WYS - IDENTITY - T-SHIRTS

Merchandise is a key part of any brand, it is used as a means of promotion, it can also be used to as a way to pull in extra cash...there are many benefits to creating t-shirts as part of the WYS brand. Not only does it give us a better chance at getting more people know who we are it also gives us the chance to do experiment with a different process that we are so what unfamiliar with, for me creating t-shirts is a great way to attract a whole new audience, so we have designed two very simple designs that will be the first edition of WYS clothing/merch. 

DESIGNS 

• Two simple designs - first the standard logo which speaks for itself the second more comical take on the logo which introduces a meme that was very popular at the start of 2018 and we are using this as more "fun" style of logo that is going to be mainly used on clothing. 
• The t-shirts will be hand screen printed, this makes for a high-quality print and this also means that you can charge a little more because they have been produced by hand (great USP).
• Below - two mockups of the t-shirts. To start with we will only be printing on white Gildan Heavy Cotton shirts which we can get cheaply on Amazon. Once we have a higher demand for the shirts this is when we would think about out scouring the printing, but for now, as we have the screen printing facilities we use them - as the only outgoing costs are for the shirts.  

PRINTING PROCESS 

• Test printed t-shirts on to old Gildan shirts which have helped me to learn the process of fabric screen printing, it is very similar to printing on paper but there are some minor differences - after printing the first batch I would be very confident in printing a much larger amount of shirts once the site has been launched. 
• Need to be careful of how much ink you pull through the screen - as you can see below on the white shirts the ink has bled slightly this is because I pulled it through twice and it maybe didn't need this. 
• Sadly when printing the WYS I covered up the HAND design with tape, when the tape was removed so that I could print on the design it removed some of the screen with it which allowed ink to seep through. This is one of the drawbacks of screen printing but once I have perfected this it will be fine. 

EXPERIMENTING 

• On the light blue shirt, I decided to experiment with the screen while printing on the shirt. To get the design that is left I used tape to create a rectangle which I used as a border, I then printed all around the inside of the shape which left me with the rather interesting looking final print. 
• Doing experiments like this has given me the idea for printing more things like this as I think it would be interesting to see if people would buy them. 
• As all these t-shirts were test prints on old shirts this has also given me the idea of creating a small range of t-shirts that are "vintage" with the WYS logo on as repurposed clothing is very popular now. 
• The grey shirt was the best one that I printed on this day - by the end, I figured out how to best print the tees. I will be ordering new shirts and be printing more for the launch of our site which I hope people will be interested in buying. 

BUYING AND SELLING

• To start out it would be fairly easy to sell small batches of t-shirts. 
• Make batches of around 10-15 shirts 
• Each shirt is £3.00 each to buy 
• Free to make (university facilities) 
• Sell for £20 plus postage and packing using BigCartel - if this becomes too much for us to handle there are other options for selling shirts e.g Everpress but for now I am happy with printing ourselves.  
• Around £17 profit on each shirt
• Great way to make extra money for WYS and to help increase the popularity of WYS