Before I even had a shirt designed, built a website, or even had a name for my brand...I did my research. I mean a lot of research. The first thing I researched were different streetwear brands...and I don't mean scoping out their designs or how much revenue they were generating but actual pertinent research. At least it was pertinent to me. I researched the history of all the brands I ran across. For example...The Hundreds started back in 2003 (I found out about them around 2005) by Ben and Bobby who decided to drop out of law school and follow their passion and start a clothing brand. Benny Gold launched in 2007, he started by posting random stickers around San Francisco and created a brand and a following from those stickers. He also went to SCAD in Savannah...which is pretty cool. It wasn't like this research was something that I just absolutely needed to start a brand but it gave me motivation and let me know that it's possible.

The next thing I researched were wholesale t shirt brands...and there are like a million t shirt wholesalers out there, so finding one that I thought would best fit what I wanted was tough. The first strategy I used was the "wing it" strategy. That pretty much means I took my design to a local screen printing company and pretty chose the cheapest shirts they had. Mind you, at that time I didn't know much about the different qualities of a shirt. In my head a t shirt is a t shirt...right? I was terribly wrong...those shirts were horrible. The quality of those shirts sucked and it was so bad that it made the design on them suck too. That shit hurt...hell that was a couple hundred bucks down the drain. So I looked for some local trade shows that would have all the different brands there so that I could see and feel first hand what I was getting myself into. I went to about 3 different trade shows because each trade show would have different brands I was interested in. After going to these trade shows, I would take all the booklets I received from each vendor and compare. 

One thing you have to realize is that you're not going to get it on the first try...shit you might not even get it on the second or third try but the more you research the more information you get and the better decision you can make. And yea, google is a great tool but at some point you're going to have to get off the computer and actually talk to some people and ask a lot of questions.

There's so much more stuff that I had to research but...I think you get the gist of it. Do your research!

And here is another random pic for your viewing pleasure...because again I hear blogs are supposed to have pics...