Another legit tip for start up brands and any product based company in general, this one will save you money.

I have spent a lot of hours with clients discussing each detail and option that a start up clothing line may have.  Tag, no tag, or inside tag. Big print, little print, this font , that font, these colors or those. Regular t? or perhaps tank tops? Often times, I begin with direct questions such as, who is going to buy this shirt? Based on who your target customer is you can bend your brand to their liking so you do not have dead inventory. What you don’t want is 100 shirts that only you and your friend think are cool. Avoid this by abusing Facebook once again.

When you get that new design idea and aren’t really sure about it, or perhaps you don’t know how well it will sell with your crowd. Just use this trick to get some influence on your decision, it’ll save you some headache, trust me. Your thinking too hard. Like most start ups your on a tight budget and you don’t know if you should order 25 or 100 shirts. What ever the decision maybe, you should let your customers decide. Get free and specifically targeted research by posting a few templates up on Facebook. Be surprised at how interactive your followers will become. “I LIKE THE YELLOW ONE!” “I’d go with the green” “Can I get that in xl?” You might find yourself telling them to calm down because the product doesn’t exists yet. Or you may find that no one commented on it all, what do you think that means? Whomp whomp whomp. Try Again! It is your job to create demand and supply, remember this for later.

If it goes well with the crowd, use this opportunity to get pre-sales. This will help negate your costs when ordering from your screen printer and let you see what sizes your going to need more of. I call it the pre-print profits. On the psychological side of things, it gets your followers a lot more involved. They will start checking on your page more often to see what might be coming up next. Play with em a little bit, build some anticipation, spark an argument, insight a riot, welcome their opinions and pay close attention to how others interact to comments. Remember that all their friends friends can see what they are posting on your clothing lines group page. This type of attention is unlike spam, it’s more settle and cunning. If you were friends with me, and saw me posting things on a clothing lines page its an automatic click. For you that’s an automatic fan. And for the hard core followers of your brand, they might be willing to share your photo postings with their friends. You can chat with them directly online and see what they think.

You will find this technique to be very effective, I have gone to the length of creating a whole photo album just for designs that we haven’t done but might do. People love commenting on these and we are constantly throwing things in it to keep the buzz up between prints.

Here are some things to look at & consider:

+How many likes did you get on that post and how fast? Usually the number of “likes” you get will translate into sales.
+Try posting the photo realistic templates while every ones online. Usually around 6ish That way more people will interact at the same time.
+Are the people who like it male or female? how old are they? are they in college? KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET PERSONALLY.
+Did any one offer to buy it? Are they excited and genuine? How much would they pay?

I hope you guy’s find this useful, feel free to drop a comment and tell us if it worked well for you.
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