TL;DR: Setting up a merch store is easier than you think — Jersey Ink handles the setup for you. Best sellers are T-shirts and hats, followed by hoodies and long sleeves. Keep your store open for 2–3 weeks, promote it multiple times (not just once), and close it with a firm deadline to drive urgency. After the store closes, we produce everything in two weeks and ship to your door or a central pickup location. You can also add a markup to raise money for your organization — we write you a check at the end.
Every season, coaches, booster club presidents, school administrators, and small business owners ask us the same thing: “We want to set up an online store — where do we even start?” The good news is it’s a lot simpler than most people think. The even better news? Done right, a merch store doesn’t just outfit your team — it can raise money for your organization at the same time.
Here’s everything you need to know, from picking your products to getting that fundraising check at the end.
You Don’t Have to Figure It Out Alone
The first thing I want new merch store customers to know is this: you don’t have to come to us with everything figured out. Most people reach out because they’re curious but a little overwhelmed. They don’t know what questions to ask, what items to offer, or what’s even possible.
That’s exactly what we’re here for. Our team can guide you on what products make sense for your audience, help with design ideas, and walk you through the whole process. The lift on your end is lighter than you think.
What to Sell: Start With What Actually Moves
Not all merch sells equally. After years of running stores for teams, schools, clubs, and businesses, here’s what we’ve learned consistently sells best:
The top two — almost always:
- T-shirt
- Baseball hat
These are the items people will buy even if they only buy one thing. They’re wearable, giftable, and universally loved.
The next tier — great add-ons:
- Hoodie
- Long sleeve
For larger stores with bigger audiences:
- Crewneck sweatshirt
- Quarter zip
- Lightweight Jacket or Zip Up
- Sweatpants or joggers
- Stickers
Stickers in particular are a great low-cost add-on that younger audiences and students love. They don’t take up much budget but add variety to your store.
How Many Items Should You Offer?
This is where most people get it wrong — and it’s one of the most important decisions you’ll make.
For smaller groups: keep it simple. Four to six items is the sweet spot. Think T-shirt, long sleeve, hoodie, and hat. Give people enough variety that they can check out with a few items, but not so many choices that they freeze up and buy nothing. Decision paralysis is real, and it silently kills merch store sales.
For larger audiences — school districts, large athletic programs, big clubs or community organizations — you can open it up to 12 or even 24 items. A bigger crowd means a wider range of ages, tastes, and needs. More variety makes sense and will serve them well.
The rule of thumb: match your product count to the size and diversity of your audience. When in doubt, offer less. You can always expand next time.
The Platform Question
Some organizations set up their own stores on Shopify, which works well if you have someone tech-savvy to manage it. At Jersey Ink, we handle the store setup for you on our own platform — and we keep it intentionally simple. Our goal is to remove as many barriers as possible so your customers can find what they want, pick their size, and check out without friction.
How Pricing and Fundraising Work
Here’s one of the most pleasant surprises for first-time merch store customers: your store can actually make money for your organization.
Here’s how our pricing structure works:
Jersey Ink prices each decorated item to cover our costs — which include credit card processing fees, web store setup, customer service, and fulfillment (organizing orders, folding, bagging, and drop shipping if needed). We share those base prices with you.
From there, you decide your markup. Want to add $5 to each item as a fundraiser? $10? That’s up to you. At the end of the store, we write a fundraising check to your organization for the total amount raised from your markup — or if you prefer, you can apply that amount as a credit toward a future bulk order.
You can even choose whether to display the fundraising amount publicly (“$5 from every order goes to the team!”) or keep it built into the price behind the scenes. Either way, the money comes back to you.
How Long Should Your Store Be Open?
Our recommendation: two to three weeks.
That window is intentional. Long enough for people to see it, think about it, and come back to order. Short enough that the deadline feels real and creates urgency.
One of the biggest mistakes we see is stores that stay open too long. When people feel like they have all the time in the world, they put it off — and then forget. A clear deadline is one of your most powerful sales tools.
Timing relative to your event matters too. If you’re running a store tied to a specific game, tournament, or celebration, close the store with enough lead time for us to produce and deliver the orders before the big day.
Once your store closes, our team gets to work. Production turnaround is two weeks. From there, orders are either available for local pickup in Reading, PA, shipped to a central location for group distribution, or drop shipped directly to each customer’s door — whatever works best for your group.
What Makes a Merch Store Actually Succeed
After running stores for all kinds of organizations, two things stand out as the biggest predictors of success:
1. Consistency. The stores that do the best aren’t one-and-done. They’re the organizations that run a store every year, around the same time, so their community comes to expect it. When people know the link is coming, they look out for it — and they’re ready to buy.
2. A mission or cause behind it. When there’s a reason to buy — a charity, a specific event, a team goal — sales go up. People aren’t just buying a hoodie; they’re supporting something they care about. If you can connect your store to a story or purpose, lean into it hard.
The Mistakes That Tank Merch Stores
Too many designs. If customers have to choose between five versions of your logo across twelve products, they’ll get overwhelmed and buy nothing. Pick one strong design and put it on great products.
Promoting only once. This is the silent killer. An organization posts the link one time, maybe twice, and then wonders why sales were low. Your audience is busy. They need reminders.
Going live without a promotion plan. Opening a store without a clear plan for how you’re going to drive traffic to it is like throwing a party and not telling anyone.
How to Actually Promote Your Store
Promotion isn’t optional — it’s the whole game. Here’s what works:
Post multiple times, every few days. Social media, email, text — use all of it. Don’t assume people saw it the first time.
Make a short video. A 10- to 20-second talking head video — you, on camera, telling your community what’s in the store, what the deadline is, and why they should order — outperforms a static post every time. It doesn’t have to be polished. It just has to be genuine.
Build community around it. Frame it as something your team or group does together, not just a transaction. “We’re all getting hoodies this year — here’s the link” hits differently than “our store is open.”
Create urgency around the close date. Remind people when there’s one week left. Then three days. Then the last day. Deadlines drive action.
How to Get Started With Jersey Ink
Ready to set up your store? Here’s what to expect:
Step 1: Reach out. Give us a call or email us at orders@jerseyink.net. If you’ve run a store with us before, let us know — we can look back at what sold well and build on it. If you have events or deadlines we need to work around, share those upfront.
Step 2: Design and product review. From there, expect about a week of back and forth. We’ll get mock-ups created and a product list put together for your review and approval.
Step 3: Store goes live. Once you’ve signed off on everything, we set up and launch the store. We’ll tell you the base cost of each decorated item, and you tell us what markup or fundraising amount to add. You can make that amount visible to your customers or keep it built into the price — your call.
Step 4: Store closes, we produce. After the store closes, we go into production. Two weeks later, orders are ready for pickup or on their way to your door. And your fundraising check? On its way to you.
It really is that simple. You don’t need to be tech-savvy, you don’t need a big budget, and you don’t need to have it all figured out before you call. That’s our job.
Contact us or email orders@jerseyink.net to get your merch store started.
Jersey Ink has been a custom apparel shop for over 20 years, specializing in screen printing, heat transfers, and embroidery for businesses, sports teams, schools, and organizations. We offer full-service online merch store setup and management.