Please help me open an online clothing and home décor store and escape poverty. The niches I’m targeting are rockers and metalheads, horror fans and goths, pet lovers (mainly dogs and cats).

This is a good business proposition because there’s a lot of crossover between the 3 niches. Not only do I offer people a place where they can find more than 1 of their interests, but also individual products that combine more than 1 of their interests. And this is made much more powerful by having a presence on the right marketplace where my ideal customers are already used to shopping.

The brand encourages you to show off your strong personality. I believe in making bold statements, going against the mainstream, standing out in the crowd, wearing or owning something that reveals part of who you are and what you care about. The real tragedy, to me, is when someone decides to be like everyone else.

I’m also a huge supporter of adopting strays and shelter pets, and want to donate part of the profit to animals in need (shelters, animal protection organizations, pets in need of treatments). I’m thinking of starting out with a 10% donation every month, and once the store becomes successful enough I’d like to increase it to 20%, and then 33%. The pipedream is that the store becomes so successful that I can support myself and my pets with just 50% of the profit and donate the other 50% to help animals in need.

Another unique feature of my store is that I focus on embroidery just as much as on print design. This is huge because you don’t normally see niche designs embroidered on shirts when you walk into a store. Even the online stores that I visit, that target my ideal customers (I’m one of them) don’t really have much in the way of embroidery – just a few patches, sometimes some hats.

I already have experience designing for apparel and home décor. I’ve been selling on Society6 for 3 years. Unfortunately, the fees they pay artists are miserably low, so even when I get tons of sales in a month, I don’t have much to show for it. I’ve also been selling on Redbubble for a few months. And I’ve been trying to sell on Storenvy, but have not found my audience on that marketplace.

I’ve been trying to find a good job for 10 years, and have believed for a long time that the only way I can have that job is if I start my own business. Problem is I don’t have money to do that. I’ve never had a well-paying job, and in addition to this my dog has had lymphoma for the past 11 months. So all my money has been spent on cancer treatment, various treatments for the side-effects of cancer treatment and blood tests, and I still had to create a fundraiser for him last month. To my misery, my pup died a few days ago, the cancer got to the point where it could no longer be controlled. In addition to giving me a chance at a better life, creating and managing a store would be a welcome distraction from the grief.

I need your help financing my business. Here’s a list of expenses:

1) $40 to pay the RebelsMarket fee for opening a store. It’s a one-time fee that every seller has to pay. Out of all the marketplaces that I’ve researched this is by far the best fit for me. They’re a niche marketplace that describes their shoppers as metal, punk, steampunk, goth, raver, rockabilly, skater, surfer, and people who don’t want to be labeled.

2) $500 to pay for API integrations. I’m starting out with 2 production partners – Printful and Printify. Neither of them integrate with RebelsMarket, so I have to pay a programmer $250 for each API integration.

Integrating RebelsMarket with Printful and Printify means that my customers will get their orders quicker and ensures that I won’t overcharge sales tax and shipping fees.

3) $100 to pay for a couple of months of mockups. I’m hoping that after a couple of months I’ll start making enough money to pay for them myself.

Mockups and lifestyle photos are what mainly sell products, especially clothing items. Customers want to see a product in use and they want to identify with the models.

4) $200 to pay for some resources like fonts and graphics that allow me to work faster, increase the number of products as well as my visibility.

5) $200 so that I can pay for any potential exchanges / returns, in case they occur before I start making enough money to be able to pay for them myself. I sell print on demand, which means that my products are only created physically once someone places an order. So if for example someone orders size M and after receiving the product they realize they need size L, the t-shirt will have to be created twice, but the client will only have paid for it once. I need a budget to pay for the second one myself so that the client is happy with their purchase.

I don’t expect many exchanges / returns as I have detailed size charts and focus on high-quality products, but I think a few are inevitable when selling online.

6) $140 to register as a business.

My intention is for this to be a proper business, not a hobby. I want to pay taxes and create a business PayPal account.

If donations exceed my goal, there are other expenses that I need money for:

- TaxJar

- branding materials (stickers, thank you notes) + storage space fees

- samples to check the quality of various products

- ads to drive more traffic to my store

- API integrations for more production partners