A big part of building a brand is merchandise, and one way for independent artists to get their brand out into the world is by using Spreadshirt, a platform for custom T-shirts and clothing.
WordPlay T. Jay has been using the site for a long time, as he says it gives him the best options for customizing his merch and promoting it.
“There are several vendors for selling this, but I like Spreadshirt most because it has all I need and it is the best-looking site, too,” he said.
There are two ways to sell on Spreadshirt — by design or in a created shop. If you choose by design, you get paid any time someone uses that design for a clothing item, and if by shop, you get paid any time someone purchases a piece of merch.
There are no up-front charges or fees, and Spreadshirt only takes a cut of profits made when someone purchases your design or item.
Once you get a shop set up, you can start adding your designs and building a catalog. T. Jay says be sure to not use any licensed images or anything for which you would need a copyright if you don’t have it.
If you’re not great at PhotoShop or Illustrator, T. Jay recommends Canva, an online graphic design company, which can help you easily create your own designs.
Some things to keep in mind when making graphics is color and how it would look on a piece of clothing. Some designs may need to be in multiple colors to fit different colors of shirts, sweaters, hoodies, etc. T. Jay also recommends making sure you use no-background file types, like .png or .psd.
In your shop’s back end, you can set the title, description and add tags. Product selection allows you to build a catalog. T. Jay opts to do his as targeted collections by season, as to not overcrowd his shop with too many items.
Once a design is set, you can save it as a template to use later. You can also tailor your shop name and SEO data to help direct traffic to your shop from Google searches.
Spreadshirt offers a set of widgets that can be added to the shop page, things like promos, about this shop, topics, etc. You can also choose from a number of page design options, such as how many items per page and if it will show just the design, the design on the item or the design with a model (in some cases).
Pricing for T-shirts, hats, hoodies, etc., is predetermined by Spreadshirt, as are the margins.
You can also see the promos run by the site, like 10 or 20 percent off at certain times, and take advantage of marketing options for social media.
Spreadsheet has an ad creation tool that you can use to build a JPG image for use in a social media ad campaign.
The site also allows for adding Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics to help you track and maximize your marketing.
For more about Spreadshirt, check out the video below!