Lockdown Lifestyle 2.0: Restarting True Gains – The Clothing Brand Side Hustle

Hey everyone, welcome back to the blog or welcome to the blog if your reading for the first time

Let’s start the week straight off with a blog post.

I’m really looking for some advice, feedback and just general thoughts from any of you guys and girls that may read this. So be sure to leave some feedback around this or get in touch on social media with your thoughts

Back in 2014 I was looking for side hustles which could be a good way of making some extra income and at the time I loved the idea of creating a clothing range / line of T shirts

I decided to create the brand “True Gains”

To me the brand was all about achieving goals, and making gains within our everyday lives through being motivated, dedicated, committed, determined & using both mental and physical strength & power to achieve things

This was the original logo and may be used again or modernised in some way

The meaning behind the brand still fully resonates with me today especially on this journey right now! I’m trying to use all of these characteristics to lose weight, get debt free and save money while creating different income streams for future success

I began the process by creating a logo or motif for the Ts, created social media accounts, and got a couple of sample T shirts made up

From that point I opened a big cartel store, which I still have the login etc for and may decide to use once again

I managed to amass around 550 views on the site over the next few months & made around £600 in sales

However, I decided to give up on this venture for a couple of reasons

1. I felt I was not really making money from this as it was costing a fair amount to get the items shipped & printed leaving me with very little profit margin

2. The process at the time for receiving the order, sending it to the printer, then shipping the item took a rather long time

Looking back now I do think I could of continued with this and as the business grew I would of been able to cut the time and cost down but being as I was in debt at the time and didn’t have much spare cash flow this wasn’t really an option

But, here we are 2021 and I’m looking at side hustles once again in a bid to earn additional income and clear my debts as well as create a stable future in regards to money

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is recreating the brand from 2014 and beginning the shop back up

I’ve managed to find a site in which the Ts would cost just less than £10 on print on demand and would allow for me to sell at around £14 – £15 making £4 – £5 per T profit after postage

As a start out this pricing may be less I would need to look at other brands and what they are charging to work out a rough cost but if I may a few pound profit to start that would not hurt as the whole process is now very simple as opposed to previously

These were the original Ts

More Original Ts

A customer comes to the online store, makes their purchase, the integrated system then tells the fulfilment centre what they ordered, they print and ship the items and then invoice me

I need to factor in of course any fees that may be incurred by the e commerce site for example big cartel I can list 5 items on the site for free before having to upgrade to the premium, or you have shopify which costs around £30 a month

If you have made it this far I would love your feedback on the below logo / designs of Ts and also any thoughts you may have on this matter

Have you used shopify or big cartel before? And what did you make of them for a start out venture

I think I’ll have to completely recreate my social media’s again and begin promoting the brand once again,

The initial costs in hoping will be less than or around £100 and that will include revamping the logo, T shirt mock ups, the first couple months of the site, and domain name/ hosting too

Please do let me know your thoughts on this one and I’ll catch you in the next blog ♥️