After my last article, Your Students Might as Well Be Naked, I decided to do a companion piece to explain how easy it is to get custom t-shirts for your school even if you are low on funds.
For those of you who may not know, I am a big proponent of being debt-free and starting with little or no out-of-pocket capital. It’s a fun challenge to see what you can get when you start from nothing and use just your ingenuity and imagination to make an enterprise grow and prosper.
So, when it comes to the subject of creating school shirts, I have found 4 simple ways to do it with little or no cash.
#1 Pre-Sale
The first is to have your students pre-pay for their shirts. If your students are clamoring for t-shirts and you don’t have the capital, then don’t wait till you have them in stock and then sell them. Reverse the process.
Simply start a monetary collection from the students who want shirts. If 10 of your students pay $20 each for a shirt, then you have $200. That should be enough for the design, start up costs, and at least the first dozen shirts at any local t-shirt shop. Or you can look online, especially for those places that specialize in quick-turnaround martial arts shirts.
After that initial order, use the profits from the eventual sale of the left-over shirts that were not ordered as well as the pre-orders for the next batch to buy a second set. This time, without the design and set up fees, you will be able to purchase even more extra shirts. Then you sell those and use the profits for more shirts, etc.
It becomes a self-fulfilling endeavor from there.
This process may take a little longer than just scrounging up or borrowing money, but in just a few months, you could have a store full of custom shirts ready for every new student without ever having to spend a dime of your own money.
I was the Marketing Director for a company whose entire multi-million dollar mail-order business was run this way. They would sell the product to the customer and only once it was sold, would they then contact the dealer and order it. This method earned them millions of dollars a year with virtually no inventory.
It’s a business model worth copying, even on a small t-shirt scale.
#2 Online Store
The proliferation of the internet has given birth to several methods to help your business This includes everything from making your own school website, to creating enticing videos on YouTube, to keeping up with your students through social networking sites, or creating an online schedule for the world to see with Google Calendar. And those are just the well-known sites and applications.
There are also websites out there that can help you clothe your students and take the burden of running a pro-shop off of your hands. While I do not recommend removing your pro-shop, there are alternatives out there that can help you run it.
Example A:
For instance, Century Martial Arts supply company offers their client schools a virtual store that they can customize for their school and then fill with supplies from Century. I believe this can include custom school shirts. You set up the site as your own website, your students order and pay for the supplies online, and it gets shipped to them. You keep the difference between the wholesale and retail prices.
It’s all automated for you, but there are drawbacks:
- All the products have to come from Century
- The site is only partially customizeable
- Once online, students are likely to search for cheaper prices and you won’t get the commission.
- Making students wait for an online order reduces the chances for a sale at all and, therefore, would reduce the amount of sales.
However, you could always use this online store as a “backup” in case your in-shop inventory ran low.
Example B:
CafePress.com is a website where anyone can add their logo or pictures to a host of products and it’s all free! You don’t pay anything until you order it and you can order as few or as many products as you want; even just a single shirt.
The price per shirt is a bit higher than having them custom made yourself, but if you only need a few shirts or bumper stickers or a coffee mug, this may be the way to go.
You can create as many products as you want for free.
Plus, CafePress also gives you the opportunity to create a virtual store on their site to sell your products. Then, your students, as well as the online community of CafePress shoppers, can buy your products right online at the price you set. The items get shipped directly to them and the price difference between cost and retail is sent to you.
Some people just add a “Products” button on their site and link that to their CafePress storefront. When the web user clicks the button, they still think they’re on the person’s official site when it’s really just a page on CafePress.
Drawbacks are the same as the previous example.
Plus, the products are a little expensive off-to-bat. For instance, a plain white t-shirt with a small front logo is about $13 plus shipping. If you set the retail price online at $20, then the profit is only $7.
The same shirt at a local printer (minus design fee and set up fee) would probably be around $7 each, netting you a $13 profit each and no shipping (but you would also have to purchase a bigger order).
#3 Iron-on Transfers
I know what you’re probably thinking when you read the words “Iron-on”, but “heat-transfer” technology has come a long way since the 1970’s. It’s easier, lasts longer, and comes in a variety of printing choices (Inkjet, color copy/toner, dark clothing, etc).
Nowadays, you can print your logo from your home computer onto special transfer paper and then press it right to any shirt, jacket, gi, or article of clothing you chose. And, if done correctly, the results can be quite impressive.
Plus, unlike screen printing, your imprint can be full-color without color seperation and extra charge per-color for both setup and printing. And, the resolution of the print (image quality) can be as high as your printer can go.
The price? If you already have a computer and printer with your logo scanned in, then the cost is about $1-$3 a sheet for the transfer paper. Depending on how many logos you can fit on one transfer sheet, you could end up with several shirts per sheet.
Most large hobby shops or craft stores not only carry these transfer sheets but also inexpensive blank shirts on which to transfer.
All in all, it should only cost about $5 a shirt.
The downside is that the endurance quality of heat transfer paper, though much improved over the years, still does not compare to professional screen printing. However, if you need shirts or any clothing printed tonight, this may be the way to go.
#4 Sponsorships
Another way to get free t-shirts for your school is through sponsorships. Just like sponsorships for youth and amateur athletics, you would court outside businesses to purchase shirts or uniforms for your school in exchange for something.
That “something” could be your business, trade of services (you teach the owner’s son for free), or, most likely, signage on the shirt, uniform, or in the school advertising the business.
Sometimes, it may be considered “cheesy” to have sponsor info on your shirts or uniforms, but more and more active martial arts competitors feature sponsors on their school shirts as well as their uniforms.
In the early days when Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu went mainstream, many traditional martial artists thought instructors, students, and competitors from those schools resembled race cars with a montage of business logos all over their gi’s. Now, it’s actually becoming quite common. In fact, for many BJJ and Mixed Martial Arts fighters, having sponsors on their uniform is a point of pride as well as an extra revenue source.
If you decide to look for shirt/uniform sponsors, the first place to look is within your own ranks. Offer this opportunity to students and parents of students who may have a successful business that could use a little advertising or good P.R.
After that, make a list of external sponsors, preferrably locally-owned, that relate to your school or style without competing with it: vitamin shops, Asian restaurants, fitness gyms, accupuncture clinic, etc.
If you still cannot find a sponsor, then try other companies that do not relate like insurance agents, plumbers, exterminators, etc. Find one or two with cool names if you can.
For instance, one Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school I know got a mattress store to sponsor them. So now every one of their uniforms features a patch on the pants that proclaims “King of Sleep”. It’s a name that works on two levels.
The bottom line is that when it comes to having custom t-shirts for your dojo, lack of funds is no excuse. With a little time, effort, and ingenuity, you can not only get t-shirts, but also build your entire pro-shop inventory from scratch.
©Copyright 2008 -Larry D. Escher
Posted by ldescher 
