Opportunity

Problem

Imagine the possibility of creating your shirt completely from scratch. Select the fabric and style you prefer, then add the graphic or image to the front and/or rear. This is the ultimate way to express yourself. There are no restrictions on what you can communicate. Different people may have different fan bases. Some might support a specific sports team and others might support a musician. Your shirt might display a message or cause. Whatever you may decide, you can print any image on your shirt.

Solution

Your T-Shirt! The T-Shirt! is an innovative new business that allows anyone to create a shirt they like (specifically the front or back design). By intelligently leveraging cutting edge technology, Your T-Shirt! will harness the power of computer sublimation to allow custom shirt printing in production runs as small as one unit.

Market

Your T-Shirt We have divided the market by the type of product they buy. Customers who prefer a premade graphic image to be applied to their shirt are the first. The second group is those who would prefer custom artwork on their shirt. Your T-Shirt has decided to divide the market by the products that they purchase because it offers an intuitive, easy method of targeting the two different groups. Another reason to segment the market based upon the two products, is that the buyers of these products have distinct demographics. This allows them to be placed in separate markets.

Competition

Your T-Shirt There are three companies that have been identified as competitors. Two of them are local and one is an online shirt designer.

• Tshirt World This competitor is a specialist in silk-screening. 70% of their business is silk-screening with the remaining 30% sublimation. They require a minimum of 10 orders with a 2-3 week lead-time. This company only uses pre-existing designs for their silk-screening and for sublimations you must use their artist.
• Shirt Shack This local retailer caters to teams or organizations with 20 or more production runs. They are good at their job, but they can be very rigid about custom work.
• Design House — This is an Internet-based retailer that primarily offers computer sublimations. Design House provides a collection of 200 images for customers to choose from. Customers are allowed to submit their own graphic. The quality of the sublimations is mediocre at best because they can only use off the shelf technology.

Why Us?

We strive to be the best in custom shirt sublimation manufacturing. We promise to offer our customers the best product for the lowest price. Our goal is to exceed our customers’ expectations.

Expectations

Forecast

We intend to grow the business and make a modest profit in 3 years. We will be synonymous with fashion-forward T-Shirts of high quality. Everybody will find a custom-made shirt to suit their needs. We will be able to pay off friends and family by year 5.

Financial Highlights for the Year

You will need financing

Total $84,500 will be ours. David will be contributing $19,500 of his own money. A loan of $65,000 will be paid off in full by year 5. After paying off the loan fully, we will make some profits in year 3, and we might consider hiring more staff in years 4 or 5.