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Sorry, we are about to burst your bubble.

“Make Money from Drop Shipping, it has never been easier.”

“How to make money $10,000 FAST by starting your T-shirt dropshipping business. No inventory, no start up cost.”

“Top XX Print On Demand Companies to start your business.”

We ourselves have seen the media bombarding such informations to teens, giving them a glimpse of being successful entrepreneurs without doing much work.

For one thing, you might be even sharing your own information or worse, even spending money to get their “Complete-guide-to-start-off-your-t-shirt-business” – the dropshipping way.

Sure, we may feel that there’s a need to unlock certain achievements at the age we are in, but there are no shortcuts.

Before we decided to compose this article, we thought hard about it. Even though might seemed like we are closing our own doors of opportunity, but educating the mass meant more to us.

Its time to hear the point-of-view from us.

For those whom do not know yet, we are a local T-shirt Printing Company in Singapore. One of those whom you will certainly knock doors on, when you decide to start your own “dropshipping business”. Heres the Top 3 reasons why drop shipping will not work out. If you do not wish to have your bubble burst, please close this page right away.

1. You “think” its a Win-Win Business Model.
   Not quite. Most would haggle with suppliers on the rates for their singular piece order. Because the more you can lower your cost, the greater your margin will be. How much do you think a supplier could possibly earn from your inconsistent, periodic sale? Suppliers would definitely be better off spending their time with another client that pays them enough to support their overheads. Oops, that was what you are trying to save on, and refuse to pay them for.
   
2. It is easy for any suppliers to replicate your supposed, “Unique Design”.
   We have seen duplicates of any iconic apparel designs on the streets. What difficulty do you think it poses to any suppliers if they would want to replicate your design? If drop shipping is about selling ur unique design and the supplier replicates your best selling model at a lower price, what more is there to value in the business? – Nothing.
   
3. You think you are “In-Control”, but you are actually “Under-Control”.
   When you finally get your order from your social media, you turn to the supplier to place your order in the requirements you have listed out and have the supplier ship to your customer’s location and you earn some quick bucks from it. The supplier gets her sale, and you got your profits from the trade, perfect right?
   
   But what if the supplier decide to put your job at the bay because they had more lucrative sale that they are trying to complete? There is nothing you can do about it, other than responding to complains by your customers and thinking about a change of supplier. The truth is, the same scenario will keep happening again and again. Didn’t your “entrepreneur mind” tell you that you should focus on the sale that brings food onto the table first?
   
   In summary, although we love to see anyone display a spirit of entrepreneurship, but there are certain fundamentals in a small business that has to be set in place. There are simply no “Get Rich Quick” formulas, but plenty of “Get Rich with Hard Work” Strategies out there. For all the time you spent on navigating your way through a effective dropshipping business model, it could be put to better use elsewhere.
   
   Hope everyone gained some new insights from reading it!

01. Complicated Designs

With too many incorporation of designs and content, in contrary to making your t-shirt stand out, it will end up looking messy. 

Remember: 
Busy design = messy looking
Simple design = brings out the right focus and makes it easier for others to process your design

02. Poor File Quality

– Bad image quality
– Low resolution
(Images should be 200 dpi or higher)

03. Bad Contrast 

– Fonts design clash
– Bad colour mix (remember that more colours involved = more cost involved)
– Background and image / text contrast

04. Bad Placement 

You can get the design right, but if your placement is off, it can make your t-shirt really look out of place.

Here’s what you can do differently: 

01. Do The Right Artwork Preparation 

Before getting your t-shirt printed, it is essential that you take some time to conceptualise your design. You can simply draw it out on a piece of paper before proceeding to do any actual design work. Try creating a few variations so that you will not be limiting your options. 

Programs that you can use to design your t-shirt:

• Adobe Photoshop: for detailed designing works
• Adobe Illustrator (AI): for more advance level designing works – it creates higher resolution than photoshop

Other than using these programs, there are actually a few websites in Singapore that you can utilise to design your t-shirt online and get it printed. 

Ensure that your image files are of high quality as this will affect the final printing outcome. 

02. Use Complimentary Fonts & Sizes

You can go to dafont.com or fonts.google.com to go about pairing your fonts for your t-shirt design. 

One should avoid choosing font styles that are too similar in nature. Because, if the contrast is too small, it will lead to a conflict in style. For instance, one should combine a serif with a sans serif. 

