Thinking about band merch...any tips please

[super al]

Last year our band released an EP and a friend of the band who is an artist (and now tattoo artist) did the cover art.

I was blown away by it, to me it looks great and I think it'd look great on a tee shirt.

I spoke to a local firm and they would do it at about £18 per tee. I've looked at Vistaprint and theirs is about £11.50. 

Now we are a very small band with limited resources £££ so I would only do small runs of 10 at a time in L and XL as most of the punters who watch us are blokes around our size.

Do any of you guys have advice or experience of working with small batches of tees, anybody use Vistaprint or have an alternative? Any help would be great, thank you

[super al]

 

This is the image, I'd like to put it on a black tee our rhythm guitarist wants white 

[SteveXFR]

What we found is tee shirts don't really sell but badges and patches do. 

People don't carry much cash. They're much more likely to have a few quid than twenty quid in their pocket at the end of a night.

[TimR]

Where are you located?

 

My daughter's boyfriend does screen print. It's expensive but good. 

 

The problem is always stock levels and storing. Minimum order quantities, ink costs, etc.

 

How many are you planning on ordering? Lowest I've seen is 30. So you're looking at a few hundred quid. 

 

I'd ask the designer to fade the edges to black so it doesn't look like a print on a shirt.

[TimR]

Just now, SteveXFR said:

What we found is tee shirts don't really sell but badges and patches do. 

People don't carry much cash. They're much more likely to have a few quid than twenty quid in their pocket at the end of a night.

 

Good quality t-shirt and a card machine. 

[super al]

11 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

What we found is tee shirts don't really sell but badges and patches do. 

People don't carry much cash. They're much more likely to have a few quid than twenty quid in their pocket at the end of a night.

 

Sound advice, thanks @SteveXFR

I think that was why I wanted to do a small run of 10 or so to start with... I don't expect a lot of demand. 

Initially the idea was vanity (I'd like to have our artwork on one of my tees) and to help pay the distro kid fees. 

[SteveXFR]

The other problem with tee shirts is you need a range of sizes.

[super al]

19 minutes ago, TimR said:

Where are you located?

 

My daughter's boyfriend does screen print. It's expensive but good. 

 

The problem is always stock levels and storing. Minimum order quantities, ink costs, etc.

 

How many are you planning on ordering? Lowest I've seen is 30. So you're looking at a few hundred quid. 

 

I'd ask the designer to fade the edges to black so it doesn't look like a print on a shirt.

 

Thanks @TimR 

If money was no object I'd love to screen print it but we're not in that league. That's why I asked about Vistaprint, direct to garment on fruit of the loom for about £11.50 and you don't have a minimum run limit thingy. 

We're in Salisbury btw

[lidl e]

25 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

What we found is tee shirts don't really sell but badges and patches do. 

People don't carry much cash. They're much more likely to have a few quid than twenty quid in their pocket at the end of a night.

Get a little card machine that works with iphone/android.

 

Hardest part about merch for us currently is finding someone to watch the table.

 

Every show we have to ask someone. And it's not like we're selling a bunch so depending in where the table is, it can br a big ask to sit there all night.

 

Edited March 9 by lidl e

[super al]

5 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

The other problem with tee shirts is you need a range of sizes.

"Available in any size as long as it is large" 😄

 

I would probably take 'orders' for anything we didn't stock. Gets tricky this t shirt thing.

[Norris]

If it's just for vanity and you're not looking to make a huge profit, maybe look at a site like redbubble.com. You upload a design, people can order it, other people print and dispatch it, you take a cut. I've bought a few t shirts from there and they are nice quality.

 

https://www.redbubble.com/about/selling

[super al]

3 minutes ago, lidl e said:

Get a little card machine that works with iphone/android.

 

Hardest part about merch for us currently is finding someone to watch the table.

 

Every show we have to ask someone. And it's not like we're selling a bunch so depending in where the table is, it can br a big ask to sit there all night.

 

 

I went to see Chas n Dave years ago, they just had their merch in a suitcase and opened it up at the end of the gig. We play pubs at the moment so thought a similar thing would do.

[super al]

11 minutes ago, Norris said:

If it's just for vanity and you're not looking to make a huge profit, maybe look at a site like redbubble.com. You upload a design, people can order it, other people print and dispatch it, you take a cut. I've bought a few t shirts from there and they are nice quality.

 

https://www.redbubble.com/about/selling

 

Thanks @Norris the hive mind of bass chat is working wonders!

I'm now thinking of having a little stock of Vistaprint or similar tees in the 'tourbus' but also have the tees available to order on redbubble.

I'll see how the prices and quality compare, I guess the tees we sell at gigs need to be near enough the same as the cost of the redbubble ones (Inc postage)

[TimR]

Are a load of L and XL blokes going to sell your brand?

 

A Web shop where young ladies can buy your stylish t-shirts will spread the message better.

 

Think of the meme where a young lady wearing a Slayer T-Shirt is asked to name one song they play - she replies - Master of Puppets - that's close enough... 😆

 

Think. What is the merch supposed to do? 

 

[Lozz196]

In my last band we had a large range of t-shirts and sold a great deal both at gigs and online. At gigs we literally carried more merch into the venues than musical equipment. 
 

 

[jimmyb625]

17 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

The other problem with tee shirts is you need a range of sizes.

This is the biggest drawback with T-Shirts, you need to carry about 6 (Small, Medium, Large, Men's, Women's), in order to sell one.

 

We also went down the route of having some tote bags made, which didn't go down too badly. They're also quite useful as an "add-on" so people can put their other purchases in them.

