Introduce your business and tell us your story: How did you decide on what to sell, and how did you source your products?
We started out with strictly graphical tees, which sold decently, especially at conventions. Two years ago we started streaming, and during one particular stream a person in the chat called us filthy casuals. As a joke, we made a Filthy Casual logo, bought the domain, and released a small line of 50 black shirts, 50 white shirts, and 50 hoodies. They sold out quickly, so we ordered more, they sold out even faster. Filthy Casual began outselling all our old bestsellers and has consistently since their launch, so about 8 months ago we rebranded from Cherry Sauce to Filthy Casual and it has been one of the best decisions we've ever made! Filthy Casual is just the 2 of us; Jason handling business, Mike handling art. All of our printing is done in the USA by an amazing printshop called ThreadBird.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Our very first line was almost exactly seven years ago, being sold exclusively to friends early on we eventually went online; and the emptees community helped us way back then. Since then we haven't spent a dime on marketing, our brand has grown organically through the amazing people we interact with at videogame and comic conventions. Traffic sources, in order of volume: Google search, direct traffic, social media. Sales generated are almost entirely driven by social media links.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
Shopify, obviously, for running our store and keeping it easy to manage. Tweetdeck and Buffer for keeping our social media smart and constant. MailChimp we just started using as we haven't bothered with mailing lists until recently. Our fulfillment and printing company uses ShipStation for handling our orders. The company that prints our shirts also handles our larger volume of storage and shipping orders; much love to ThreadBird <3
What are your top recommendations for new store owners?
Don't give up, work fast and make mistakes; They say overnight success happens after 10 years of busting your ass, so what are you waiting for?