Jenna opened her phone Saturday morning and found a question under the drawing she’d posted the night before.
Where can I buy the T-shirt?
She read it again.
What T-shirt?
The drawing was a crow standing on a fence, feathers puffed out, looking deeply offended by something happening outside the picture.
Jenna had posted the crow.
She hadn’t posted a T-shirt.
Then she saw another comment.
You need to put this on a shirt.
And another.
I’d buy one.
By the time Jenna finished her coffee, there were a few more.
She went back to the first comment.
“Are you people serious?”
Apparently they were.
She’d sold prints of her drawings before. Somebody ordered one, she had it printed and sent it out.
A T-shirt couldn’t be that different.
By Monday afternoon she was standing in a local print shop holding two blank shirts.
“Twenty-four?”
The first shirt was inexpensive. It felt fine.
The second cost a few dollars more. It was softer, a little heavier and felt noticeably better in her hands.
Jenna held them up.
“I like this one. If I’m charging people for a shirt, I want it to feel like something I’d buy.”
The printer worked out the price.
About $14 each.
Jenna nodded.
“That works.”
“Minimum order is twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four?”
“For screen printing, yes.”
Jenna had been thinking maybe six.
She pulled out her phone.
24 × $14 = $336
Three hundred and thirty-six dollars.
Nobody had bought a shirt yet.
The printer was waiting.
“All right. Twenty-four.”
“What sizes?”
Jenna stopped again.
“Right. Those.”
Small. Medium. Large. XL. 2XL.
Twenty-four shirts suddenly didn’t sound like very many.
“How many mediums do I need?”
“Depends on who buys them.”
“Helpful.”
The printer laughed.
“I can show you a pretty normal mix. First run is always a bit of a guess.”
Jenna looked at the numbers he suggested.
“More mediums and larges?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Welcome to inventory.”
Jenna looked at him.
“I don’t think I’m ready for that word yet.”
She adjusted the order as sensibly as she could and handed it over.
A week later, two boxes appeared at her door.
Jenna opened one on the living-room floor, pulled out a large and put it on.
The crow looked good.
And just as important, the shirt felt good.
She turned sideways in the mirror, then sent a picture to the friend who had first asked for one.
A reply came back almost immediately.
YES. TAKE MY MONEY.
Jenna smiled.
“Working on it.”
The $32 shirt
Before ordering the shirts, Jenna had looked at what other independent artists were charging for similar T-shirts. Prices were all over the place, but low thirties didn’t look unusual.
She opened a note beside the product page on her laptop.
Shirt: $14
Selling price: $32
Underneath that she wrote:
Profit: $18
Not bad.
She went back to building the page.
Picture. Sizes. Quantity. Add to cart.
Then the setup asked what she wanted to do about shipping.
Jenna looked back at:
Profit: $18
“Oh, right. The shirt has to go somewhere.”
She took one out of the box, folded it and found an old shipping mailer in a drawer. She put the package on her kitchen scale and checked postage.
Depending on where it was going, roughly seven or eight dollars.
The mailer cost something too.
Then she tested the checkout and discovered the payment company wanted a little over a dollar from a $32 sale.
Jenna drew a line through:
Profit: $18
“Well, that didn’t last long.”
She had planned to put Free shipping on the page.
“Everybody likes free shipping,” she said. “Except the postal service apparently.”
She tried:
Crow T-shirt — $38
Free shipping
“Thirty-eight. More left when one sells. Maybe fewer people buy it.”
Then:
Crow T-shirt — $27
That looked much friendlier.
She ran through the costs.
“Twenty-seven is friendly to everybody but me.”
Jenna clicked back and forth between the two prices.
“Higher price, more on each shirt. Lower price, maybe more people buy.”
She looked at the comments under the original drawing.
A few people had said they’d buy one.
Not twenty-four.
She put $32 back.
“Start at thirty-two. Shipping separate. See what happens.”
That was enough deciding for one night.
The next morning Jenna opened the page again.
She checked the pictures. The sizes. The price. The checkout.
“Everything looks good.”
She clicked Publish.
Five orders
By the next evening Jenna had five orders.
“People bought it.”
Getting the first package together took her a while.
Find the right size. Fold it. Mailer. Label.
The second went faster.
By the fifth, Jenna barely had to think about it.
Shirt. Mailer. Label.
Beth stopped by while she was packing the last one.
She picked up a crow shirt.
“These came out nice.”
“They’d better. I have nineteen more.”
