WELCOME TO THE T-SHIRT EXPERIMENT!
Three volunteers from the Wilcom DecoNetwork Team have started this blog. It will explore all the steps of establishing an online business including any falls and triumphs.
Kristi (coffee-drinking snow skier), Anh (shopaholic and mother of a baby girl) and Phoebe (pencil-holding chocoholic) will be your guinea pigs. They’ll blog every step involved in creating an online web store, from thinking of a company name, designing the website to making the first sale! (yay!)
AIM
Each of us will create on online t-shirt business. with limited capital within a short time frame.
HYPOTHESIS
Things we think are important in setting up an online business, they are:
- Target Market
Choosing a target market for your business that you’re passionate about. - Choosing the right Online Store provider
Finding a secure, easy-to-use and reliable solution for your online store. Having technical support available when you need it. - Understanding your customers
Having your finger on the pulse so your products, services and pricing suits your target market. - Unforgettable Branding
It’s the keyword people associate with you. It’s the gut feeling someone has about you. - Website Design and Content
Your online store is the first impression someone sees. Make sure it represents your brand personality. - Having a Fresh Storefront
Update your website regularly with fresh new content to keep your customers interested and inspire them to buy. - Marketing Strategies
Online and traditional marketing techniques that will help customers find your store. - Customer Relationship
Great customer service is even more important for online stores than traditional retail stores. - Sales Techniques
Once you’ve attracted the customer to your store, convert those interest to sales! - Learning as you Grow
Monitoring the statistics of sales, trends, what works, what doesn’t work and adapting to improve
Here are our ideas. What are your thoughts on this? We appreciate your comments.
METHOD
Each of us will create our online store and we’ll blog our experience along the way. We’ll commit around 3-4 hours per week for 96 days (about 3 months) working on our online shop. The technology we’re using is called Wilcom DecoNetwork, because it has an online designer and all the tools we need. Because we’re not producing the shirts ourselves, we are creating Affiliate stores under different DecoNetwork Fulfilment centres. Fulfilment centres are businesses who subscribe to DecoNetwork and offer free affiliate stores underneath them. That way they get more sales and we don’t have to worry about producing and shipping- everyone wins 
DecoNetwork.com offers a cost effective and easy way to set up and maintain a web site, allow your customers to order custom print and embroidery online, manage your production and build a network of resellers.
This is going to be very interesting and I am looking forward to see what you do with this.
I would suggest that you take a look at social networking and use that in a big way.
In my opinion branding takes longer than you have time for.
Personally, I’m learning that a lot of the traditional things no longer work, especially in a short time frame.
Good luck!!