Niche Market Ideas for the Screen Printer and DTG Printer

3 UNIQUE Markets for your Custom T Shirt business

Once thing every small business person needs, especially ones going into the custom t-shirt business, is a list of hot niche markets to go after. While the screen printing business is a little different that the direct to garment, the customers are going to be the same. So once you’ve picked the best DTG printer for your business, like we’ve discussed from www.dtgprintermachine.com, or before you’ve even started a screen print shop, jot these down as part of your business plan.

Wedding Businesses

Most new printers start out with sports teams and leave the wedding wear to bling machine or rhinestone machine owners. The obvious markets for weddings are in those sparkly, funny rhinestone tees that the bridal parties wear, after all.

BUT this can be a hot market for you too! You can offer the following:

• Tees for the bridal party – funny, raunchy or with the bride/grooms photos on them
• Wedding invitations – people do screen or DTG printing onto wood for unique invitations like this store.
• Custom chair sashes with sayings or family names
• Groom tee shirts

Those are just a few ideas! Why not sit down with a local wedding planner or bridal shop and work out a referral exchange deal?

New Businesses

The trend online is to serve up LOCAL information. More and more search engine tools and phone apps are designed to tell you what’s nearby – and you should be doing the same!

Brand new businesses are the perfect customer for a dtg printer or screen printing business because they usually need everything. Here are a few examples of new brand businesses and what they might need:

• American Boat Trailer Rental – no question what this company does, they rent boat trailers in Florida. What might they need from you?
  • Company logo tees
  • Promotional t-shirts to give away to customers
  • Fitness and Weight loss companies – even a national online business, like this one called Javita that just started selling weight loss coffee, has ample opportunity for promotional product sales. Company like these have lots of resellers, so each one is a prospect for:
    • Personalized promotional tees – for their local franchise only
    • Coasters, banners and hats for giveaways
    • Restaurants and Coffee Shops – the smaller the better! These companies are great markets for company uniform tees and polos, giveaway items and employee motivational clothing for employee of the month tees, etc.

New businesses are simple to find too. Whenever a company is formed the owners must register the company name with the state and advertise it in the newspaper. There are also several publications, like the Business Journal, see bizjournals.com and find your area, that publish new and growing businesses in a leads section.

Event Venues

You may or may not be able to sell custom tees to the local fair grounds or concert venue, but they can still be an EXCELLENT source of business. After all, are there ANY events that you’ve been to that don’t sell event based custom tees? Or that wouldn’t want special event employee t-shirts?

The salespeople or booking agents that work for event venues can be a gold mine of leads for your business. Just call up your local venue and ask for sales, tell them what you do, bring them a free t-shirt and let them bring you new business every time a group comes to town!

So when you’re thinking about your custom t shirt business, think about these 3 unique markets and go get ’em!