Ask HN: How do I get people to buy my tshirts?

2 points by faviouz 11 years ago | 9 comments

I had the stupid idea of designing a tshirt about memorising 39 digits of pi (because that's how many you need to measure the circumference of the observable universe within the width of one hydrogen atom).

I posted it on Hacker News, a few subreddits and some startup link directories that I found. I made a website and everything at http://memorize39digitsofpi.com/

It was a massive, humiliating failure. I didn't sell a single tshirt on Teespring and the statistics weren't very impressive either. It was a stupid idea, but I was still disappointed.

To be fair, I didn't even try that hard. I ignorantly expected it to blow up given that it was Pi Day. But now I'm sitting here thinking how I wasted $10 on a domain (I'm hosting it for free off of GitHub Pages).

I want to give it another shot and run another Teespring campaign. I literally just want to get my $10 back for the domain. Everything else is extra.

How can I achieve this?

MichaelCrawford 11 years ago |

Sell them at flea markets. I have a friend who does quite well with this.

Also sell them on the street. There are some places where this is welcome, as on telegraph avenue in berkeley. Some cities may require a permit, or limit the places where such vending can be done.

faviouz 11 years ago | |

Thank you for your advice! :)

I didn't buy a bunch of tshirts hoping to sell all of them. I'm selling the tshirts on Teespring. Teespring handles everything for me. They design, print and ship the tshirts. Only if I get enough pre-orders though. I just get the money at the end of the campaign. :P

I can definitely see this working on the street. In retrospect, I'd buy one on the street if it was presented to me. But I don't have the time to do this. I'm just a lazy college student hoping to make some easy money.

I really appreciate your insight though! :)

MichaelCrawford 11 years ago | | |

I have two t-shirts in mind myself, one is the logo on the top-right of my website, the other is my drawing of the Eyeball tree at http://www.warplife.com/mdc/drawings/

The Eyeball Tree is - and has been for many years - the single most popular document on my site. Back in the day, my girlfriend and I were looking for a way to kill some time. She suggested we draw. She drew a portrait of me, I drew the Eyeball Tree.

27182818284 11 years ago |

>It was a massive, humiliating failure.

I don't think you actually got out of the building and spoke with people. It is intimidating, but completely necessary. Always talk to customers. Then talk to them again. Then talk with them again.

Consider this: I actually own a shirt with Pi on it where the symbol is made up of the digits, I come from a math/phys background, I wear T-shirts often, and I still don't want this shirt.

JoeAltmaier 11 years ago |

Maybe folks that want to memorize PI DONT want random strangers 'asking them' to perform that fact. Your description of the universe/hydrogen atom ration is far more compelling; an actual graphic of that would go much further as a T-Shirt idea.

gershwin 11 years ago |

Who is your target demographic? I think you need to reach out to that audience and iterate on your product to meet their needs.

faviouz 11 years ago | |

To answer your question: high schoolers and college students in the sciences or engineering. Or generally anyone geeky enough to buy this tshirt. That's why I went to HN first. It didn't explode like I fantasised it to, though.

I'm going to keep this in mind, thank you! :)

mdturnerphys 11 years ago | | |

"high schoolers and college students in the sciences or engineering" - The problem is that your target demographic has no money :)