Category: Storefronts

Raise Awareness For Ovarian Cancer With A Custom Apparel Storefront

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September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness month. In honor of those who are fighting against ovarian cancer and for individuals helping spread awareness, Customized Girl would love to feature Bluegrass Ovarian Cancer Support Inc. as our storefront of the month.

In their own words, Bluegrass Ovarian Cancer Support’s primary goal is to offer a forum for sharing experiences, knowledge and assistance to women who face the unique challenges of these types of cancers. Not only do they spread amazing information and knowledge about ovarian cancer, but they are doing their best to spread awareness in any way they can. One of those ways is opening a custom apparel storefront featuring supportive shirts and accessories that can be customized with names of loved ones.  All of the proceeds from their storefront go directly to the Bluegrass Ovarian Cancer Support Inc. At Customized Girl, we encourage storefronts to follow the example that BOCS has set. We wish them nothing but the best and great success in their mission to spread awareness.

Customized Girl wants to help promote awareness for ovarian cancer and encourage others to join the movement by offering custom apparel storefronts. Our storefronts offer an excellent opportunity not only to spread awareness but to also raise funds towards their charity of choice.

Interested in starting a storefront to spread awareness and raise funds for your cause? For more detailed information check out our storefront FAQ. Customized Girl would be more than happy to help assist your efforts by offering our marketing strategies and art assistance to achieve the ideal storefront.

Learn More About Your Storefront’s Traffic With New Features For Customized Girl Storefronts

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A few months have passed since our last blog post about new features and big pushes at Customized Girl. A lot has happened in those months and we are excited to share our newest contributions to Customized Girl storefronts!

New Features:

– Site Redesign – Customized Girl is getting sleeker! There’s much more to come, so keep a look out. We’re trying to make the site cleaner and easier to use, and ultimately, we’re trying to increase everyone’s sales through higher conversion rates.

– Google Anlaytics – Ever wonder which traffic sources are driving the most visits to your store? Which designs get the most clicks? We’ve recently added the ability to integrate Google Analytics into your storefront! Learn more about connecting your store to Google Analytics here.

– Embed – You can now embed your designs so that they display on your own website! Customers can visit a page on your site and browse your designs. When they click through your design, they will go to that design’s page on Customized Girl. Check out our new FAQ section and learn how to embed your storefront.

– New royalty rates – We have bumped royalty rates on the majority of our products! Now you can earn up to 30% on select items. Check out our new royalty rates and what products will give you the highest return.

– We added the Wanelo social button to our website. Now on every design page, you will see the “W” button for Wanelo, along with other social options to share your designs.

– When a customer adds your design to their cart, they will now see a “Design by [Your Store Here]” link in the Shopping Cart. This way, customers have an easy path back to your store.

– We are continuously improving mobile usability and our mobile navigation menu has been updated.

– We’ve started our own blog series on how to market your custom apparel storefront. The first posts cover Tumblr, Pinterest, and Polyvore.

 

New Trendy Categories:

– Emojis: Emojis are where it is at! We’ve added a ton of new art emoji art and designs to our gallery. Faces, monkeys, cats – you name it.

– Spirit Animal: This is a new trend we are seeing that offers a great customization element similar to the Keep Calm trend.

– Cannabis: There was a demand so naturally we supplied the art and designs.

– Political: The presidential election is coming up and our designers added some great art of candidates to give our users an opportunity to show their support.

 

Product Updates:

New stuff is here!

– Varsity Jackets – These new jackets are the perfect addition to all those cold Friday nights cheering on your favorite player!

– Crop tops – We’ve recently added some new and trendy crop tops in a variety of styles.

Sadly, older stuff is going away.

– Our vendors are no longer carrying the Rabbit Skins Baby Blanket.

– Next Level seems to have stopped making their Ombre tank and Ombre v-neck shirt.

– We have to say goodbye to our plastic ball ornament.

