If you are selling T-shirts Online and have a storefront of any considerable size at some point you have probably wondered what to do with designs that are not as current as they once where or that have been updated or just not selling well. Ultimately it depends on the situation that you are in.

Are you making the t-shirts yourself and carrying a stock? Or are you using a site like Cafepress or Printfection for one off, on demand production? Because depending on your business model and strategy it makes a huge difference.

When you are carrying your own stock and making your own products it is probably a good idea to limit the items that you carry in stock to only the products you can actually sell. Carrying designs that you sell one of a year or a month can be a huge drain on your finances especially if you have a couple hundred designs with only a few hot sellers.

This means constantly evaluating whether the money you spend on stock is worth it and you are probably much more likely to eliminate older designs and designs that just simply are not moving. But if you are a t-shirt entrepreneur that is just creating designs and using third party sites to on demand print t-shirts as they are ordered you have less to worry about.

I council people that are in this later category to never get rid of any design unless there is a huge problem with it (i.e. misspelling, major design flaws, etc.) or unless you are being charge by the gigabyte for storage. Why do I say this? Because there is no reason to get rid of designs that are old, outdated or otherwise just slow selling because there is no financial expense incurred by you or your business.

One never knows what the future holds. And if there is no financial reason to remove a design I would personally never do it. You never know when someone might come along that finds the design, likes it, and buys it. Sure you might make only a couple bucks compared to your hot selling designs but for most entrepreneurs a few bucks here and a few bucks there is usually welcome and can certainly add up.

But this does not mean that you should keep these designs which have low potential in prominent places on your online site. Outdated designs not selling like they once did (such as designs for a specific event that has long since past) should definitely be considered for a move to the bottom of a page or even to their own section. Label it “discontinued designs” or something like that, but there is no need to take up valuable space at the top of a page that could be better used promoting hot items.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.