How do you start a custom sticker business?
My son (5 years old) races motocross and it gets very expensive. We want to start a small business to help support his habbit and we thought of a custom sticker business. Does anyone know how to go about this? What kind of equipment would you need. We know we could make this fly but dont have a clue about how to get started? Any help would be appreciated!
need place to buy stickers—you need to plan this one
well, while the idea does sound appealing, I know you can
go to Kinkos and have any bumpers sticker that you want made,
including a wide range of colors and fonts. I had a bumper
sticker made that said "real men love Cheeses" which was
my own personal take on the Christain bumper sticker that
says, real men love Jesus, which I personally find ridiculous.
However, if you are interested in the processes of bumper
stickers, I am sure you can learn a lot from Kinkos.
Ok I just realized that you didn’t specify "bumper" stickers.
My bad. I don’t even know what the hell custom stickers
means.
My wife and I started a now sucessful greeting card business that we do out of our home. We make greeting cards, tee shirts, baby oneses, and my wife (she’s the artist, I’m the beast of burden! lol) paints murals and large signs for local businesses.
OK. Now, the first thing you need to do is sit down and figure out exactly what you want to start with. You can branch out later as your market develops and TELLS you what it wants. Once you have figured out what your starting with then learn all about it. Take a week and go to the library, the net, people with similar businesses and learn all you can. If you have more than one person doing this you can devide up the process. This allows for one person to learn, in detail, one aspect of the business and for another to specialize in another aspect of the business. Getting a business lisence. I don’t know where you are from but in the US all you need to do is go down to the county court house and ask for the forms for a lisence or, I bet, you can get them online as well as the amount of the fee. It was a $15.00 fee for us and that is normal through out the US. Next, getting equipment and supplies. DON"T BUY OR LEASE OR SPEND MONEY ON ANYTHING UNTIL YOU GET YOUR LISENCE! Haveing your liscence first allows you forgo paying sales tax in most parts of the US (don’t forget to save ALL reciepts! We’ll talk about taxes later). Find the equipment you need online and shop the hell out of those items. If your patient you can find the stuff you need at used places or close outs, that kind of stuff. However, when shopping for supplies you need consistancy in produce so no buying blank stickers from some fly by night site. Go with a repitable company.
This is getting pretty long but if you want to hear more just email me.
http://www.freelycreative.com/productsandideas.htm
http://www.uprinting.com/bumper-sticker-printing-equipment.html
http://www.signsign.com/labels.htm
http://www.allaboutstickers.com/view.php?cat=12
http://www.stickermaker.com/mastin.html