– Vendors also stopped carrying the District Sun Floppy Hat.

– Boxercraft is making some big changes to their Itty Bitty Pajama Shorts. All current colors were replaced with Pink Polkadot and Navy Polkadot.

 

Big Pushes:

– Fall sports – New year, new gear! Parents will be gear for their kids, but they will  also be on the look out for their own gear to cheer on their favorite players with jerseys, hoodies, and bags. Here is a list of fall sports to get a head start on:

– Custom hoodies and sweatshirts –  With summer being almost over, our custom hoodies and sweatshirts are starting to pick up in sales. If you have a trendy design on a tee or tank make sure to add it to hoody or sweatshirt.

The best way to take advantage of these new features and big pushes is to promote your designs anywhere and everywhere. Linking back to your store and designs gives your products a better chance of being seen and therefore sold. The more you sell, the higher your design will rank in our gallery giving your design an even greater opportunity to be purchased. Christmas is almost here so take advantage of those holiday shoppers!

 

At Customized Girl, we want to build an amazing platform. And we want to build it with the feedback and guidance of our store owners.

 

Please fill out our very short survey!

 

We want to evolve this platform based on your input!  We are looking forward to hearing from all of you!

How To Market Your Custom Apparel Storefront On Polyvore

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What is Polyvore?

It is a visual website that allows you to discover the newest trends and shop for the things you love. In their own words, Polyvore disrupts the traditional e-commerce model by giving everyone everywhere a voice in shaping today’s trends and influencing purchases. Their global community of stylists share tips on how to mix and match looks to make the most of your closet and predict trends before they hit the mainstream.

Polyvore also simplifies online shopping by bringing together all the stores in one convenient place. They make it even easier to discover and shop for looks you love. Polyvore is a huge community of fashion lovers. It is a great opportunity to share your style and start your brand.

What makes Polyvore different?

Customized Girl and Polyvore are a match made in heaven. Customized Girl empowers everyone to make a statement and to be their own fashion designer. Now with custom apparel storefronts the ability to make your message be heard is even easier.  Polyvore takes it one step furthering by allowing users to express their fashion creativity by creating look books with stylish pieces of clothing. These look books give users a chance to express their style and become trendsetters. Perfect combo, right?

Polyvore Terms:

Look books – A look book is a collection of images compiled to show off a style or stylist or a clothing line.  This gives viewers ideas on how to style outfits or to show what the latest fashions are.

Check out some of our look books!

Sets – The Polyvore editor lets you create sets using items that have been imported into Polyvore by you or other members. Think of it as a very simple collage maker. Once you publish your set to the Polyvore community, users have the opportunity to view, comment, and “heart” your set to let you know how much they love it!

Collections – Collections are a great way to group your favorite sets and items. For example, Customized Girl has used collections to group together contest entries, a trending product that is being used in sets, or even to group products like the Novelty Christmas Sweaters collection below.

Editor – This is where the magic happens. Polyvore’s editor is very similar to Customized Girl’s design center. The editor is the tool used to put your actual look book together. You can search and add not only clothing but backgrounds, photographs, and accents.

How To Get Started:

The first part of using Polyvore is to add the clipper button to your browser. Once the clipper is in your toolbar of your browser, all you have to do is go to the page your design is on and hit the clipper button. A little window will pop up and  you can add tags, the design name, and the price. After you hit “like” it will show up on your Polyvore page. From there not only can you add your designs to your sets and collections but so can other users who love your style!

Helpful Tips and Tricks:

Clipper – When clipping items from your storefront onto your Polyvore account make sure to be as descriptive as possible. By adding multiple tags that best describe your product betters your chances of being found on the Polyvore site and through their editor. Also double check that the pricing is correct before adding your product. Sometimes the clipper can get the wrong information and you don’t want to mislead any potential customers.

