process of starting over. we started our company sixtyfold with another guy, who was a printer. he pretty much funded everything then when things were really picking up.. he bailed and took everything with him. so we have been slowly trying to rebuild it from nothing with a fresh start.
Mr.Stan Geek said 2 months ago
I think a good number of us have had to start over I know. I think one of the biggest mistake many make is marketing. I think internet marketing is the hardest if you don’t have a fan base and your not backing any artist. Also its a great idea to trademark the name you want for you brand the second you have the free money cut down on the number of shirts at the start up or wait till you trademark its about $300 if you do it yourself online that $300 can help you save from a lose in money. You could face cause of shirts you find out you can’t sell cause someone has the name you wanted
Random said 2 months ago
$300 to trademark, really? What is the site?
Simply Complicated said 2 months ago
first to get mentioned hahaha sweet...yah restarting sucks..I spent so much time on 32 only for it to completely collapse, with Simply Complicated I am being a lot more careful with anything and everything I do to make sure I don’t waste me time
quakerninja said 2 months ago
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,850 for quakerninja. (0.23 seconds)
Not to bad for one guy, but sadly know one would ever look up Quakerninja, without knowing me personally, what a waste.
And yes don’t do big runs to start, I did 100 shirts and haven’t broken even, I did sell a few to live people, but now my shirts are just sitting at home, despite lowering the price to a whopping $5 bucks.
I have enough saveings so that I’m not hit to hard, but it’s not the big launch I had hoped for.
Jon Kruse said 2 months ago
what did you do with the extra shirts?
seems like you could just sell them at school without anyone really knowing.
atomicchild said 2 months ago
I learned this lesson the hard way about 5 years ago with a online t shirt company me and a friend started...after 2 years we stopped...we spent way to much money on large runs of shirts not knowing any better....but we had the most success at flea markets selling to real people
Simply Complicated said 2 months ago
thats what i do..a lot of people want that dripping one and the shutter shades tee so i just lowered the price and im almost out so its all good..im working on another shirt for sc which will put me at 4 tees for my release..i had to push back the release to the original one in january because of personal reasons but its going to be a nice release..im working on a varsity jacket to that is sick
MadeByMAS said 2 months ago
weve all been there and done it, its part of learning really. If my first clothing line hadnt of failed horribly I wouldnt run a design/print studio now and be part of 4 clothing projects.
Jon Kruse said 2 months ago
I think a lot of people start out too big and print too many shirts. I’m printing 72 for my new designs and that’s a good number to get decent prices and not having way to much inventory.
You just need to find your market for the shirt. I’m sure there are people out there that want that shirt you just have to find out where they are and how to connect with them.
Time Without the E said 2 months ago
ya it sucked bigtime
i still think about it all the time but hey thats life i guess
it could be way worse
i actually sold alot of them on ebay for like 5 bucks.
also kept 2 of them cause they didnt say the name of the brand on it thankfully
robolove said 2 months ago
I used to have a clothes shop which failed miserably. I think we lasted about 8 or 9 months before it all went wrong. I learnt more from it than I could ever learn from reading a tutorial or something though.
With RoboLove we only really wholesale and therefore only hold like two tees per design which we use as samples. It is pretty much a risk free business at the moment. We dont offer stores credit it has to be payment up front and we dont do sale or return.
The only thing I regret really is sending about £800 worth of t-shirts to a band I sponsor to take on tour with them only for the band to split up at the start of the tour and never see the t-shirts again.
If anyone wants to open a clothes shop and needs some advice I would be happy to offer a few tips on what NOT to do :-)
Random said 2 months ago
^^ please teach us Master Robo
Terror said 2 months ago
yeah, i printed a small line a year ago and it failed pretty bad. My downfall was due to laziness and a lack of advertising, plus i printed about 50 tees with a design that i wouldnt even wear (big mistake). I’m working up the funds/design skills to set up a new one soon though. Hopefully i’ll do it right this time.
Selling clothes is pretty tough, so hats off to everyone that takes care of business. My downfall was due to laziness and a lack of advertising hahah
Random said 2 months ago
Lack of advertising has killed MANY brands!
robolove said 2 months ago
I don’t pay to advertise my brand at all and it sells pretty well. If your working on a budget you just need to be imaginative and do whatever you can to get it known. It only costs the price of a few tees to do a competition in a magazine which will get you a small write up and your web address printed.
I rely on people liking my designs to get them to sell. The more you spend out on advertising the more you have to make before you see any profit (obvious really).
Im not saying don’t advertise but be careful choosing what advertising you do.
robolove said 2 months ago
Firstly I don’t know everything. To be honest I know very little but I am willing to share what I have learnt.
Don’t open a shop unless you can afford to pay the bills for at least a year with no sales (this is called working capital).
I opened my shop with enough to last me about 2 months and it was a stuggle. It was stressful. You need that security to get you through the tough times. It will take a while to build up a good reputation with customers and to get regular sales.
I made the big mistake of only stocking brand names including:
Atticus / Famous / Heartcore / Rockett / Dickies / Macbeth / Lowlife and so on...
These brands sell really well BUT most people cant afford to be paying £20 to £30 for a t-shirt on a regular basis to earn you enough money to keep your shop open.
Look around for stock you can get in cheap to sell cheap. This can be anything from plain t-shirts to make-up or bags to shoe laces. Its better to have someone come in and spend £2 on some crap than spend nothing at all. Its even better if someone comes in to buy a t-shirt and ends up buying the extra crap too.
I don’t want to bore people so thats all for now.
xok said about 1 month ago
I haven’t had to start over but I’m restarting in a way since I’ve been pretty dormant for the last 3 years. It sucks cause hindsight is always better than foresight. I was doing really well 2003-2005 but my day job was doing even better so I neglected the clothing hobby too much to sustain the growth and then my day job glory didn’t last. But now I have more time for my clothing.
djredbrownie said about 1 month ago
So where can you trademark your name then??
heavyprints said about 1 month ago
I’ve had to start everything all over again, more than once. Kind of a good feeling to shake off all of the burden and have a good run at things with your life lessons in hand.
Mr.Stan Geek said about 1 month ago
http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm
FunForAllKids said about 1 month ago
killuv clothing, never work with a partner...