Edited March 10 by jimmyb625
Bags, not bads. Who in their right mind would buy a tote bad?

[MichaelDean]

We've had some some made by this lot. About £6 per t-shirt. Took about three weeks for the first run, only about a week for the second. I guess it takes longer to get the initial thing made up. 

 

https://www.vinosangre.com/

[Marky L]

4 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

We've had some some made by this lot. About £6 per t-shirt. Took about three weeks for the first run, only about a week for the second. I guess it takes longer to get the initial thing made up. 

 

https://www.vinosangre.com/

 

Do you know what the print medium was?

 

I have used Streetshirts.co.uk in the past and found the print quality good. Very like screen printed ink, probably direct-to-garment. The online "design" app is a bit pants though. They often run deals like free delivery. Oh printing on the rear of the shirt is a simple option with them too.

 

I did a simple design for the band to have a shirt each and one of our fav punters and used tshirtstudio it seems more like a transfer print which I don't like but the quality is fine.

 

Both the above are reasonably cheap and do quantity discounts.

Edited March 10 by Marky L

[skidder652003]

sold 3 last night, all x Large.

If your demographic is older blokes like ours, we pretty much sell only X large and small for their partners.

To make it work you need a minimum order run of 50 and keep it strictly black and white.

That can get the cost down to about £4 quid a pop.

I can recommend Pins and knuckles for great quality at a good price.

A card reader is a must. They cost nothing and the commission is very small in comparison to making or not making a sale because punters dont carry cash.

Sell them for £15 each, £10 profit per Tee, it soon adds up. we did a day in the studio on the back of T shirt sales alone from the past few months.

Edited March 10 by skidder652003

[Bassassin]

Conditional recommendation for Streetshirts here - I've used them for band, work & novelty stuff for years. For the most part they're very good considering how inexpensive they are but print durability is variable & I've had a few average-quality prints too.

 

The design interface is OK for upoading completed artwork but it's important to enter the actual size you want the the design to be, not what it looks like on the screen. Not sure how it will handle the OP's (excellent!) artwork but what's good is that a one-off with a single front print is £17 delivered, so not too much of an outlay for a sample. There are significant reductions for bulk & they'll print on any colour shirt.

[MichaelDean]

36 minutes ago, Marky L said:

 

Do you know what the print medium was?

 

I have used Streetshirts.co.uk in the past and found the print quality good. Very like screen printed ink. The online "design" app is a bit pants though.

 

I did a simple design for the band to have a shirt each and one of our fav punters and used tshirtstudio it seems more like a transfer print which I don't like but the quality is fine.

 

Both the above are reasonably cheap and do quantity discounts.

It was screen printed onto a Gildan t-shirt. I've got one and it's washing really well. 

[Skybone]

Shirty Something

 

We had some printed up by Shirty Something, great people to deal with. We had a simple logo screen printed on M to XL shirts, which worked out at around £6 per shirt IIRC.

 

One thing about the above design, is that it may be a bit too complex for a traditional screen print, but there is a "direct to garment" option, which is a bit more expensive.

 

Make sure that you're asking for screen printing, as a lot of places will offer vinyl printing, which is a lot less forgiving, less flexible and will crack. 

[BigRedX]

The main problem is that the design in the OP is is not really suitable for printing onto cost-effective T-shirts, hence the prices that are being quoted which is for direct to garment, which is too expensive and not as hard wearing. IME a design like that in the OP is only worth producing directly when the band is at the stage where they can be looking at T-shirt sales of 1000+.

 

At the level the OP's band appears to be they need T-shirts that can be printed for around £6 each or less (for 100 shirts) to be sold at £10-£15 a shirt. This means reducing the design to a single solid colour - generally white to be printed onto a black T-shirt. Depending on how the original design has been produced it may be possible to go back to the original artist and get them to do a new version that meets the requirements for single-colour screen printing. They will also need to simplify some of the fine line detail as that won't reproduce well.

 

The other potential issue is that the design is specific to a particular EP which means that it will date. One of the bands I play with have generic band logo T-shirts and those based on the cover of our last album. The album design T-shirts sold well while the album was new, but now the album is a couple of years old they have dropped off in favour of the generic ones. 

 

If this was for one of my bands I would forget about the illustration and simply go for a big band logo. This will look impressive, be easy and cost-effective to print which means that there is a very good chance that the band will actually make money out of selling them. It also turns every single person wearing one into an easily readable walking advertisement for the band.

 

Also IME for the print to be cost effective you need to produce at least 100 T-shirts and be able to sell them for at least twice what they cost. If you don't think you can sell 50 T-shirts in a year then it's probably not for your band. Don't worry too much about sizes - from experience no matter how much of your audience is made up of skinny hipsters the people who buy band T-shirts tend to be size L and bigger. So get mostly L and XL and a few S, M and 2XL.

 

As has been said get a SumUp or similar card reader. Personally I wouldn't bother with cash any more, it will save you from having to have change, as you can guarantee that the first 5 people to buy one for cash will all want to pay with £20 notes.

 

HTH.

[Fionn]

Top tip … Make sure your CD is the cheapest thing on the stall 

[BigRedX]

2 minutes ago, Fionn said:

Top tip … Make sure your CD is the cheapest thing on the stall 

 

It's a sad state of affairs when a band's audience is prepared to pay £10 for a T-shirt which will probably have at least a 100% mark up, but won't pay the same for an album on CD which is barely breaking even on pressing costs only.