Trending products – By clicking on the “trending” section in the header,  you will be able to see what articles of clothing are the most popular and being used the most in other users sets. Using these trending styles or products in your sets and then properly tagging them with hashtags before posting gives your sets a higher chance of being seen and liked. Make sure to check this tab on a regular basis, trending items change almost on a daily basis.

Contests – Contests can be found on the main “my feed” page. Entering contests also give your sets another chance to be seen and give you the possibility to win some great prizes!

Polyvore is an amazing resource to use when you are building your brand. There are many opportunities to take advantage within their website and all of this information can be a little overwhelming. For more detailed information about Polyvore, check out their help center. You can also learn more about Customized Girl storefronts here.

Build Your Own Brand With Custom Apparel Storefronts

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It’s that time of month again where Customized Girl highlights a storefront that exceeds our expectations. This month’s feature is dedicated to the talented Mom Means Business. Strong mom brand – check. One of a kind designs – check.  Amazing marketing efforts – check. Soon as you enter her storefront you can see that this single mom of three means business by offering some of the trendiest and best designs in custom apparel. Every design in her storefront is family friendly and centered around sports, family reunions, charities and more.

Mom Means Business offers some of the finest designs on Customized Girl but that is not the only reason why they are our storefront of the month. They jump on every opportunity that Customized Girl presents to their storefront owners. Opportunities like uploading amazing design images, jumping on new products added to the website, and strong advertising that is strengthening their brand name.  She understands her consumers by creating designs that give multiple options to customize the product.

Mom Means Business is a storefront after Customized Girl’s own heart and we love seeing storefronts seize the opportunity to target specific niches while creating trendy and fashionable designs. Mom Means Business storefront is doing a fantastic job of getting their brand out there and marketing across all social media.

If you are interested in what custom apparel storefronts can do for you and your brand make sure to check out Customized Girl’s storefront FAQ.

Take Your Creativity To The Next Level With Custom Apparel Storefronts

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It’s that time again where Customized Girl highlights a unique and creative storefront that sets the bar high in the custom apparel world. This month we would like to feature shirts, hoodies, and accessories from the amazing Shimmeryfly Tees.

Whenever a new trend mashes up with the custom apparel world, Customized Girl does their best to seize the opportunity.  Matching couple shirts was and still is one of the opportunities we do our best to contribute to.  Shimmerfly Tees noticed the demand for couple shirts and added their own original and adorable designs.  They offer the cutest matching couple designs you can find online. Great design concepts that range from simple, funny, and down right charming. There’s something for everyone.

But that is not all that Shimmerfly has to offer. Birthday, bridal party, and encouraging breast cancer shirts are just a few to name. Every design provided in their storefront is so unique that you won’t find anything else like it online. With that being said, each design can be customized to include names, dates, or even a different style in a different product. Although, these designs are amazing all by themselves. Customized Girl is thankful for an imaginative storefront like Shimmerfly Tees and we can’t wait to see what they will come up with next!

If you are interested in what custom apparel storefronts can do for you make sure to check out Customized Girl’s storefront FAQ.

 

Customize Your Own Patriotic Apparel with USA Pride and More

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With Independence Day around the corner it only seemed appropriate for Customized Girl to highlight one our most patriotic storefronts. USA Pride and More is a storefront dedicated to representing the United States and loved ones in the military. These designs are great for holidays such as the 4th of July, Memorial and Labor Day but also to show off your pride and love of country.

USA Pride and More has an eye for design and offers patriotic designs on a variety of trendy apparel and accessories including bags, hats, socks, and teddy bears. They also provide incredible and thoughtful designs dedicated to the Air Force and Coast Guard that are perfect for anyone who has a loved one serving in these branches. Another great factor about their storefront is that all of the designs offered in their storefront can be customized. Express your freedom of speech by swapping the design onto a different product, adding your own art, text, or even uploading an image to make your finish product one of a kind.

If you are interested in what custom apparel storefronts can do for you make sure to check out Customized Girl’s storefront FAQ.

