Design Ideas for Great Custom Hoodies
Hoodies - those comfy sweatshirts with the bonus of a cozy hood - have transformed from a simple piece of clothing to workout gear to a trendy, fashionable year-round wardrobe staple for all of us. Along with their siblings, sweatshirts and pullovers, hoodies can be worn as a fashion statement of their own with leggings or skirts; used as a layer underneath a suit jacket or blazer; created in unique or unexpected materials; personalized for the customer; or made the canvas for trendy printed hoodie designs.
Customized hoodies and sweatshirts, in particular, lend themselves to that perfect blend of creativity and commerce, allowing creators to connect with their audience while monetizing their artistic vision. As printed hoodies, sweatshirts, and pullovers all continue to gain in popularity, creators are leaning on them as part of their revenue stream, and the potential for profit is looking great! And you can easily create your own print on demand hoodies with any design you’d like on ecommerce sites like Fourthwall - so let’s create a blueprint for your hoodie-selling success.
Why Hoodies Make Great Merch
Hoodies and sweatshirts have a lot of positive points going for them. For starters, they appeal to a wide demographic, which means you’re not limited on who you’re selling them to - pretty much anyone can wear a hoodie! Hoodies and sweatshirts also offer high profit margins if you sell them through ecommerce sites like Fourthwall, with low to reasonable production costs and high perceived value. To get a fashionable, comfortable hoodie made of high-quality fabric or a nice thick branded sweatshirt, most people are equally comfortable paying a higher price.
The adaptability of hoodies for both fashion and function also make them a favorite of creators and customers. Hoodies, sweatshirts, and pullovers all offer a large clothing “canvas” to showcase printed graphics of all styles, text, embroidery, and other custom elements, which allows for endless design possibilities to suit your brand and your customers needs. Variations on hoodies, like regular sweatshirts, sweaters, and pullovers, only serve to expand your merch line and your custom designs, making customized hoodies and their kin a great platform for brand promotion, artistic expression, and revenue generation - so let’s get creating!
Key Elements of a Best Selling Hoodie Design
Choosing the right combination of elements as you create hoodies, sweatshirts, and pullovers can make them really stand out in the crowd - both in your merch store and on your customers!
Standout Custom Artwork
Hoodies are hoodies are hoodies - unless they’re customized hoodies! The success of a hoodie or sweatshirt design can definitely be affected by the quality of the graphics printed upon it. You can choose from screen printing, DTG (direct to garment), embroidery - there are many options for printing on ecommerce sites like Fourthwall, so look for the ones that really suit your brand and your budget. A unique hoodie design with distinctive, original customized printed artwork can really catch the eyes of your potential customers, and recognizably branded items will resonate with your existing fans. Your most fashionable fans might even want to collect and wear ‘em all, so the more unique designs you can create, the better.
Comfortable Quality Materials
Your material of choice can also significantly impact a hoodie's appeal. Opting for high quality, comfortable, soft fabrics ensures that your custom hoodie or sweatshirt not only looks good but is also a luxurious and comfortable article of clothing to wear; and making sure that your printed designs are sharp and durable is also key. These are important factors for positive word of mouth marketing and retaining repeat customers.
Colors and Typography
The right color scheme teamed up with carefully chosen typography (fonts/lettering) can really elevate your hoodie design. The colors and fonts should align with your brand and theme, as well as with each printed design. Unless you’re purposefully going for a neon retro look or humorous design (fluorescent yellow Comic Sans, for example), it’s best to choose rich, saturated colors and fonts that are both in style and easy to read (even while your customers are wearing them - see below for notes on design placement!) Watching current fashion trends can help you choose color/font combos that will appeal to your target audience.
Design Placement
Whether printed on the front, back, sleeves, or all of the above, the placement of your custom graphics can greatly affect your hoodie or sweatshirt's visual appeal, and how your designs are perceived. Sometimes a singular design (only the front, or only the back) can make the biggest impact. A split design (for instance, an event logo printed on the front, and event dates listed on the back) works well for a specific purpose. And smaller designs, like a compact logo on the front, or text printed only on the sleeves, can help your hoodie or sweatshirt stand out in a more understated way.
Customization Options
Offering customization and personalized options are great marketing tactics, as they can make your hoodie even more appealing by adding in a personal connection between the buyer and the product. You can go the full customization route by offering space for your customer to add a name or number to their personalized hoodie or sweatshirt; or you can do “soft customization” by offering a wide range of color combination choices or many different styles/versions of the same design, for instance your logo.
5 Hoodie Design Ideas To Spark Your Creativity!
1. Minimalist Designs
Focusing on clean lines, subtle graphics, and a limited color palette, minimalist hoodie designs appeal to those who prefer less branding, but still want to wear something unique. A minimalist custom hoodie or sweatshirt might feature a very small printed logo, a simple phrase, or a small all-over pattern that weaves across the torso and arms of the hoodie. These designs are a little more elegant and high-end looking, and may even command a higher price.
This Amethyst Duo logo hoodie from Vitalasy’s Fourthwall website features a tiny 8-bit logo that will appeal to fans who want to support the Minecraft YouTuber in a more subtle way.
2. Bold Statements
Bold hoodie designs are all about making a big statement! Think large graphics or logos; attention-grabbing text or phrases; or blocky, bright colors. These types of hoodie styles are designed to grab attention, and are a perfect match for creators who really want their merch to be noticed, and fans who wear it to be seen! Bold hoodie designs are definite conversation starters, so make sure the message you’re sending about your brand is the message you want to send.
