T-shirt.com was launched in 2010 by the BuyFun.com, which was started in 1992 as a Halloween garage costume shop and today, is one of the internet's largest online retailers of funstuff. BuyFun.com is a family owned, retailer of Fun from Mankato, Minnesota and has evolved into an e-commerce company, running multiple brands, with T-shirts.com being one of them.
Not only can a customer purchase t-shirts from the website but he can even design a t-shirt for himself or friends. T-shirts.com has a team of 17 talented designers, designing t-shirts for the customers. T-shirts.com takes pride in their excellent customer service and their fast, worldwide shipping. Read on to know more about T-shirts.com, in our exclusive interview with them.
1. Please introduce T-shirt.com to our readers.
T-Shirts.com is owned and operated by BuyFun.com, a family owned, retailer of Fun from Mankato, MN. The business started as a garage costume shop in 1992, and has since evolved into an e-commerce company that runs multiple brands.
2. How do you go about creating categories of your t-shirts? Share with us the creative process behind it? Is there a minimum number of t-shirt designs required before you start a t-shirt category?
3. How do you onboard an artist on your team? What is the process of approving a given design for production?
The 17 artists that currently have shirt designs on T-Shirts.com were selected by our team and asked to create original art print shirts to sell on our site. We are not currently accepting public submissions or adding additional artists, but expect to in the future.
Artists sent lo-res files of their art to our design team and the designs were approved on a case-by-case basis. They were then asked to submit layered high-res files that could be used for printing the shirts and our design team added the new shirt designs to the site.
4. With so many different designs and sizes and the associated logistical challenges, what systems do you have in place to manage everything? How do you ensure the consistent quality of your products?
We have inventory reports that run and let us know when we are low in stock, or if something is not selling well, or if something goes discontinued and use that data.
5. How are you promoting the website? In your opinion do social media networks play an important role in determining a brand's success in today's connected world?
Our focus is about spreading the message of our relatively new brand to customers who are looking for a place to fulfill all of their t-shirt needs. We are currently on FB, Twitter, Pinterest and Blog we would love you to follow us along and find out about all the great deals!
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TShirtsDotCom
Twitter: @tshirtscom
Pinterst: tshirtscom
Blog: http://www.t-shirts.com/blog/
6. What different methods of design printing do you use? What about the materials you use?
We print our shirts on varying apparel manufacturer’s products, such as Alstyle and Bay Island Sportswear, which means the size and comfort may also vary from shirt to shirt.
7. With so many different designs and sizes and the associated logistical challenges, what systems do you have in place to manage everything? How do you ensure the consistent quality of your products?
We have our inventory system in place where it is updated all the time when an order goes through and we can see how much we think we need to replenish (buy more of) or what we need to put on sale (if not doing that well). We use a lot of excel documents for our inventory and also email updates for bulk orders. We ensure the conisistet quality from our vendors that we go through. Once we see the shirt in person we can tell by how soft it is and think that we could sell a good amount of them. Once the shirts start selling we go through and see if we want to keep ordering from that vendor and try something new with them too.
8. What advice would you like to give to aspiring etailers to help them in their ecommerce ventures?
Make sure you pick products that you know people want. If you have search bar’s it helps a lot to look into the detail of what people are searching. You want your layout of your design for your website to look clean and inviting and fun. So people know it’s safe and secure to shop your site online and see all your new products. Want to show that communication just like you would see if you were shopping in a store at the mall. Stay promising to your customers and guarantee them their products on time and have shipping options available to them. You want to make it easy for the customers to purchase products since they are doing it online and not with someone at the store. We also like to thank our customers after they have ordered from us so they feel like they are invited back and that we appreciate that they took the time to check out and order from T-Shirts.com
9. What are your future plans for T-shirts.com? Are you working on any innovative concepts to showcase on the site?
At T-Shirts.com, we leverage our many years of experience in e-commerce to provide the products that are both currently popular and also introduce new items that push the envelope. We pride ourselves on excellent customer service and extremely fast fulfillment as evidenced by our customer reviews. We’ve already received very positive feedback on our original graphic tees and plan to expand more into this category.
Thank you T-shirts.com for taking out the time and doing this interview with us. We wish you the very best for the future.
thanks for share.