How to Market Your Custom Apparel Storefront on Pinterest

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On our first edition on how to market your custom apparel storefront we discussed marketing on Tumblr and now we will have tips and tricks on the best approach to Pinterest.

What is Pinterest?

For those of you who don’t know, Pinterest is a platform of “pins” where you can discover ideas, projects, and interests. Pinterest is a very visual website allowing users to really see what they are buying into.  A “pin” is an image you have captured and have added to a board. Boards are an area where you store content and once added they become easily shareable. Pinterest acts as a personalized media platform. Users can browse the content of others on the main page. They can like or repin any content they find and save it on an organized board to keep or purchase in the future. And like Tumblr, Pinterest is free and anything go viral.

Customized Girl has a “pin it” button located below every design but you can always install the pin it widget onto your desktop for all access use. If you are creating an on model or flat images to upload to your product page,  you can also upload these images onto pinterest through the upload option. This is great if you want to direct individuals to your storefront with a different image referencing your storefront as a whole and then adding your storefront URL as the destination URL.

Pinning:

When pinning make sure your image has a title, a small description, and two to three hashtags that describes or organizes your pin. For example:

Like we said earlier, Pinterest is all about amazing images but your product will never be seen if you don’t provide content that will help organize and help your product be found through Pinterest’s search engine. Using the description and hashtags provided in the image above, we have a better chance of being seen when someone is searching “St. Patrick’s Day” even if it is for St. Patrick’s Day shirts, sweatshirts, ideas, parties, etc. The more the better.

Organizing Your Pinterest Page:

Your Pinterest page shouldn’t only be pins of your personal products. You should organize your pins by creating a mini theme for each board you create. Customized Girl’s Pinterest page is a great example of our target niches, seasonal pushes, and any new trends we add to the website.  Repinning content relative to your product gives your products a better chance of being seen and always give users a reason to follow you for more exciting content. Plus no one likes spam. Pinterest is a super useful platform, so enjoy it for your own personal use. Pin your next DIY projects, new recipes, and if you love your storefront designs, then pin those too.

A note about Pinterest boards: they seem to rank really well on Google search results. Think about the search keyword you might want to target, and then name your Pinterest board using that keyword search phrase. As we mentioned, it’s a good idea to fill that board with other relevant pins. If you want it to rank on Google, you’ll also have to link to that board from other places on the web. From Facebook. From Twitter. And from anywhere else that would be relevant, reasonable, and not spammy.

You’ll want your designs to rank well on Google so that shoppers can find them, obviously, but you also want journalists and members of the media to discover your stuff as well. If they have an article to write, chances are they are going to do some Google research. Perhaps that’s how a smart and cool buzzfeed reporter discovered this “Meowy Christmas” Sweater pin of ours when gathering ideas for this amazing post.

Designing For Pinterest:

Users on Pinterest visually scan through pin images very quickly and many pins can be overlooked. Make sure your designs are eye-catching and grab the users attention immediately. They need to use big, bold text with a clear message. Here is some helpful information on what makes a design successful.

If you are selling custom designs, we recommend using a phrase like “[YOUR NAME HERE]” rather than a placeholder text like “SMITH”. On Pinterest, a user might see your SMITH design and think it’s an image of a stock design for someone or something named Smith. But if it says [YOUR TEXT HERE], then it’s clearly a design meant to be customized, which makes it all that more special. This Mom Means Business is a great example of pinning designs that let users understand they can customize this product with their names or dates.

Pin Sizing and Specifications:

Last but not least, sizing! At Customized Girl we are fans of the longer pin images. We use the image guideline of 500 x 1320px. You can pin or use any size, we prefer this size  due to the fact they take up a larger amount of space on any device, making your pin very prominent on the page.

