Increase Back to School Apparel Sales
Some of the mascots that we offer with Easy Prints!
With back to school season in full swing, it’s time to reconnect with schools or even connect with new customers! For many custom apparel companies, schools are one of your biggest customers.
There are so many different opportunities when selling to schools. You can sell custom apparel for sports, spirit wear, ‘class of’ shirts, field trips, and even to parents. The hardest part is determining how to get in touch with your customer and knowing what they will want.
Sport designs on the Easy Prints Pinterest page
Sports, sports, sports! One of the ways that you can sell custom apparel to schools is through sport sales. You can sell for football, soccer, baseball, cheerleading, tennis, dance team, and so much more! Get in touch with the coaches to talk about having their teams use the custom apparel that you offer and talk to the school about selling your decorated apparel at the games! When you talk to the coach, if they are interested in purchasing custom apparel, find a way to casually ask them if they know a good way to get in touch with other coaches and people in the school district that you can talk to about selling custom apparel. If they are able to help you out even a little bit in the process of finding contacts, it could make your job a lot easier! When you talk to the school about selling at games, if you have a heat press that you can take on location, don’t forget to mention that you can customize the apparel at the game with Numbers & Letters by adding ‘MOM,’’ DAD,’ ‘BROTHER,’ ’LTL BRO’, ‘SISTER,’ ‘BIG SIS,’ etc.
Show your spirit! Does the school that you want to do business with have a store located inside of the school that sells spirit wear? If they do, that is a great opportunity! Let the school know that you can create the custom apparel items that are sold in the store. If the school does not have a school store, suggest that they pick one or a few school spirit designs to sell to the students. Once these designs are chosen, the school will be responsible for getting the order information from individual students. Once they receive all of the student orders, they will place one large order so that you receive one payment and can create all of the t-shirts or hoodies at the same time.
Represent your class! With ‘class of’ t-shirts, you can sell to seniors and even field trips! High school seniors usually order class shirts, let the school know that you can offer these. You can use the same process mentioned with school spirit wear to sell the ‘class of’ attire to the school store or have the school sell the clothing so that you receive a bulk order of all of the shirts that are needed. Keep in mind that there are even signature designs so that friends can sign each other’s shirts. ‘Class of’ shirts can also easily be used for field trips! It can say ‘Class of 2014’ and be used for senior trips, or it can say ‘Class of 2019’ and be used for a middle school trip, it can even say ‘Class of 2027’ and be used for a kindergarten field trip!
Field Trip Designs – Add the school colors!
Take a trip! Most schools will order matching t-shirts for school field trips so that the kids are easy to find and will not get lost from the group. For field trips, you can offer ‘class of’ t-shirts (as mentioned above), t-shirts that show the mascot, show where they are going, have the year, or even contain clip art that matches the location where they are going. You can even add a mixture of more than one of these elements and have the school name, where they’re going, and the current year; such as the ‘zoo field trip’ example above.
Your biggest fan! Parents are usually the first ones to cheer on their child at the big game. As mentioned with sports, keep in mind that you can customize parents’ sports clothing. These decorated apparel items can be personalized for football, basketball, soccer, baseball, and so many more!
It may be helpful to provide the schools with a flyer, this helps to limit the designs that they have to choose from. We have great graduation flyers that you can use! If you want to give them even more options, it may be helpful to provide your customer with a black & white idea book, this will show them different designs that you can offer to help in the decision making process. You can also refer them to the Easy Prints® Pinterest page, where they will be able to see what some of the finished products look like!
There are so many opportunities when it comes to back to school! Remember to look for these opportunities and always let your customers know what else you can offer them, so that they will continue to come back to you in the future!