Building a brand is a slow burn and you need to not only put out a high quality product, but you need reasons to continually engage people
Your brand needs to have a cohesive message/theme.
Being in a niche is not a bad thing and when choosing what your brand is about it can help you stick out in an over saturated market. Picking something you are passionate about beyond general t-shirts is very important to building loyalty. When a customer goes to the miles to go site, they know your designs will be inspired by literature and that’s the crowd that buys your products. If you start releasing random designs that had nothing to do with your brand’s theme, it would confuse people on what the brand is about. It’s not to say that some random customers may stumble across a design they like specifically, but for the core repeat customers you need to build for growth, they enjoy the comfort of familiarity.
Maybe someone likes a design of yours, buys a tee and they decide to come back and everything looks like a totally different brand…you just lost a customer because they can’t identify with who the brand is now. It’s important to evolve, but side shifting is an easy way to disengage people who have supported you.
DO NOT print a ton of logo shirts on your first run!!!!
It takes a while for people to want to walk around like a billboard advertising the name of your brand. Limited items don’t have a draw unless you have built a following of customers who will desire the extremely limited version. What would it take for you to walk around with a shirt that just had the name of a new company on it?
It is almost impossible to build loyalty from a jumble of randomness in your store. Curate the look and offer a strong vision of what your brand is about. Having a consistent feel to your brand will in time allow people to develop a bond with your brand. It takes time and you need to stick to your guns and your vision for the brand. Building a brand doesn’t happen overnight and you need to recognize that just because you release a bunch of t-shirts doesn’t mean people will attach. You need to give them something they want to align with consistently. Trust and consistency lead to loyalty and growth.
