Top 6 Tools to Help You Run and Grow Your Apparel Business
One of the challenges of owning an apparel business is that you have to be a salesperson, accountant, apparel decorator and more. There aren’t enough hours in the day. That’s why we’re continually creating new tools to help you run and grow your apparel business.
Here are the top 6 tools you’ll want to make sure you’re using.
Did you know you have your own online catalog?
If you go to the website www.easyprints.com, you’ll notice that there is no Transfer Express branding on it. That’s done quite on purpose.
With more and more business being conducted on mobile phones and tablets, you might not always have your physical catalog with you when opportunity strikes. By showing your customers the Easy Prints site, you look through layouts, fonts, colors and more.
If your site supports iframes, you can actually embed the Easy Prints sites on a page of your website quite easily.
You already have your own online designer!
If you’re like most of our customers, you make entensive use of Easy View, our free online designer. While it is very helpful in showing you what your transfer costs are, that’s probably not something you want your customers to see – nor the Transfer Express branding.
Enter Customer Mode.
In the upper right-hand corner, you’ll see three lines and the word “Settings.”
When you click on this, a menu will drop down. Simply click the circle next to “Customer Mode,” and the Transfer Express branding and pricing will disappear.
This allows you to sit down with your customer and design the transfer together.
Are you using your full color catalog?
Let’s face it, printing is VERY expensive. But research proves that customers still like to hold a catalog in their hands – particularly if they are a Millennial.
That’s one of the many reasons we created the Marketing Kit. In addition to a color guide printed onto fabric for accuracy, samples of all of our transfer types (so you can practice and create a display for another tactile experience), the kit features a full color catalog binder with your business name on it (again, not a link of Transfer Express branding in sight) AND two generic black and white versions you can leave behind. Basically, for under $50, you have an entire apparel business marketing ninja in a box!
Make use of our customizable sales flyers.
Did you know that the Transfer Express website contains an entire page of pre-event sales forms, event flyers and more that are absolutely free to download and use?
The pre-event sales form is particularly effective for groups where parents are buying. You simply design your shirts in Easy View (or another design program) and insert them into the form. This post goes into more detail about how to use the form and how it’ll prevent you from getting stuck with a bunch of unsold shirts.
Keep track of the details with the custom order form.
There are a lot of little details that go into a custom apparel order and it’s a lot to keep track of. Having a standard form to work from ensures you don’t lose track of them – and helps you look more professional. That’s why we created a custom order form based on your feedback. Simply download it and print some off.
If you have the Marketing Kit, you can keep a stash in it to take orders as people look through your custom catalog.
Make sure you’re using social media to its fullest potential.
Social media rules are always changing. What worked yesterday, like encouraging people to vote on a design, will now get you penalized.
We recently posted about how you can grow your Facebook following and what the current social media best practices are.
While finding enough hours in the day will always be a challenge when you own an apparel business, using the right tools with save you valuable time and money.