Shirts with Your Logo Make Life Unbearable

Do you have a T-shirt with your logo on it? Maybe as a uniform at your shop or just something to wear at a tradeshow? Branded T-shirts are great ways to increase the recognizability of your brand and company. Shirts with your logo can be inexpensive to make and give your company a professional and consistent look. And people like branded things much more than regular advertisements. In fact, people are 2.5 times more likely to have a positive view of companies with branded materials than who use internet advertising. Whether we think it or not, someone using something with your brand on it is kind of like an endorsement, and we like brands that our friends like too.


Branding on a T-shirt provides 200 brand impressions per every dollar spent. That’s the same rate of impressions per dollar as a primetime cable ad. So T-shirts are a lot cheaper than TV commercials but are just as effective. On average, a T-shirt will give you over 2,200 to 3,400 brand impressions per shirt over the lifetime of the shirt (about 14 months). That’s 150-240 impressions a month. 5-8 impressions every day -- per shirt (if you wore the shirt everyday… which frankly we do not recommend). 


That sounds great, right? Well, there are a few things you should know before you get a T-shirt with your logo on it. Believe us, you should have all the information before deciding to purchase.

THE REAL COSTS OF A BRANDED T-SHIRT


#1. You will have to talk about your business a lot more.

You’re going to have thousands of instances of people seeing your shirt. And not everyone is going to come up to talk to you about it. But even if just a few percent of people do, you could be facing 50 conversations -- per shirt! Imagine if you and each family member is wearing one when you go out to dinner? Well, let’s just say we hope you enjoy a conversational dinner.


People will want to know what you make! They’re looking for a new buffet for their dining room, do you make that? They want custom shelves in their living room, do you make that? They were going to order a serving tray with their family tree on it, can you do that? Your T-shirt will remind people all around you of their projects or wish-lists for their home. And since you’re right there, they might want to go ahead and see if you’re the guy who can make their woodworking wishes a reality.


When a conversation like these strikes up, usually people hand over business cards with some information about their shop (and a reminder to follow-up later!). But if carrying business cards everywhere is not your thing -- or if you know your customer is just going to look up your business online anyway, why not just invest in a digital business card? Then you can send your customer directly to your online shop, website, business reviews, and whatever else they were going to look up! Then within minutes, your shirt has resulted in potential customers on our website.

#2. You will have a lot more business.

This is directly related to our first point: after people get a sense for the kind of work you do, they may start ordering your products! 86% of customers believe that their experience with a company is just as important as the product or service they pay for. And that experience can start right in the coffeeshop, church, or park where your potential customers strike up a conversation with you. Having a good conversation with someone, combined with your professional logo on your shirt, is a fantastic start to a great relationship with that customer, which can lead to increased sales and orders through retention and repeat business. So before you decide to wear your branded T-shirt, ask yourself: Am I ready for more orders right now?


And sure, you can get some more wood and sandpaper, and unfortunately your mortgage isn’t going to pay itself, so a few extra orders can’t hurt too much. But more business is not just more measuring and cutting and staining. It’s more printing invoices and product information cards. It’s more emails and phone calls. It’s more project management. It’s more packaging, marketing, and pricing. All because you wore a T-shirt with your logo on it! This is one area that we can help with, though. Check out the links to some other resources and products we have to help you with the business so you can do more woodworking.

Here’s an example of a custom product card we designed for Clovis Custom Woodworking


#3. You will have to hear a lot more stories from strangers.

When your logo immediately conveys your prowess with a band saw, people might just assume they can tell you all about the time they hired a guy to build a bench for their dining table… and then their cousin Danny fell through it! (And if your logo doesn’t show off your prowess with a band saw, we can help you with that!) From these stories,you might learn about every shortcut in the business and all the shoddy materials you need to avoid, in addition to every tale of an errant paint chip and splinter in town. Everyone loves to share a good story about a bad time, and your T-shirt may be all the invitation someone needs to start sharing theirs with you.


