T-shirts are big business. The global custom t-shirt market is more than $4 billion. T-shirts have universal appeal and are available to purchase from a wide range of retailers, including mass market retailers, sporting goods stores, gift shops, grocery stores, speciality apparel stores, and almost every type of retailer you can imagine. But what is the best way to display a t-shirt to maximise sales? The answer is it depends. Many factors determine the best type of display to use, such as available floor space, inventory of t-shirts, and breadth of product selection. Let’s look at some of the most effective ways to display t-shirts.

Wall-Mounted T-Shirt Display

If your floor space is limited, one of the most brilliant things you can do is take advantage of your wall space. You can hang your t-shirts on face-outs or apparel bars if you have Slatwall. A less common but very effective approach is wall-mounted cabinets that show the t-shirt graphic outside the cabinet. One advantage of this approach is keeping your t-shirts nicely folded and organized.



T-Shirt Cubby Display

T-Shirt cubby displays are enormously popular. Each cubby typically holds a dozen t-shirts, so these displays offer the advantage of high carry capacity. Many of these t-shirt cubby display spin so they can be placed almost anywhere in the store- even in unusable corners. One of the critical features of t-shirt cubby displays is they generally have a space next to each cubby to show the graphic on the t-shirt, making the collection highly shoppable.

Below is an example of a 4-sided spinning 20-cubby display with 240 t-shirts.

T-shirt cubby displays don’t have to be made of wood or MDF. Below is an example of a cost-effective wire t-shirt cubby display. This example illustrates an easy way to boost sales by adding a cap attachment.

For smaller stores that might not have the space or might not want to invest in that much t-shirt inventory, a 10-cubby t-shirt display is a good option.


Hybrid T-Shirt Cubby and Hang bar Display

T-shirt cubby displays can also be combined with traditional t-shirt hanging displays to create a mixed merchandiser. An example is shown below. This display features 10 cubbies, a centre shelf with a hang bar below it, a branded header, and generous side graphics.

Free-standing Multi-Product Apparel Displays

T-shirts can also be displayed on more traditional freestanding multi-product displays that use face-outs, waterfalls or jet rails. The example below shows how t-shirts can be cross-merchandised with caps, shorts, and shoes.

Another example that falls into this category is a 2-ways display. The Escape Apparel display shown below is a popular solution in college book stores. It uses waterfalls to hang t-shirts and features prominent branding on the base and header.


There are many ways to merchandise t-shirts. We have shared just a few examples of t-shirt displays that are proven to sell t-shirts in almost any retail environment.

About Jim
Jim Hollen is the owner and President of RICH LTD., a California-based point-of-purchase display, retail store fixture, and merchandising solutions firm. A former management consultant with McKinsey & Co., Jim has authored over 500 blogs on POP displays and retail merchandising. Jim earned his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.