Here are examples of longer pins that visibly do well on Pinterest regardless of desktop or mobile users since the user is always scrolling down to see more images:

 

Useful Tips and Tricks:

You can easily find out what’s being pinned from a website by using the URL http://www.pinterest.com/source/websitedomainname.com/. Just replace websitedomainname with the website domain and you will be able to see the latest pins being shared.  This is great way what to see what customers and users are pinning from your storefront or blog.

Pinterest has recently added a “trending” instant keyword search to their search bar allowing users to see what is trending right at this very moment. This can be very helpful if your specialty is trending and you want to add more products or if you want to jump on the trend by designing a custom shirt that relates to it.

The popular section also allows you to see what is trending. This is the place where you can find pins that are being repined, liked and commented on repeatedly. Here you can find pins your followers will like. You can share it with them to increase engagement

Let us know about your efforts to market your storefront and what Customized Girl can do to help get your products seen!

Get The Latest Trends With Girly Growl’s Custom Apparel Storefront

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Customized Girl prides themselves on staying up to date with the latest trends and having the most stylish products that are offered in custom apparel. So when a new storefront opens up with on point designs in pop culture we couldn’t be more thrilled. Sassy and fashionable designs are why Girly Growl is Customized Girl’s storefront of the month.

Girly Growl’s storefront offers amazing text based designs that are the forefront of custom apparel. Pizza, Netflix, and pop music are only some of the designs available but the more you scroll through their storefront the more you’ll love it. It’s easy to get lost in all their great designs and to find something you didn’t know was a thing, you love it, and then you’ll need it.  The best part about Customized Girl storefronts is the option to customize any item. Swap out the product, art, font, or text to make any design truly unique but what makes their storefront so great is that these designs are already fabulous without the customization factor.

Another reason we love Girly Growl is their activeness on social media channels like Wanelo where they highlight their designs with effective hashtags. Not only does Girly Growl do a great job of finding the latest trends but also making sure their designs get seen by the right consumers.

Think you have an eye for trendy fashion? Make sure to check out Customized Girl’s storefront FAQ and see what you can offer to the fashion industry!

How to Market Your Custom Apparel Storefront on Tumblr

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Here at Customized Girl, we are happy to say our storefront platform is growing rapidly, with hundreds of new designs being submitted every day. With so many great designs, we now want to give our storefronts the tools and marketing tips to help get your products out and seen.

First up in our series of blog posts to marketing your storefront is Tumblr! Tumblr is a free blogging website that allows users to share their content with millions of viewers and in their own words “lets you effortlessly share anything.” What makes Tumblr so awesome is that it’s free, easy to use, and with the right keywords anything can go viral. Tumblr is also a great resource to find what is trending online right at this very moment. By clicking on the trending tab you can see what posts are getting the most likes and reblogs. With this information you can take one of your existing designs or create a new design specifically targeting a trending topic or keyword.

When you launch your Tumblr blog, you are launching a brand. So think carefully about how you want to represent and showcase your brand. No one likes spam so make sure to reblog other interesting images or posts that directly relate to your theme or niche. For example if you only create cheerleading related designs on your storefront then it’s ideal to follow other cheerleading blogs and reblog what your customers are excited about.

Important things to include in your post are hashtags, click through picture link, and a keyword or title comment hyperlink.  Here’s a general break down of how to use Tumblr but we’ll dig a little deeper to make sure you are optimizing your images to the fullest. For example, take Customized Girl’s Best Friends For Life Tank Tops:

These shirts are targeted towards best friends so we want to makes sure to include hashtags “best friends,” “best friend shirts,” and the name of our design “best friends for life tank tops.” Those are only a few but it’s important to include as many descriptive hashtags because it will give your products a better chance of being seen.

More importantly, you want viewers to be able to find your products and purchase them. Make sure to include a click through picture link and a hyperlink. Keep it short and sweet like TeesandTanks did – “Customized Best Friend Tanks at Customized Girl. Tag your best friend!” By making “Best Friends Tanks” a hyperlink, we are giving the viewers a name and a way to find your product plus this great for search optimization.

