My Experience Launching a T-Shirt Brand | Entrepreneur Chronicles #3
After “My Frenchy Life” blog and launching 27Eleven in 2018, which now serves as my micro-company in France for freelance gigs, I embarked on another venture called WanderEscape in the same year.
I was exploring ways to earn passive income and came across suggestions to create and sell merchandise. It sounded brilliant: design some t-shirts, set up a website, integrate with a print-on-demand service that handles everything from order to shipment, and watch the money roll in. Simple right?
Indeed, putting a website together was within my skillset. With Rosie’s help, I quickly designed a logo and t-shirt graphics featuring travel quotes. The next step was figuring out the e-commerce aspect and finding the right print-on-demand platform. It took just a few days to get everything up and running—an automated system where someone orders a t-shirt, it gets printed and shipped under my brand, and the money flows directly into my accounts. The perfect model of passive income!
However, I overlooked one crucial element: traffic. Without proper marketing, my beautifully set up e-commerce site was like a ghost town—no visitors, no sales. I set up an Instagram account and posted mockups of people wearing my designs, but without constant engagement, the algorithm was unforgiving. Views were scarce.
I eventually let the project simmer, maintaining the site since I had already paid for the domain for a year, but I didn’t pursue it further.
Yet, I wouldn’t call it a waste of time. Learning how to set up an online shop will undoubtedly be useful for future projects, like adding a shop to the Warrior Flow School website. Understanding how on-demand printing works also proved invaluable when Rosie started her dog photography business Portraits of Poochies.
Most importantly, I learned a critical lesson: having a great product isn’t enough. If you don’t know how to market it and make it visible to potential customers, you’ll end up with a fantastic product that no one knows about.
👉 This is part of my Entrepreneur Chronicles—real stories, real lessons. Dive into the full series here.