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Popcorn Prints is a relatively new shop on the Spreadshirt platform filled with custom shirts and clothing inspired by furry little friends. Starting with guinea pigs and hamsters, Louise plans to cover all household pets. These kind of niche shops can become successful, especially when it’s run by an enthusiast. We wanted to hear about her experiences using Spreadshirt and here are the answers we got!
What inspired or motivated you to open a shop and how long have you run the shop?
As a self-confessed guinea pig lover, I was looking around for a t-shirt for myself featuring guinea pigs and struggled to find one that I really liked. As it was just before Christmas 2011, I was also looking for a way to earn some extra money and when I landed on Spreadshirt’s site, it seemed a perfect way to solve two problems in one! The more I thought about it, the more I realized there was also scope to promote important messages and help to raise money for guinea pig charities.
How did you learn about Spreadshirt?
Once I hit on the idea of designing my own custom t-shirts, I read many reviews regarding the main t-shirt printing companies. Spreadshirt consistently appeared to outperform its competition on quality and reliability.
How much time do you invest in your shop? Do you create designs yourself?
All the designs are created from scratch by me. Inspiration comes from my own pets, their funny little quirks and characteristics. Some of my designs are just for fun whereas some try to promote a more important message.
At the moment, my shop is still relatively new so I am spending a lot of time testing new ideas, getting the website looking right and including all the relevant information. As it’s so new, I’m spending lots of time in promotion and marketing.
Where and how do you market your shop and make it well-known?
I began promoting the website on forums full of fellow guinea-pig enthusiasts! I quickly discovered Facebook was an even better way of sharing the shop with a huge audience. The viral nature of Facebook means messages can spread quickly and like-minded Facebook groups can help each other out by sharing their pages with each other. The ease of putting ‘questions’ and opening ‘polls’ for your followers on Facebook is also a wonderful way to instantly discover what your customers want and fulfill their demands!
Who do you think your customers are?
Facebook provides excellent information regarding my customers. From the ‘page insights’ I can quickly see that my customers are mainly females in their 20’s and 30’s. This info can then be used to decide which of Spreadshirt’s products to use for my designs. Of course, I don’t need Facebook to tell me that all my customers are guinea-pig lovers!
If you think back from the “opening” of your shop up to now, what would be the most important insight that you would give a newcomer?
My shop is still relatively new so I’m learning new things all the time. I made sure that people liked my designs before spending any money. Spreadshirt is excellent at allowing new designers to test their designs but it also allows you to scale up your business and easily incorporate it into your own website on your own domain name when the time is right.
How did you get involved with Glynneath Guinea Pig Rescue team?
I already knew Glynneath Guinea Pig Rescue and the wonderful work that they do. Opening my shop seemed like an ideal opportunity to help promote the ‘rescue’ message and also hopefully raise some money for them. When I bought my first guinea pigs 12 years ago, I had absolutely no idea there were so many guinea pigs in rescue centres needing new homes. I naively thought rescue centres were just for cats and dogs. Glynneath is only one of many recues in the UK, yet they alone took in 163 guinea pigs in 2011. Many of these were in a terrible state of neglect and needed a lot of medical care to get them fit for their new homes. These costs, along with the day-to-day running costs of a rescue, can be immense.
I was also recently approached by www.guineapigwelfare.org.uk who run a website packed full of useful information. They have decided to run a special campaign for 2012 “One is Not Enough”, an awareness-raising campaign to promote the message that guinea pigs need to be kept in pairs or groups. They asked me to design a range for this campaign, which I have just put on sale in my shop and have already had a fantastic response!
Have you ever seen someone you don’t know walking around with your t-shirt on?
No, but that would be wonderful! I love to think people are wearing my designs and getting enjoyment from it. What makes it even more fabulous, is that the designs are all based on my pets and those of my friends! Some happy customers have posted photos of their t-shirts on my Facebook page which always makes me smile!
What do you do for a living, or better said: what do you do when you are not fiddling around with your shop?
I am currently self-employed and working from home running Google adwords ‘pay-per-click’ advertising campaigns for other small businesses. This means I can be very flexible about splitting my time between my Spreadshirt shop and my other clients.
If you were a t-shirt, what would you look like?
As all my designs are created by me and based on the things I love the most, I would look like one of the t-shirts in my shop, of course!
