Been building out a custom apparel brand for fandom/meme communities and wanted to share what I've learned so far for anyone thinking about doing the same:

Don't pre-order stock. The temptation with merch is to bulk order 100 hoodies of your "best" design and hope they sell. Don't. Print-on-demand means every design is made only after it's purchased — zero dead inventory, zero upfront capital at risk. Your only job is picking designs people actually want.

Let the community pick the designs. The biggest mistake creators make is designing in a vacuum. If you're serving a fandom or niche meme community, the designs that sell aren't the ones you think are cool — they're the inside jokes and references only that community gets. Build a chat, throw out concepts, let them vote.

Price for scarcity, not volume. Limited-run drops (48-72 hour windows) create urgency and give you real signal on what to reprint. It also means you're never sitting on unsold stock from a design that flopped.

Membership > one-off sales. An access pass that gets people first dibs on drops + a standing discount converts way better than trying to sell single items cold. People want to feel early, not spammed.

Started applying all of this with Threadforge — happy to answer questions if anyone's exploring something similar.