I recently became an ambassador of sorts for my favorite online T-shirt company, Cotton Bureau. The concept of the site is a lot like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, in that the business model is basically crowdfunding.
The following is from Cotton Bureau’s FAQ section.
How the design gets on a t-shirt and how the designer makes money:
Designers choose their own profit margin. We give each designer a baseline price per blank that covers our cost and profit; they choose how much they want to earn on top of that number. As long as your design sells at least 25, you get paid! Over 12 and we still print your design, but we keep all sale proceeds to cover our costs.
On their ‘stock’ of items:
Cotton Bureau is a pre-order system: every design gets two weeks in the spotlight to sell as many as it can. But… the designer could always choose to post it again if they want.
If a design doesn’t make it to 12:
No one gets charged any money, and we don’t print or ship the shirt.
How long after pledging to buy a shirt does it take before the shirt is shipped:
A few weeks at the soonest. Designs are on sale for two weeks and get shipped about two weeks after that. Once we ship your order, it should get to you in a few days (if you live in the United States) or a few weeks (if you live anywhere else), depending on how far you live from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
That’s pretty much it. I have spent more money here than my wife would like, so I can tell you just how easy it is to get a great design. At some point I will collect a page on this site showing all the shirt designs I have purchased.
Use discount code CBANTHONYC10 to get 10% off your purchase!