Forum - Online shirts...

Online shirts...

Thu, 22/07/2010 - 14:35 — grudfuttle

I'm after some practical advice:

I'm currently running a sucessful retail shop but not in an industry which interests or excites me. I'd like to sell it and concentrate on an online business in another product area. The idea is to start an online venture part time until it's big enough for me to sell the shop and go full time.

I used to wear (in fact almost live in) grandad shirts many years ago as a student. Even back then I used to have to buy them from second hand shops. For almost 30 years since I've been completely unable to find anything like them. There are grandad shirts online, even retailers specialising in them, but they're nothing like the real thing. They're poor copies and generally cheap rubbish. I should know - I've bought half of them!

I've researched and discovered there's an awful lot of people 'Googling' for grandad shirts and I'm wondering if there's enough to go online retailing them. I'm not interested in competing on price with the cheap rubbish already out there - I want to compete on quality. Genuine, traditional, classic, grandad shirts made from quality material. Not cheap but "garanteed 100% satisfaction or send it back for a full refund" - sort of thing.

I've already decided on a company name and I've lots of ideas to make the shirts exclusive. I had the idea of testing them out on ebay for a few months first to gauge interest, response and feedback.

My problem is practical: how to find someone to work with me on the design and make the first samples? I confess to having absolutely no knowledge of materials or clothing manufacture. It would be terribly expensive, and I don't think very wise, to have several thousand made just to test the theory. Is it feasible to have a small batch made? Where? How?

Thanks, Paul.