How to Set the Right Price for your T-Shirt Designs: What’s Considered Too Low or High?
Pricing is one of the most challenging aspects to selling any business product. You've possibly struggled many times to find a middle ground on pricing for direct marketing products you've sold online. Now that you've started selling t-shirts online, pricing might become more challenging. One reason behind this is the extremely crowded t-shirt marketplace.
You shouldn't fret about how crowded it is, because creative possibilities are still wide open in t-shirt designs. What's important is to find a fair price for first-time customers. At the same time, you'll want to price at a rate where you can still make healthy profit without a competitor one-upping you.
Here's some tips on pricing your t-shirts, including the most common price being used today.
So What Do Most T-Shirts Sell For Recently?
Most direct marketing analysts point out t-shirts generally price the best at between $20-$30. This is a very basic way to price, though, because pricing often has to go by the design and the materials you use.
It's sometimes justifiable to charge more if you've used a premium material that's rare to acquire. Generally, you shouldn't go past $45, even if the material is top quality.
On the other hand, you don't want to go too low on a permanent basis just for the sake of maintaining customers.
Should You Price Lower for a Temporary Time?
You might want to price lower when first starting out to establish loyal buyers. Some first-time businesses price close to $15, which is really low, though a great bargain for quality t-shirts. Establishing trust with customers is always a good idea because they'll maintain loyalty, no matter what you charge later.
So consider doing a temporary low price offer until you've developed a solid customer base. Then start charging based on production cost reality.
Pricing Based On Your Supplies and Materials
All the costs for the supplies and materials you use is likely higher than what you've estimated. Some of these expenses can become significant when you factor in how much it costs to ship items to your business location.
Also factor in how many shirts you might misprint. Out of all those you print, it's important to estimate how many you usually mess up so you can factor in your losses.
Divide up these losses over how many t-shirts you plan to produce in a month to get a realistic cost figure.
Labor and Overhead
It's not always possible to create t-shirts by yourself. Once demand starts picking up, you're going to need a small team to get your shirts printed quickly and shipped out just as fast.
Your labor costs could add up since your production team might not work for small minimum wages. How much you pay them should factor into how long it takes you to produce a t-shirt.
The faster you can produce a shirt, the middle ground price of $20-$30 works all the better.
However, overhead charges factor in just as much. Maybe you produce the t-shirts out of your home, which can consolidate your home and business expenses. Even so, you're better off finding a business site where you can make your shirts in an environment without obstructions. Expenses here range from office leasing to packaging materials, perhaps precipitating a slightly higher asking price.
Researching Competitor Prices
The old idea of doing a price war probably doesn't sound very attractive. Nevertheless, you'll want to research what your competitors do in the way of pricing to gain some idea of what price you'll set. Doing so helps you fine-tune the price down to a more targeted rate.
Even just a 25 cent difference can determine whether a customer buys from you over someone else.
Keep reading us at TeeSpy to learn more about the t-shirt direct marketing business and ways to succeed.