What makes a great image on Tumblr? Two words: SUPER. TRENDY. Here are three ideas to go with those two words:

1. Grab the main the image from the design details page. Just go to your store, click on a design, right click on the main image, and choose Copy Image URL. Then on your Tumblr dashboard, choose post photo, choose post from web, and paste the Image URL. Boom done.

Ask yourself, how trendy is this design? Have I maximized it’s trendiness? What does that even mean? Well, that’s the challenge to be honest. Trends are constantly changing. Right now, I would say a trendy design probably has big, bold, and easily readable text. It probably has an element of humor. Maybe a rhyme. It’s probably fun, a little clever, and easily understandable at a glance.

2. Take a picture of a cute person wearing your cute design at a cute place. These types of photos are always trendy. Maybe there is a sunset involved. Maybe a Starbucks cup.

3. If you have a trendy photo of the blank garment, you can always photoshop your design onto it! That’s what the Tees & Tanks tumblr blog is doing with their simple wooden-hanger images. And guess, what? Those wooden-hanger images are available to everyone! Check out this blog post on how to use photoshop to add your own images to pictures of tees and tanks (which includes downloadable jpeg and photoshop files featuring those blank garment images).

Bonus idea: once you’ve created these wonderful marketing images, you can then add them to your design details page using the upload image feature.

Need some easy tips on editing images and adding images to your custom apparel in general? This blog post contains some helpful information about finding and using free photo editing websites. Check out the step by step screenshots in this post on how to add your photos to your custom apparel.

Let us know about your efforts to market your storefront and what Customized Girl can do to help get your products seen!

Heretic Honey Launches an Apparel Store and a Fundraising Platform and Makes the World a Better Place

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More and more often, people are turning to custom apparel to raise awareness for certain causes. Heretic Honey took the opportunity to help spread more awareness for a very specific cause with Customized Girl’s custom apparel storefronts and that is why they are our storefront of the month.

In their own words, Heretic Honey “is a brand, community, and handcrafted accessories boutique that believes in the power of collaboration & the power in choice. As a brand, we support the right of individuals to define themselves – and what they believe to be beautiful – as they choose. As a business, we work with artists to co-create products that showcase their unique talents, stories, and cultural traditions.”

Heretic Honey also offers beautiful jewelry and accessories, but here is what makes them really extraordinary : they act as a resource for people to connect with causes they care about and are donating to a different cause every month.  For the month of April, Heretic Honey is sharing stories from the Autism community to help spread awareness and raise funds. Heretic Honey incorporated custom apparel into their “Hat’s Off to Sarah” campaign by designing a shirt dedicated to Sarah’s natural locks, style, and in celebration of our own.

Customized Girl believes that women should be encouraged to express themselves and leave their mark on the world. We produce clothing and accessories that allow our customers to give voice to their ideas, opinions, jokes, and pretty much everything else. Heretic Honey is the best example of this by using fashion to not just look good but to do good.

Their objective doesn’t end with apparel. Heretic Honey is doing an outstanding job of getting individuals involved and spreading the word.  Blog posts and reaching out to local radio stations are just a few ways they are bringing attention to this campaign but with a bigger audience comes a greater response. Their next objective is to get the attention of Ellen Degeneres, who could help bring Sarah’s story – and Autism awareness – to a wider audience. We expect nothing less from the exceptional Heretic Honey and her team.

Support Sarah and Heretic Honey’s mission to raise awareness for Autism by sharing your stories and contributing to their storefront. Once you receive your adorable Bed Head Shirt make sure to snap a picture and use the tags #HatsOffToSarah and #theellenshow on social media to show your support of Sarah and the autism community, and create a kinder world through awareness and understanding.

Learn more on how custom apparel storefronts can make a difference in your fundraising efforts and spread awareness for your cause.