Beth laughed, then noticed another drawing pinned above Jenna’s desk. A raccoon was hanging halfway out of a garbage can with a stolen sandwich in its mouth.
“That should be a shirt too.”
Jenna looked over.
“It really should.”
Then she looked at the little row of packages by the door.
“You know what? That one would actually be easier.”
“Why?”
“I already know the printer. The checkout works. I have mailers and labels. I know how to ship them now.”
Jenna nodded toward the boxes.
“I’d still have to buy the shirts.”
“There is that.”
“One design at a time.”
One medium left
Three of Jenna’s first five orders were mediums.
The other two were larges.
Then another medium sold.
A day later someone messaged:
Any mediums left?
Jenna checked.
One.
She called the printer.
“If I need more mediums, can I just order six?”
“Sure. Just not at the same price.”
Jenna closed her eyes.
“Of course not.”
“For screen printing we’d still be doing another run. If you order more, though, the price per shirt comes down.”
“How much more?”
He ran a quote.
Forty-eight shirts would bring the price down to around $12.50 each.
Jenna reached for her phone.
48 × $12.50 = $600
“So I save a dollar fifty on each shirt by spending six hundred dollars.”
“Basically.”
“That still feels like a trick.”
The printer laughed.
Jenna looked at the shirts she still had.
“I’m going to try selling these first.”
“Can I exchange it?”
The next email came from someone who had already received her shirt.
I love it, but the medium is tighter than I expected. Can I exchange it for a large?
Jenna typed:
Sure.
Then stopped.
“Okay. Medium comes back. Large goes out.”
She looked up the postage.
“Of course.”
Jenna rewrote the reply.
Sure. Send the medium back unworn and I’ll send you a large. You pay the return postage and I’ll cover shipping the replacement.
She read it once.
Fair enough.
Then she opened the website.
“If I send the wrong size, that’s on me. If there’s something wrong with the shirt, that’s on me.”
She paused.
“If you’ve worn the crow for three weeks and suddenly decide you’ve grown as a person… that’s on you.”
That short exchange policy, surrounded by a little legal mumbo jumbo, went onto the site.
Then Jenna pulled one shirt in every size from the boxes and measured them.
“Maybe we don’t do this again.”
She added a size chart.
A few days later another email arrived.
Hi. My tracking hasn’t moved for four days. Do you know where my shirt is?
Jenna checked the tracking.
Nothing.
She checked the postal site.
Nothing useful there either.
She replied with what she knew and checked again the next morning.
A few hours later the package finally moved.
Jenna sent the customer the update and closed the tracking page.
Still $32
By the time Jenna had sold eleven shirts, she opened the cost note on her laptop again.
Shirt: $14
Selling price: $32
Profit: $18
She laughed.
“Yeah. No.”
She could switch to the cheaper shirt and save about three dollars every time she sold one.
Jenna pinched the fabric of the crow shirt she was wearing.
“No.”
She changed the price on the product page to $36.
Then $38.
Eleven people had already bought it at $32 plus shipping.
Jenna stared at the screen.
“Why am I trying to fix this?”
Back to $32.
What about $29?
“Maybe more people buy it.”
She thought about that.
“Or the same people buy it and I make three dollars less.”
Back to $32.
Then Free shipping.
Jenna pictured seven or eight dollars coming out of every order.
Delete.
At the top of her note she typed:
$32
Customer pays shipping
“Okay. That’s the deal.”
She saved the page.
She wasn’t making the clean $18 she’d imagined before she’d sold anything.
But when order number twelve popped onto the screen a little later, Jenna smiled.
“Good.”
“I just wanted to sell a damn T-shirt”
Beth came over for dinner a few nights later.
She picked up a stack of mailers from one of the chairs.
“Where do these live?”
“Apparently in my dining room now.”
Beth put them on the floor and sat down.
“How’s the crow business?”
“Twelve sold.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.”
Beth looked at her.
“But?”
Jenna sat down.
“I’ve got five sizes, except apparently everybody wants medium. The printer says I can save a dollar fifty a shirt if I spend six hundred dollars. I have an exchange policy now. Yesterday I spent half the day checking on a package I didn’t lose.”
“It was your customer’s problem.”
“Exactly. Which made it my problem.”
Beth laughed.
Jenna looked toward the boxes.
“I just wanted to sell a damn T-shirt.”
Beth took a bite of dinner.
“Have you looked into print-on-demand?”
Jenna stopped.
“Print on what?”