How To Successfully Make Custom Merchandise for your Business

You might be thinking how hard can it be when you consider making custom merch for your business, but if you’re not an apparel company there’s some bumps along the road that can be discouraging for any business owner.

This comprehensive guide will help you navigate all of the factors to consider when making custom merchandise for your business.

1. Merch is more than just the design.

Seven years ago, I made my first merch product. It's what made me realize that good merchandise is more than just a cool graphic.

I had a beautifully detailed pen and ink illustration that looked great on paper, but I hadn't considered how it would work printed on the small bag I ordered. In short, my pen and ink was blurry, design incorporation with the product poor at best, and the white stained instantly. I was frustrated.

Over the years I learned that designing merch starts not with the design, but with these three things: target audience, budget and goal.

2. Your Target Audience for Custom Merch

If you don’t know who to target with the design, then the options for imagery and text are endless. The chances of creating something that resonates will be about the same as the 40 to 1 odds on that little brown horse at the racetrack. You might win big, but it might also take you 50 bets to get there. That’s not smart business, that’s just gambling.

By determining your target audience, you can get specific on the design. By getting specific, you can add in “easter eggs” your target audience will catch on to. The design will still appeal to the broad audience, but it will resonate with the specific audience.

3. Determining a Custom Merch Budget for Your Business Goals

Budget is important for a lot of reasons. It will decide if you are creating something custom or shopping on a site like Creative Market to license an existing design. It will also determine the printer you’ll use, and if you order in bulk or print on demand. Furthermore, your budget needs to consider marketing costs for product photos, promos and ads. Merch isn’t always a quick return on investment, so be prepared to market the heck out of it.

Your budget should also take into consideration your goal. For some, merch is all about brand awareness and loyalty. They’d feel successful giving merch away if it meant people wore it everyday and repped the brand. Other’s want it to be a steady revenue stream for them, and they need to make a profit in order to be successful. Your goal guides the choices you make.

4. The Most Important Step in Designing Merch

You have a target audience, a goal and a budget, but it's still not time to design. The next step is choosing your application method and printer.

It's how I start all merch designs, whether it's for my own business or a client's. Defining the application and printer first allows me to create an efficient and attractive merch design.

One example being screenprinting; you tend to use a limited color palette, but if you design it right you can actually get an extra color by incorporating the color of the fabric or material into your design. If you were to design first before deciding to use screenprinting, you may end up reworking the design or creating a product that isn't an efficient use of the method and materials.

5. Two Ways to Produce Custom Merch

When it comes to producing your design you have two choices: Order in bulk or print on demand (POD).

Print on Demand

POD is great when you don’t have the budget or space to keep stock on hand, but oftentimes you lose the ability to work with quality products or get the expert advice from a speciality manufacturer. You can also produce a lot of different products ranging from t-shirts to drinkware with just one design using a POD store, but designing for the product is an important aspect I’ll discuss in a minute.

Specialty Manufacturer

Specialty manufacturers can be a print shop that does shirts and hats using methods like screenprint, embroidery, patches, or DTG printing, or it could be as specific as a sock company that offers designs on their variety of specific SKU’s. By using a specialty store you get access to their knowledge of what looks good on their product, but you also have to buy at set minimums.

6. Merch Design

So, you know the target audience, have a budget, set goals, sourced a printer, picked an application method, and have finally arrived at the design stage!

With all of those factors in place you will know how many colors you can use; what the subject matter should be; if you will incorporate text or not; and whether you will be licensing existing art, designing it yourself, or working with a commercial artist like myself.

Wondering how you will know this? I created a checklist that helps you narrow it down.

7. Merch Design and Marketing Checklist

Designing merch comes with a learning curve, and if you've also had the experience of designing something that just looked 'blah' then you understand the frustration.

I use a pre-launch and post-launch checklist to ensure I cover all my bases when designing and marketing merch. Aside from what we covered above, it also includes product photography requirements and marketing material distribution, such as: 

Choosing Good Mockups and Lifestyle Shots

If you’re using a POD site, they do provide mockup photos, but let’s be honest they are so generic that anyone can spot them as POD mockup from a mile away. If I don’t have a sample product, I always use a mockup that fits my product well and will match the target audience.

If I'm able to get a sample, then getting quality photos and lifestyle shots is a must. The DIY option here would be to use photos from your audience to help you style and market it. Otherwise, hire a professional to help you take and edit the photos. This is something I offer as an add-on for select clients I work for.

Telling Your Brand's Story with Merch

Why did you choose this design? Why should your audience care? Why is this product important? Those are just a few things to consider when talking about the product. Sure you can list the basics like 100% cotton, such and such size, great for hiking, but make it more personal too. If you work with a professional listen to how they describe the design. They often talk in 'artsy' terms that can be useful to incorporate.

Results Create Better Future Designs

Results are a powerful metric, and I often look to them when determining whether a future design will work. In fact, if you work with me, the more data you can bring about your audience and their preferences the more successful we will be in designing merch. I may be an artist, but I love a good data set.