What’s the best time of the year to sell printed merchandise and spirit wear?

The back-to-school season, without a doubt.

Each fall brings palpable excitement as students, parents, and administrators gear up for the new school year. School spirit is higher than ever (after all, the football team starts its season undefeated!) and continues through homecoming. July and August provide a golden window of opportunity to push spirit wear sales. And selling spirit wear online makes it 10 times easier.

Why online spirit wear stores?

Putting your spirit gear stores online offers a few key advantages:

Keep it convenient

In today’s marketplace, convenience is critical. The easier you can make the purchase process, the more people will make purchases. With an online store, customers don’t have to carve out time to visit your shop; they can shop whenever it makes sense for them.

Stand out from the competition

In this industry, the biggest differentiator tends to be price. In the customer’s mind, a T-shirt is a T-shirt is a T-shirt. How can you set your business apart?

Online stores allow you to move beyond mere price differences and offer clear differentiators. A customer will be far more likely to go with your business if you can show you offer unique advantages, such as saved time on the customer’s part and easy customization.

No hassle

School administrators don’t want the traditional hassle that comes with spirit wear sales. An online store makes the process paperless as it collects and processes orders, and it delegates most of the workload back to students, parents and alumni.

Sell efficiently

Every school has many more selling opportunities than the average printer is aware of. A critical mistake printing businesses make is concentrating on the “name” accounts such as football, basketball, and baseball etc.

In reality, by doing a little research, you will find there are 50-60 possible clients at each high school. For example: Junior ROTC, DECA, chess club, debate club. Each one of these accounts has a need for decorated apparel and accessories, but these often go unserved because they are perceived as too small to bother with. “We have a high school account whose DECA group does around $4,000 in sales a year,” InkSoft user Scott Creagan says, “This account led us to the state DECA group that does $12,000 per year. Small accounts add up to big business!”

A single online store allows a printing business to serve an entire school and all of its clubs, teams, organizations and groups. Many students are members of multiple organizations. A web store provides a centralized location to buy all of their printed goods.

Offer easy fundraising packages

Schools, teams, and clubs are always seeking fundraising opportunities. InkSoft’s online store technology allows printing businesses to marry spirit wear and fundraising into one complete package.

How to present and promote online spirit wear stores

Contacting booster clubs, fall sport coaches, and school administrators should start in advance of the new school year. Schools usually want goods delivered before the doors open or immediately after classes start, so by August, some opportunities have already been lost for garnering the most sales.

Not sure what a school’s needs are? A school secretary can be helpful in identifying who in the school could use your services.

Set up fundraisers the easy way

School decision makers are constantly in fundraising mode. So we decided to make it easy for you with InkSoft online fundraising stores. They’re a powerful ecommerce solution that pairs your printed products with your clients’ fundraising needs in an easy-to-use website. Using InkSoft, you can quickly and easily create, launch and manage online stores for all your school customers. Here’s how:

 

Want to learn how InkSoft can help your printing business succeed? Fill out this simple, no-obligation form to learn more.