Have you ever wanted to have your own t-shirt business online but were worried about storing inventory in your home or having to ship every order personally?

Do you think it might be too difficult to manage especially if you are a stay-at-home mom or you have a full-time job?

Well, it is possible to have a thriving business from home and you do not have to handle inventory or process shipping…through dropshipping.

Dropshipping is a great way to start your online business full-time or as a side hustle.

There is very little start-up cost, especially compared to a brick-and-mortar establishment, and since you do not handle fulfilment, you can focus mainly on marketing and customer service.

As with any successful business, it does require work to build and grow your brand.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is an e-commerce business model where you, the store owner or merchant, receive an order from your customer, you then purchase the product online from the manufacturer or wholesaler who ships it directly to the customer.

You purchase at the manufacturer’s price and you sell it at your retail price, therefore you keep the profit.

What is Printful?

Printful is an online dropshipping and on-demand, custom print fulfilment service.

The company features products such as:

Men’s Clothing – T-shirts, Hoodies, Tank Tops, Sweatshirts
Women’s Clothing – T-shirts, Tank Tops, Leggings, Skirts, Swimwear, Hoodies, Sweatshirts and Dresses

Kids and Youth Clothing – Baby Onesies, T-shirts, Tank Tops, Leggings
Accessories – Hats, Phone Cases, Socks, Bags, Fanny Packs
Home Décor Items – Coffee Mugs, Wall Art, Beach Towels, Pillows

Custom Engraved Jewelry

Dropshipping with Printful

Printful allows integration with the Shopify e-commerce platform. So when your customer buys from your Shopify store, the order is automatically sent to Printful.

They proceed to print the item with your design, package it with your logo and ship it to your customer.

With Printful there are no minimum purchase requirements and you can order samples of your products at a 20% reduced price.

Another bonus to integration is there is no painstaking entering of products manually to your store or inputting of product descriptions or prices. Printful fills in all the product information for you and provides a size guide for your customers to determine their sizes as well as an option to have imperial and/or metric measurements.

Below is a video of how dropshipping with Printful works.

Determine Who is Your Target Market/What is Your Niche?

Let us just say that your passion is entrepreneurship, especially as a mommy. Based on your market research you realize there is a growing trend in the stay-at-home mom community who are starting their own businesses and you decide to create products for mompreneurs. Prints with affirmations, motivational quotes or bold statements, for example. This is your niche.

Examples of niches:

Fitness

Pet Lovers
Motivation
Hiking/Camping

Motorcycles

Here is a great article from Entrepreneur.com detailing 5 Steps You Can Use to Find Your Niche.

Decide on Your Store’s Name

Now that you know what your niche is, you need to find a name for your store.

Brainstorm name ideas for your business, and write them down in a notepad. Ensure that it is relevant to your niche and use keywords in your name to help potential customers be able to find your store online.

Create Your Designs

There are a few ways in which your designs can be created. The most cost-effective way is to do it yourself using your own design software or online using PicMonkey or Canva.

Printful also has in-house designers that you can work with to create designs for your products.

Another option is to come up with your own creative concepts for your designs and then outsource the work to a graphic designer on Fiverr. Under the Graphics & Design category on Fiverr, there is an entire section for T-shirts and Merchandise. Browse through the portfolios and reviews of the designers to find someone you would like to work with.

Why You Should Open Your Online Store on Shopify

Shopify is a fantastic e-commerce platform on which to host your store.

You do not need any web design skills as the system is not difficult to navigate or learn, and your store can be up and running in no time.

Shopify is the world’s fastest-growing e-commerce platform with over 500,000 active global retailers

It is Mobile Commerce ready
You can use your own domain name

Sell gift cards and generate coupon codes
Use its integrated blogging platform to create blog posts
Process credit card payments directly through Shopify, or other gateways such as PayPal

Process purchases with your smartphone using Shopify Mobile
Receive 24/7 support from Shopify Gurus
Access e-commerce analytics

Use built-in SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Rely on fast servers, industry-leading response times, and cutting-edge infrastructure
Keep your customer’s data secure with PCI Level 1 Compliant checkout

Shopify has over 1500 Apps that can enhance your store and customer experience

Set Up Your Store on Shopify

At the time of this writing, Shopify has a 3-day free trial during which you start setting up your store. Then you can get 3 months of Shopify for $1/month on selected plans.

With the free trial, you have some time to familiarise yourself with the platform and create a beautiful and professional storefront.

Click here and enter your email address to start creating your Shopify account. It takes just a few minutes, and no credit card is required to sign up.

You will be given a free domain like http://www.yourstore.myshopify.com. Later on, you can connect an existing domain that you own or buy a new one through Shopify.

Custom domains purchased through Shopify start at 15 USD per year.

Create a Printful account

To create your FREE Printful account click here. Follow the instructions to set up your account.

Once you have created your accounts, you will need to integrate your store with Printful.

The video below explains how this is done.

Decide on the Products You Want to Sell in Your Online Store

Next, it is time to start choosing your products.

Decide which of Printful’s products you want in your store.

You can choose to specialize in T-shirts and have a T-shirt business only or you can mix and match products as you please.

See my related post on How to Start a Leggings Business At Home using Printful.

On each product, you will see the cost price as well as actual customer reviews. There is a range of colours, sizes and other variants to choose from.

Printful, always expanding and adding to their products, recently introduced a line of Custom Engraved Jewelry to their merchandise, as well.

Add Mockup Designs to Your Products

Add mockup designs to your products. This is to showcase to customers what the final product will look like.

Set Your Prices

The next step is to set your prices. Prices can be set based on percentage profit or you can choose your own markup price and Printful automatically configures the retail prices.

Repeat these steps to add multiple products to your store.

Note: Both Printful and Shopify have great tutorial videos on YouTube that are easy to follow along as well as merchant support if you have any questions.

Launch Your Store

You have imported all your products from Printful into your store, continue setting up on Shopify; your payment gateway to receive payments, your About Us, Contact pages, etc. Then you will be ready to open your business to the world.

Here is a Checklist from Shopify to ensure you have everything in place before launching your store

Once everything is in place, launch your business!

Congratulations! You have just opened your online store!