That is the question. It’s a rather costly expenditure. Even if you only make 100, and you find the cheapest place to do the silk-screening, or do the silk screening yourself, it’s still going to cost hundreds of dollars. There’s no getting around buying the shirts… And you can’t cut corners on the shirt quality. If you buy cheap, crappy shirts, no one is going to want to wear them. Add in the issue of making different-sized shirts, and it starts to get rather complicated – How many baby t’s do you make? How many large versus how many smalls?
Add in the rather hazy promotional impact, and the headache starts to pound a little harder. Does someone wearing your t-shirt truly help you get the word out about your project? Every little bit helps, of course. A person wearing your shirt does add to the cumulative awareness of your project. But let’s be realistic – it’s less about your project, and more about the shirt…
Still, making a cool t-shirt tied to your project is almost too hard to resist. And if you are going to be doing lots of shows where you can table/sell your wares, it might make a lot of sense to go forward with the t-shirt making plan – musicians are best at this and are the model to try to duplicate. With a good design and enough gigs to showcase and sell the shirts, it can really bring in some dough. The layout of cash for the production of the shirts isn’t something to take lightly, so be sure to pay attention to inventory and keep records of what actually sells. That way, when you re-order, you will know which sizes, colors and designs are the shirts that sell best.
There’s always the option of offering up t-shirts via cafepress.com. There’s no upfront cost. You simply upload the image you want on the t-shirt, and then anyone can buy the shirt, with you getting a cut of each order. The problem with this is, it’s all online. The only way to actually sell is by getting someone to click to the cafepress.com site from your website. T-shirts are more of a spur of the moment type of purchase. Something you buy after holding it up and checking it out. It takes more of a handsell to actually get people to buy a shirt. That said, if you really want to offer t-shirts and aren’t in a position to handsell or layout the upfront costs, the shirt-on-demand option is quick and easy and free.