T-Shirt King – Bill Broadbent – Store Review

By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
February 27th, 1999

Bill Broadbent has been involved in the T-Shirt industry for over twenty years. Less than six months ago he opened his online store, T-Shirt King, and has already achieved startling results. In this interview Bill explains why he decided to take his bricks and mortar store online and how he went about it.

Lang: Can you tell me something of the history behind the T-Shirt King Web store?

Broadbent: T-Shirt King is owned by The Tanglewood Collection, Inc. Tanglewood sells T-Shirts wholesale to retailers. So, we were in the T-Shirt side of the Apparel Industry already. I have been making and/or selling T-Shirts for over twenty years now.

T-Shirt King Actually began purely as an experiment and it was not until January of this year that we decided to make it an all-out effort.

Lang: What made you decide to take your business online?

Broadbent: Every year we see thousands of really great T-Shirts. Many of these T-Shirts never make it to mainstream Americans because retailers simply have too little display space set aside for T-Shirts. Great designs that never really get the chance to sell. In discussing the advantages of Cyber-sales we realised that we could show thousands of designs to anyone with Internet access.

Also the the Internet gave us the world as a market (never before have so many customers had direct access to consumers world-wide) and the ability to bring any design we wanted into a huge online catalogue.

Finally, the cost of overhead in a brick and mortar store is sinful. The advantages of selling online are truly unfair. Brick and mortar retailers are not prepared for the inevitable growth of online sales.

Lang: What server and shopping cart software are you using and why?

Broadbent: We began T-Shirt King as a Yahoo! Store while we were still in the experimental mind. Yahoo! Store is not capable of being a serious retail outlet. And, it is our experience that Yahoo is only after part time, hobby retailers. Any needs we discussed were dismissed as being that of an amateur. As one Yahoo tech assured me, if we had Internet retail experience we would realise that our problem was not a problem at all but actually a function we did not need on the Internet. I was asking for the ability to add a sign-up form for our Affiliates partners.

Launching the store costs less than $1,000, maintenance less than $500. Now that we are serious, our new site will be about $50,000 and our marketing and maintenance (hard to separate these on the Internet) will be in the six figures per month. We have still to choose an e-commerce software solution for this second phase.

Lang: Sounds like you have some pretty serious plans for growing your store?

Broadbent: October through the Holiday Season let us know that the world loves a good T-Shirt. January had us making the decision to capitalise T-Shirt King and go for it. We believe that within the next three to five months T-Shirt King will become the worlds best T-Shirt Resource with 10,000 + different designs and the best customer service of any retailer anywhere.

In the true nature of the Internet, we have decided not to fear competition and our plans include making T-Shirt King a resource for people that want to produce and market their own shirts as well as for consumers. We will even be linking to other Web sites that carry shirts T-Shirt King doesn’t. There will be a T-Shirt finding service for obscure shirt searches and a whole lot more.

Our goals are still evolving and our plans are still unfolding. Personally, this is a new and challenging retail frontier that has given me renewed enthusiasm for a career that was getting a little stale. I have no regrets and I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this new retail revolution.

Lang: Which methods have you used to try and promote your store? Which were most / least effective?

Broadbent:

• Affiliates – Provide a good portion of our traffic.
• Banner Ads – Big fat zero. Online ad agencies can tout their $10 to $40 per thousand rate as being better than traditional marketing but, as far as banner ads are concerned, a waste of money. A radio ad for $30 or $40 will do much more.
• E-Zine Advertising – Targeted – this is great and it supports good people with a great service for us all. E-Zines are great.
• Traditional Offline Marketing – This is where our real dollars are going.
• Search Engines – A must.
• We plan a lot of donations and community involvement projects also.

Lang: Why did you decide to launch an affiliate program?

Broadbent: Affiliate programs are a new opportunity for both retailers and affiliates. For example, for me the ability to sell Dragonball Z T-Shirts on Dragonball Z specific sites is a big advantage. And most Web site owners really enjoy making money this way and it is new enough that they “discover” the opportunity. However, I believe that these programs will soon not be as lucrative as they are now. Already large companies are buying up this space and it will not be long before you have to get banner space in a way similar to newspaper advertising space.

One problem we have found is that many programs only pay affiliates for sales made by a visitor’s first visit. It is our experience that just under 90% of our visitors buy on return visits. We have taken the approach that the more money our affiliates make the better. So, we are also leaving Yahoo’s traditional affiliate program and creating our own which will treat the affiliates as they should be treated. Happy Affiliates = success. It is that simple.

Lang: Finally, what are your top tips for anyone considering opening his or her own Web store?

Broadbent:

• Start with Icat or Yahoo to test the waters. Plan on growing and go for it. This is the new frontier of retailing and it is going to grow a lot over the next decade. New fortunes are being made right now. Cost of entry is minimal and the opportunity to support growth through revenue created is a dream.
• Think Global. I really enjoy the international side. There are a lot of great people in the world. Here is a statement we’re using in our Star Wars advertising:

Commerce Creates Communication.
Communication Leads To Understanding.
Understanding Is The Key To Peace.
E-Commerce = World Peace
www.T-ShirtKing.com

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