3. Pop Culture and Niche References
Using trendy pop culture or niche interests in your hoodie designs can help you tap into customers that align with those references. Whether you’re including phrases or memes from your own brand or community, or referring to something from pop culture like movies, music, fashion brands, or sports, custom hoodies and sweatshirts that capture a trending moment can become must-have in demand items (just be careful of copyright if you didn’t create the image or phrase yourself.)
4. Seasonal Themes
Seasonal hoodie designs tied to holidays or specific times of the year can be big sellers! Christmas and winter themes, Halloween and autumn designs, and summer vibes all offer so much design potential, and also create a sense of time-sensitive urgency among buyers. You can even create limited-edition hoodies and sweatshirts for those specific holidays, blending the holiday designs with motifs and slogans from your personal branding to make truly unique holiday hoodie merch.
5. Grab Bag!
Really getting creative with your hoodie designs and customization can give them even more of an edge in the custom clothing marketplace. Different types of detail and unique hoodie shapes give your potential customers more options to choose from, and can move your hoodie farther into the realm of fashion. A few extra-creative ideas could include extremely oversized hoodies or short, cropped sweatshirts; vintage, retro, or distressed fabrics; unique fabrics like velvet or nylon; unusual printing methods like metallic or puff prints; fun cut outs, patches, or colorful zippers; or fabrics with an all-over print.
Designing Hoodies and Sweatshirts for Your Audience
Understanding your audience is the key to creating customized hoodies, sweatshirts, and pullovers that sell. The better you know your audience, the better you can tailor your hoodie designs to match up with things you know they'll be hyped to wear!
Know Your Target Market
To really focus in on your target audience, it’s important to research them. Are they 20-somethings into wearing the latest trending hoodie styles, or Gen X-ers who prefer wearing sweatshirts featuring retro graphics? Knowing your audience’s demographics, interests, fashion preferences, and purchasing behaviors can guide your design decisions, ensuring that your custom hoodies, sweatshirts, and pullovers are more likely to appeal to your fans and potential customers.
Stay Trendy!
Fashion and clothing trends are always on the move, so staying updated with what’s on trend is very much to your benefit when designing customized hoodies, sweatshirts, pullovers, and other wearable merch. Keep a close eye on what pieces of clothing are currently selling, what colors of shirts are popular, what hoodie styles are in season, and what kind of graphics and memes are trending. Incorporating fashionable elements into your hoodie designs and also offering personalized hoodie and sweatshirt options helps ensure that your merch stays relevant and fresh.
Listen to Your Customers
As you continue to create and list your merch line, including your customized hoodies, it’s important to listen to feedback from your fans and customers, which you can collect via reviews or market testing. Analyzing the feedback as it comes it will help you make adjustments to your designs, colors, printing, and style choices, which will help you better capture your customers’ interest and sell more hoodies and sweatshirts.
Pro Tips for Selling Your Custom Hoodies
Choose the Best Ecommerce Platform
Your ecommerce platform of choice is so important to successful sales of any of your merch, including hoodies and sweatshirts! Platforms like Fourthwall can provide all of the most crucial components for your ecommerce clothing and merch store, like customization options, print on demand, merch listings rich with text and images, a user-friendly interface, secure payment options, and plenty of bonus features that will keep your fans and customers coming back for more, boosting your sales and growing your fan base.
Set the Right Price
Carefully set your hoodie, sweatshirt, and pullover prices while considering all of the important variables: production and printing costs, shipping costs, your designing and listing time investment, competitor pricing, and the perceived value of your hoodies and sweatshirts to your customers. Ecommerce platforms like Fourthwall help make these calculations easier by making it simple to upload product images and create listings, and with Fourthwall, you can get started for free! Offering limited time discounts or coupons and bundling products can also help drive more hoodie, sweatshirt, and overall merch sales.
Build Customer Loyalty
After ensuring that your hoodies, pullovers, sweatshirts, and other wearable merch are designed well and are of top quality, fulfilling and shipping orders in a timely fashion is your next very important order of business! Ecommerce platforms like Fourthwall automate the fulfillment process, ensuring that your customers receive their custom hoodies promptly. Then, engaging with customers post-purchase can help build loyalty and encourage repeat purchases - some of the ways you can do this include follow-up emails, social media shoutouts (for instance, posting a customer review of one of your products), or even thank you videos like the ones you can create and send on Fourthwall!
Use Your Socials
Socials like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest are great avenues for showcasing your hoodie and sweatshirt designs. Creating visually appealing, catchy, exciting posts showing off your custom printed clothing can attract potential buyers, and can also generate anticipation among your existing customers for your latest designs. Be sure to utilize hashtags and respond to comments to help create buzz around your new customized hoodie and sweatshirt releases!
Reach Out to Collab
Collaborate with fellow creators and amplify your reach! Reach out to influencers who have audiences and interests similar to your own, and work with them to create fun content that will both introduce your clothing designs to a broader audience, and will benefit your content creation colleague, too. This strategy can be especially effective for niche or trending sweatshirt and hoodie designs.
Start Selling Your Hoodie Designs with Fourthwall!
Fourthwall is the perfect platform for creators looking to turn their merch into profit! Maximize the profitability of your customized hoodies, personalized sweatshirts, and more by opening your own customized Fourthwall shop. Then you can take advantage of Fourthwall’s many features, including easy listing creation, secure transactions, and automated fulfillment for your print on demand hoodie and sweatshirt designs.
Once you’ve got ‘em in your shop and buying your personalized hoodies, sweatshirts, pullovers, and other merch, you can keep them there by using Fourthwall’s other excellent extras, including memberships with exclusive members-only content, video thank-you notes, custom promo codes, blog posts, and more.
Throw a hoodie on and get designing, so you can get started with Fourthwall today!