On the flip side, when a client of yours sees your logo, it may remind them to share how much they love the work you did for them! They’ll want to share with you the compliments they got from their friends and family. Heck, they may even ask for a quote for another piece they were thinking about getting for their home. But whether people want to complain about their shabby, mass-produced, store-bought bookshelf or compliment your craftsmanship on a custom end table, you will have to learn to listen to more and more stories.

#4. You will have to talk shop with a lot more woodworkers.

Sure, you expect a good amount of chatting and sharing tips with other craftsmen and craftswomen at events, on Instagram, or even while in the lumber section at your favorite home improvement store. But while you’re shopping for jeans or picking up milk? If you’re wearing your branded shirt, you will! Other woodworkers will identify you and they could see this as the perfect opportunity to get someone else’s perspectives on a project that is giving them a lot of trouble. Or maybe they can’t choose a good hardwood and would love for you to shed some insight on the best choice. They could also want to share some of their recent successes! Both professionals and hobbyists want to brag sometimes and that could be a great opportunity for you to talk about your latest accomplishment too. It was the wood shavings on your shoulder or shop pencil behind your ear that used to give you away -- now a shirt with your logo makes it even more obvious that you are a woodworker.

#5. You will have to keep a portfolio of pictures of your projects.

Whether talking to friends, family, customers, other woodworkers, or anyone else, someone is going to ask for pictures of your projects. Maybe it’s to check in on the progress for their order or get ideas for a new order. Or maybe it’s to test your mettle and figure out how good you are. Either way, you better have some pictures ready to go. You could show them your Instagram or Etsy store, your online shop’s inventory, or a gallery on your website. But inevitably, they will want to access those pictures on their own device so they can look at them on their own time, too. So not only will you have to take time out of your day to show off your work, you will need a robust presence online, too. One good technique is to have one central landing page for any kind of customer, where there are links to your social media, online store, website, photo gallery, and anything else you have online. Check out our post on lnk.bio on how to create an easy webpage with everything your customer may want to see! (You didn’t think your T-shirt would require updating your website, did you? That’s why we made this post about the real costs of your branded shirts.)

#6. You will have to tell people where and how to get their own branded shirts.

Maybe when someone starts chatting with you in line at the store, they don’t want to talk about woodworking! They could be starting their own small business and want to know where you got your T-shirt printed. They may think about all the benefits of sharing their own business logo on their clothes to help increase awareness of their new company, and not even realize some of the drawbacks of it. But you don’t have to tell them, they will find out soon enough.


Of course, if someone is asking about getting customized apparel, including T-shirts, feel free to point them to us! It’s kinda what we do. Here’s a few shirts we have in our store (click the image to see them on our site):


IN REVIEW (AND A SOLUTION TO MAKING YOUR LIFE BEARABLE AGAIN)


A branded shirt seems like a great idea -- and we agree! T-shirts with your logo, however, are never just simple T-shirts with your logo. They are invitations to talk, market, network, and do business, even when you are just out and about running errands. Who knew that shirts came with such responsibility? There is a lot to do when you wear your shirt! But… does that responsibility always have to fall on you?


Did you know that 80% of people in the US have a branded T-shirt? People love T-shirts that rep their favorite companies, or maybe they just love getting free stuff, including shirts. So this got us thinking… There’s a solution to all the problems we’ve described so far: give those shirts away! Sell them! Give them to your customers (through raffles, giveaways, loyalty rewards, etc.) and let them deal with those conversations. ...That is, unless you like talking to people about your passions and your business. In that case, wear your shirt proudly!


We hope you caught our attempt at comedy throughout this article. We admit: we were pretty subtle. Obviously we think T-shirts are one of the best ways to share your business, increase engagement, and add personalization and professionalism to your brand. And it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to do it, even with all the “costs” we described in our article. But don’t just limit your brand to shirts -- we can customize hats, hoodies, and pants, too!


Maybe we should add a disclaimer onto our website: Wear your logo at your own risk. You will get busy.

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