Also, it seems like a relatively significant commitment from a person who signed up because you're asking them to upload three pictures of themselves in the t-shirt (for either another free t-shirt or "credit").The system I intend to implement should make this relatively painless.
Presumably,and I may be way off here, you're sub-contracting out the screen-printing of the t-shirts. And, as I understand it, the cost of producing t-shirts can be significant and you would probably have to hold a large inventory of t-shirts in various sizes.
Entirely true. But if Lockerz story is any indication of how it can work out, inventory turnover is likely to be ridiculously fast.
- What kind of advertiser are you trying to appeal to?
Large consumer goods and local stores. Got a nifty solution in mind on how this'll scale.
* Does an advertiser pay only when there's evidence that the t-shirts are worn? Or why do you have to upload three pictures of yourself in the t-shirt?*
No, pay up front. Receive elaborate statistics afterwards.
- Roughly, what kind of margins are you expecting to get?
Back of napkin style; profit margins somewhere between 30%-50%. Margins on t-shirts alone 50%-75%.
Are you trying to focus in a local region or nationally?
International user base. Allow advertisers to segment their target users by region/age/interests.
What happens with any left over inventory?
Promote them to first time users. Loyal users get cooler/more shirts.
Lastly, I may be interested in a t-shirt that combines an advertising with "pop art", but that's just a quick idea...
Definitely a great design idea. The one that's currently on the site is a drawing an ex-girlfriend of mine made over a year ago. I thought it was pretty amazing and asked her whether I could print that instead of my own terrible attempt at a mash-up of several freely available vectors.