Interview With Inkefx

[Use the discount code INEFXLAUNCH for 15% off]

If you’re active in the t-shirt industry then chances are you’ve stumbled across Inkefx, a brand new line that’s come out of the gates with a big boom.  It’s really refreshing to see a new brand that tackled everything from head to toe and did it WELL.  I did a short interview with the owner of Inkefx which sheds some light on his creative process and gives some hints to other clothing line owners on how to create an awesome website.  But before I jump into that, lets take a quick look at what Inkefx is as a brand…

“So here we are today, 3 shirts under our belt set on a mission to provide the highest quality product we possibly can with the best customer service that we can provide.”

Inkefx has started out with 3 t-shirts, all are printed on American Apparel Tri-Blends and are completely finished with screen printed neck labels and custom woven hem tags on the bottom of the tees.  Throw in a top notch website and you have an undeniably amazing recipe for a clothing line you could ever ask for.  My favorite of the bunch has to be this Geometry one:

Now that you know this brand is for real…lets get on with the interview:

Lets start out with you telling us a bit about who you are, give us 3 random facts about yourself.

I’ve been doing web design for the past 9 years and learned 95% of all I know on the job. I enjoy playing basketball and spending time with my wife traveling. I recently started Inkefx as a personal challenge to venture into other forms of design and to learn how to run / build a brand.

1. I recently won 56 games of HORSE in a row. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations_of_basketball#H-O-R-S-E)
2. I once designed business cards for Van Halen
3. I can eat 2 pounds of shrimp in one sitting

I’m sure you get tons of compliments on your website, lets give people some insight on how you came up with all of the ideas for it.  Such as how you decided on the color scheme, the layout, if you wanted a clean or grungy style.  Did you jump into it already knowing what you wanted to do or did you play around with it a lot?

My process for designing is a little different than most, I would assume. I never draw out my designs on paper or wireframe them. I just jump in, I start browsing online to see what most people are doing, find styles and colors that I like and begin to build based on the ideas that spawn from browsing. Many times I scrap several ideas before I come up with a design that works for me. The current Inkefx site is probably the third rendition. The colors, just kind of evolved. There are really only a handful of colors that work well with black so yellow really stood out to me. I love graffiti so I wanted to incorporate a little bit of that flavor in there.

What made you choose Big Cartel as your storefront when there are many more options out there for websites that are way more easily customizable?  Do you just like a challenge or is there something about it that appeals to you more than the other choices?

I used BigCartel a while back on another business venture and really enjoyed the ease to integrate. I had worked with other commerce solutions in the past such as Joomla, WordPress, etc and just felt that with this being a startup and not knowing how well it would be accepted I should start with something that is rather inexpensive and extremely easy to use and code. I did however want to build a site that looked very different than a lot of BigCartel sites. Most of them are very boxy and grid like. I will eventually incorporate a similar to view in my site down the road, but for now I wanted a layout that really featured the 3 shirts that I was offering.

For other aspiring t-shirt line owners out there, what are 3 good solid tips you can give to someone wanting to build a strong website like yours using Big Cartel?

1. Always think of custom experiences, coding and usability during the design process
2. Make sure you understand that BigCartel offers the features you need for your site
3. Code it out in valid HTLM / CSS and then begin to transfer over to BigCartel incorporating the variables needed to display specific information.

Aside from the obvious things like prices, size charts and payment options, what parts of a website made for a clothing line do you think are the most important to have?  What about the least important(things that just clutter things up and don‘t serve much purpose)?

Photography is really important. Having good product shots will definitely help create some confidence in people purchasing your products. I think a clear purpose and explanation about your company is important along with a FAQ page that continues to build that confidence in answering common questions customers may have. Make sure you have an easy way for clients to contact you. One extremely important item is to have Google analytics so that you can track how well your site is performing. This allows you to understand what is performing, what featured articles are working, what twitter links are productive, etc.

Thanks for doing the interview! I agree with all of the answers here and I think this is some great info that should be absorbed by everyone else out there running a clothing line!  But, I also think you should go support the cause and pick up an Inkefx tee right now!  Make sure you check them out on Facebook and Twitter also!

[Use the discount code INEFXLAUNCH for 15% off]

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