Making money with spirit wear – where to begin
Making money with spirit wear is a solid way to raise revenue for a school, sports team, or any kind of organization. It’s a very old fundraising method that has actually gotten easier over the years. Aside from being a cost effective marketing tool it also raises awareness of unique. I’ll use a youth baseball organization in this example. Youth club baseball is a competitive industry and the various organizations do a great job of promoting their organization through their custom jerseys, t-shirts, jackets, bags, sweatshirts, etc. In this day and age these baseball organizations are not limited to a blue sweatshirt with white writing. The options are endless so now the goal is to not only to market the organization through spirit wear, but marketing through unique spirit wear. Now they can get a blue sweatshirt with white contrast stitching and camo piping down the sides to allow them to stand out even more. It’s not just about using apparel to raise funds but using apparel that is unique.
Making money with spirit wear – The market
The easiest thing about making money with spirit wear is you have a captured audience. Every school has their student body and every team has their fans and every foundation has their supporters. Sometimes the market can dictate what you want to offer and bouncing ideas off the potential buyers is a great idea. Often times people just want to have something to wear to show support.
At Kirkwood Trading Company we print a lot of custom spirit wear for area schools and teams and foundations. There are always going to be those staple pieces of apparel that will always sell no matter what. However since we are in the business we are always trying to present our spirit wear customers with new trendy ideas that they can include in an order form or incorporate on their spirit shop website or school store. We have one particular high school client who sells tons of basic sweatshirts of varying school colors with a simple school name printed on the chest. Those aren’t going to go out of style but from a profit standpoint, once a student buys that sweatshirt they may buy one more throughout their school career. So the idea is to offer different pieces each time as well so those kids who have the staples will also be interested in new and different spirit wear.
making money with spirit wear – basics
Making money with spirit wear can be simple. Nobody has to reinvent the wheel. You simply need to know your audience and their taste for the types of logo wear they’ll wear to promote. Basics will always be in style but you also want to offer a few unique pieces of apparel as well. Introduce a ladies cut or a youth style shirt. Today the most popular styles are the moisture wicking performance fabrics. There will always be people who strictly like cotton but today it’s almost a 50/50 split between customer preference.
Simple designs go a long way. A unique eye catching design not only attracts the buyer but also attracts people to look at it in passing. There is a reason why every major professional sports team has multiple outlets to sell their apparel. They know they have a loyal following that crosses state lines and ever countries. Spirit wear for youth sports and schools is no different, you just have a smaller demographic.
making money with spirit wear – exposure
Physical brick and mortar spirit shops will always thrive. Especially in a setting such as a school. With the technology we live in today people can increase their sales by 50% with a simple online presence. I know Kirkwood Trading Company offers our clients free online spirit stores. We put them together, handle order processing, and if need be shipping as well. Schools for instance can increase their sales with an online presence to their alumni. We have introduced online spirit stores to our clients and they have all had a significant increase in sales mainly from alumni and parents of kids who don’t have the time to go to the school during the stores open hours.
If you’d be interested in learning more about increasing profits and getting the most out of your spirit wear feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to show you how we can help. Here are a couple links.