Tees of Life, a T-shirt brand with inspirational messages aimed primarily at women, was founded in 2020 by entrepreneur Ari Simpson.
Simpson started her T-shirt company on the side while working full-time. She made a million-dollar sale after selling more than 50,000 T-shirts in less than three years.
Before she started printing T-shirts, she made flyers and invitations for weddings, businesses, and events, earning around $200 per year. Following a pep talk with her husband, she was inspired to start her T-shirt business.
She began her business with a $45 heat press purchased from Facebook Marketplace. She began pressing T-shirts with a heat press, old shirts, and other materials she obtained for free from Facebook Marketplace. Simpson also took online marketing classes to help her launch her new company. She went on YouTube and watched a few marketing and T-shirt business videos. She also created a website for her company.
“I made a Shopify website and mock-ups of the T-shirts using Canva. It took four weeks from start to finish to get the website built, and I did it from scratch without professional help,” she told Business Insider.
“My husband and I spent $55 to buy blank shirts wholesale from S&S Activewear. We made a batch of shirts for our closest family and friends, pressed with inspirational messages such as ‘Thou shall love thyself first,’ ‘It’s the peace of mind for me,’ ‘Heavy on the self-love,’ and ‘I said what I said.’
“I asked them to buy our shirts, which were $20, and then post pictures of themselves in the shirts on social media,” she noted.
Simpson officially launched her business in 2020 after registering as an LLC. Through various online media, she sold her T-shirt and made $88,586 in gross revenue in 2020.
“I paid $5,000 to join a mastermind group for T-shirt-business owners in 2021 that taught me how to run paid advertising on Facebook. We had weekly group calls and 50 videos that taught us how to increase sales by using ads,” she said. According to her, she spent $100 a month on Facebook ads and got five to seven times the return on spend.
In 2021, her revenue hit $608,000. And after paying for social-media ads, blank shirts, shipping, and other costs, her profit was around $100,000. Today, her business has hit the million-dollar mark.