Towards the end of the previous module I’d experimented with putting an image on a t-shirt, firstly to see how it would look and also to consider whether this might be another way to share and potentially market my work. I’d taken inspiration from Juno Calypso, who successfully blends a critically-acclaimed fine art career with a more accessible commercialism, selling a range of posters via her website.

To this end, I set up a limited duration campaign on Everpress offering print t-shirts in four colours in the period just after new year, and promoted them via my Twitter and Instagram accounts. 

It’s fair to say that the response was…terrible!

The way Everpress works, you’re required to stipulate how many items must be sold in order to trigger the shirts being printed. The t-shirts are then only printed at the end of the offer period, if the minimum number of orders is reached. If the minimum orders is not reached, those who have ordered are refunded and your campaign is consigned to the sad list of losers (maybe that last part isn’t totally accurate!). 

Having set a minimum order of 5, I was sadly unable to convince 3 people to buy a t-shirt (I bought two myself!), with only one other item purchased. 

Despite being on the face of it a crushing failure, I learnt quite a few things from this experiment: 

• People on social media are not as engaged as they might seem. The numbers of people who viewed the Instagram stories and favourited the posts related to the t-shirts did not translate into traffic to the Everpress website (the site helpfully gives you data about number of page visits etc). It’s interesting to reflect on how to consistently turn a social media following into active engagement outside of the immediate social media platform, whether that be to promote a project, convince people of an idea or turn followers into purchasers. I am sure there’s a lot of information out there about how to do this better. It would be wise to take a more strategic and informed approach to selling on social media if this was ever to become a significant income stream.

• Pricing is obviously key. I set the price of my t-shirts at £19.99. The cost of producing each shirt was around £12 due to the low number of predicted sales. There’s certainly a discussion to be had about value and how this relates to exclusivity and desirability of the product on sale. Speaking to a friend of mine who enquired about how the sales had gone, she interestingly said that she was put off from buying as she felt the price was too high compared to the equivalent item she usually buys on the high street. This raises another question about the context of the sale and where you seek out your audience. Using Juno Calypso as an example again, it’s probably easier to convince a visitor to her slick website, that showcases her work to best effect and reinforces the impression of it being high concept art, to part with £50 for a poster than it might be if she were trying to find the same customers via Twitter. In the first case the customers have somewhat self-selected. Of course, I could have simply listed the t-shirts for a few pennies over their cost price. I’m not sure this would necessarily have resulted in any more sales. It would also have done little to affirm the value of the work, which is of course a complex concept in itself and not one that is solely dependent on my view of the matter!

• I really don’t enjoy self-promotion and find marketing decidedly uncomfortable. My efforts to drum up interest in my t-shirt campaign were lacklustre I have to admit, and basically amounted to one post on Instagram and a couple of Instagram stories, as well as a couple of posts on Twitter. Even this felt horrible! I have to consider what the root of this discomfort is and whether it would make future attempts at self-promotion or product selling impossible. It’s difficult to expect anyone to buy your product if you’re not enthusiastic and passionate about it yourself. 

• Trying to sell t-shirts in winter when it’s snowing is stupid! (Maybe this partly explains my sheepish marketing…)

Overall, this was a valuable thing to do. I’ve not been completely deterred from doing something similar in the future, and I would hope to have a slightly more successful outcome by applying the lessons above. It’s worth considering how much of one’s income can ever be from selling these sorts of products, if my career heads in the direction I’d like it to. Equally though, the underlying principles of marketing, audience engagement, understanding your customer and what they want etc. are all skills a successful photographer must master.

So, anyone for a t-shirt?