Serif: has a small line attached to the end of the stroke

San Serif: does not have any extra strokes at the end 

The more contrast your fonts have, the better the result. With that being said, one should not go to the extreme and choose fonts with too much variation and difference. Some fonts just do not have a great pairing combination. 

Another way to achieve a good contrast is by experimenting on the font sizes. 

Usually the header is meant to stand out more than the content that is in the paragraph. Remember the same rule: if there is too little contrast, it will make it harder for the receiver to distinguish the difference in your separation.

03. Use Complimentary Colours 

If you have trouble identifying your colour’s html code (exact colour code), you can consider using this program: https://imagecolorpicker.com/. 

– Simply drop your picture into this website
– And it will identify for you your html colour code 

An example of a shade of blue = #2596be

Next, if you are unsure what kind of colours go with your primary colour that you have chosen. You can also check out this free website: https://coolors.co/f77f00-555b6e-89b0ae-bee3db

• Click on the figure on the 1st column and paste in your colour code 
• You can proceed to lock your primary colour by clicking on the lock icon
• Press ‘spacebar’ on your keyboard and let the system generate 3 other colours to compliment your primary colour! 

If you are not satisfied, simply press ‘spacebar’ again. 

04. Source For A Good Printer

All in all, after you have prepared the ground work and solidify your ideation, the last step is to find a good printer that can turn your visualisation into a reality. In Singapore, there are actually very few t-shirt printing companies that have their own in-house printing team. This means that usually there is a lack of quality control. 

Before you make a decision to go with a particular company, it is important you do your own research and look up the company’s track record, reviews, pricing, and even the after-sales service. 

The result will also depend on the kind of material quality that the company uses as well as the type of printing you would want the company to help you with. There are many types of t-shirt printing, and it is an art that requires skill and workmanship. 

We have received good viewership for the first article on this topic ” Why are some T-shirts more expensive than others (Part 1)”

Today we are going to dive in deeper to talk about this. Our main objective of the write-up is to increase your knowledge and preferably make the best decision that suit your requirements – juggling a balance between cost-effectiveness and reliability.

Quality of Print

Photo Credits to Iconique

More visible in darker coloured T-shirts – A print will appear to be more vibrant if being Silkscreen Printed twice, instead of just one layer. As you can see from the photo, just one layer of white print is not sufficient for coverage of the T-shirt’s base colour. In design language, we call it opacity; Dark coloured T-shirts that has only a single layer of print would appear to have its print adjusted to 70%. This procedure of printing in 2 layers is often compromised. The reason is because a lot of apparel printing vendors in Singapore they do not have their own production space. They simply get someone else to do it and hand over the goods to you. 

Location of Manufacture. 

This is a rather straightforward point. Due to the scarcity of land space and difference in workforce labour, it will be certainly more affordable to have your T-shirts / apparels printed in China. But the shortcoming? — You have to accept the goods that is delivered to you even if it is poorly done, and theres no room for Returns / Compensation / Complain. Or maybe during your next flight to China you can carry the T-shirts back to the supplier with you.

Turnaround Time

One would often see this word appearing on different vendor’s website. “Turnaround Time” basically means how much time does the vendor require to complete your job after you have made the necessary payments. Vendors whom do not do the printing by themselves would usually take about 2weeks – 4 weeks, compared to local manufacturers; if they were to acquire your orders, they usually can complete within 3-5 days during a non-peak period. 

Summary

What is your risks appetite like? Would you attempt to save cost by importing your shirts without quality checks – or have your apparels handled by vendors who do not have their own production ground where they simply act as a middleman and cant provide any defects handling?

In Iconique, we have our production site located at 85 Genting Lane, #03-01B, Singapore 349569. In this space, we carry out all our production related works and we welcome any of our readers whom is interested to find out more about apparels printing to visit us!

In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 Circuit Breaker in Singapore, we have taken a step back to review our machinery set-ups, with the intention of delivering better quality prints, in a shorter time to our consumers.

Introducing our latest addition to our machineries – the Graphtec CE7000-60, Made in Japan.

The new Graphtec CE7000 series cutting plotter builds on Graphtec’s industry-leading reputation for quality, precision, and value. Although it might seem that this is not the best time for machinery upgrades – as most businesses are trying their best to stay afloat, we thought to use this opportunity to stay ahead of the industry by acquiring the state-of-the-art technology.

In Iconique, we pledge to keep ourselves updated to the latest news and technology, and to deliver the perks and excitement to our clients. Do not just believe what we say, you can check out our Google Reviews Page to authenticate.