Whether you are just starting a group or team, you can experience several benefits from offering team apparel to your customers. Here's just a few of the reasons to consider offering apparel then how to execute on this addition to your programs.
Offering apparel to your team can offer several benefits to your program and here's the ones that we have seen in our programs.
1. Advertising. When your students go to school, other sports or walk around at Target with your apparel on, they are helping to spread the word about your program, build name recognition and build your brand.
2. Team Unity. When your classes or groups are dressed in team gear at a show or competition, team unity starts to develop. The kids will feel connected to your group and develop a sense of pride in their team.
3. Additional Revenue. Are you going to buy a mansion off of your apparel sales? Probably not but apparel sales can give you an additional revenue stream that can help you reach your personal and business goals.
4. Community. Offer apparel for parents too to build a community that support and promote your business so that you can impact even more families.
If you are looking to add apparel to your offerings, here's a few way to get started in offering apparel to your customers.
1. DIY... You can design and create your apparel, choose what designs will look best on what items, set-up an order form and then create your apparel. If you do the DIY route, be sure to account for your time, possible returns, shipping when you set your prices.
2. Use a national company to help you design and create your items. Sometimes, you'll be required to use pre-formatted designs that add your name and you may lose the ability to choose certain brands of apparel (i.e. the company may use Gildan only instead of being able to use Nike). You may also be required to meet item minimums in order to get the best price available. These companies usually have good quality products at good prices.
3. Use a local company to help you. Local companies can give you the flexibility to choose different brands, add your designs and help another small business in your community. With that said, your base price may be slightly higher than DIY or a national company.
Both local and national apparel companies may be able to create a "store" for you that makes online ordering easy for your families.
Personally, we have chosen to bring our apparel "in house" because we were able to have the most control over quantity minimums, design and online store. We have used both national and local companies but in the end invested in the equipment such as transfer printer and heat press so that we could create the best quality products at the best prices for our families. Have questions on launching an apparel line? Reach out any time! We're happy to help you in any way that we can!