Custom Apparel Startups

Custom Apparel Startups

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Custom Apparel Startups episodes

  • Episode 92 – New Product Ideas – How to Decide If Your Idea is Good

    Why should you validate your new products?

    You should know if your new product meets a few standard criteria. You want to be able to: make money with it, understand the market, know the competition and understand the business of this new product. If you jump on something because it's an impulsive idea, you might find out it's not what you expected.

    So HOW do you validate a new idea or product? The steps are simple and deliberate.

    1. Who is the target market?

    This is defining who will purchase this product from you. Is it new mothers, motorcycle crews, adult recreational sports players, etc

    HOW: Attend events where these people go. Visit their stores. Get to know the industry. takes notes on everything you can learn. Age, gender, interests, style, income, etc

    2. What are the problems, wants and needs in this market?

    Understand the personality and lifestyle this market of people live in. Are they very busy or retired? Do they have a lot of disposable income? Do they prefer a certain style of apparel?

    If you understand the market, you can bring things to them that will solve problems or fulfill desires.

    HOW: Survey people, brainstorm with people who know the industry. Observe them.

    3. How big is the potential for this market?

    If you want to focus on a fishing market, and you live in the desert, you probably won't have a lot of customers.

    So how many people would purchase your products, what is the potential for your business.

    HOW: How many people are in this market? How many businesses, or leagues, or population. Try to get actual stats where you can. Ask people, look online, etc

    4. Who are the competitors?

    You should know your competition. This doesn’t mean be discouraged by them, but know what they offer and how they do it.

    HOW: Ask people and search online. Shop them (or have a friend shop them). Get to know their offering

    5. What are they missing

    Do they not offer short runs or same-day delivery. Do they only offer cotton or only polyester. Do they only offer it in embroidery or screen printed or single colors?

    HOW: See #4 and compare it to #2

    6. How exciting is the solution and whats the demand?

    Is offering what your competition does not going to lead to sales? profits?

    Your competition might not offer cowboy hats with softball team logos on it… but how many people are going to play softball in a cowboy hat?

    HOW: Survey, interview people, ask in FB groups.

    Once you have gone through understanding these… you can make an educated decision and determine if your new idea is valid and worth your time, money and energy.

    42 min
  • Episode 91 – Steps to Getting More Customers by Networking

    In this episode we have put together a formula to follow step-by-step that WILL get you more customers through the power of networking. This formula combines working hard, being personable and a little touch of psychology to give you that extra edge.

    Here are the steps to making money with networking:

    Attend Social Events

    • Meetup.com
    • Local Business & Commerce Groups
    • Events for kids where parents socialize (Kids B-day parties)
    • Church events

      • Go with intent to meet people (not to sell)

      • In discussion ask what someone else does first
      • Show interest in them. The more likely they are a prospect, the more
        • you talk about them. You can pitch your ideas or business later.
      • Mention what you do, and see how they react. (they may ask you to
        • talk about it)

        Having cards is important, GETTING cards is more important.

        • You have control of making contact, rather than waiting.
        • You can archive people into your contacts
        • Write notes on cards whenever possible
        • No card is even a great excuse to contact people (actually I don’t
          • have any cards with me, but I’ll email you and you can add me to your contacts… I can even mail you a few with more info about my company)

          Contact them ASAP.

          • If they discussed business or a referral, you are in. Contact them

            and discuss the business or proposal

          • Otherwise next steps are…..

          • Drop a quick email or social media contention

          • Let them know it was a pleasure to meet them

          • Be POSITIVE about something

          • View their website, store or social account and genuinely compliment

            something

          • “I just went to your Instagram feed and love your pictures, so

            creative”

          • “I ended up checking out your website, wow love the design”

          • “I googled your company and saw 100 5 star reviews on google WOW”

            or….Compliment something about your conversation

          • I love your idea about…..

          • It was really interesting discussing…

          • I didn’t know ….. could be so interesting.

            Follow up with a “by the way” email

            • Wait a handful of days and follow up again. This time ask for
              • something
            • “Hi…. I was thinking about our convo at…… have you considered getting
              • custom apparel for your business.
            • “Hi….. you mentioned you know a lot of small business owners… is
              • there anyone you can introduce me to that might need my services”
            • “Hey, I was wondering. I am trying to grow my business. could I make
              • you a custom shirt for your business and you tell me what you think?
              If you love them… you could buy more…. or refer me to some other
              people”
            • ” I am trying to meet more business owners to help grow my business,
              • (since I make t-shirts) are there any other groups or people you can
              intro me to. I am trying to build my network”

              Keep engaged with them

              • Don’t let your relationship end there. Keep on the edge of their
                • minds so when they need apparel or can refer someone you know them.

                TIPS:

                • Follow them on social… like, comment, share
                • Refer them business. If you know someone who needs their product or
                  • service…… send them their way and make sure they know who sent them.
                • Leave them a review online.. “just met ……. these are the type of
                  • people you want to do business with 5 stars”
                • Return to those social events and be sure to say hi to them. Even if
                  • you are mingling with others.

                  Using the above formula will help you build a large network of people who are business associates. Never forget to keep in contact, even if just every few months. Always remember to refer business whenever possible.

                  TIP: If you are looking to build a network of associates, be sure to have a good way to keep track of them. Using a CRM is a good idea, can add notes, and access mobile.

                  1 hr
                • Episode 90 – Your Cricut Based Business Next Steps

                  If you are listening to this, you have a Cricut or a Silhouette, basically a cutter you got for $200-$600 at a local hobby store.

                  You make things for yourself, for friends and family. Maybe you are even making a little money here and there, or you've opened an etsy shop.

                  You might even be fulfilling orders almost every day.

                  What you all have in common is taking the next step to growing yourself into a better business, or maybe you might think of it as a "real" business.

                  What are the next steps:

                  1. Make it a business - Register with the state, get a resale or tax certificate, get a email address with your business name

                  2. Find Blank suppliers - stop buying from Walmart

                  3. Social Pages - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn

                  4. Website..... maybe? Order online?

                  5. Start quoting in writing, on a form. Sales Quote excel /google sheet / apple sheet

                  6. Start invoicing the same way in writing

                  7. Find a way to accept credit cards. Circle pay, Paypal

                  8. Treat every customer, like a customer. even friends / family.

                  9. Create a price book / price sheet.

                  10. Get commercial equipment

                    Story of comparing a job from a hobby to a commercial machine

                    Hobby Cutter: cut a 58.5in Triangle..... that is 11.5 across bottom and 23.5 up, then back 23.5 down takes. 30.5 seconds, when in fast mode on certain models, its 15.6 seconds.

                    Graphtec Commercial does that in about 2.5 seconds.

                    That's 6x faster on the fastest hobby cutter or 12x faster on the standard one.

                    NOTE:

                    Consider the size. Affordable professional cutters cut about 15-48in wide, and can track 6-16 feet.

                    That means when you are using a hobby cutter, you are going to cut about 12" x 24" at a time. If you are cutting t-shirt designs that are a 7x7 square, you can cut 3 at a time. One over the other on a 12x24 in sheet. That is at a speed of about 2 inches per second.

                    Compared to a commercial unit, that is not that much more $.... you can cut 2 wide and about 27 long... so essentially over 50 at a time! Also at a speed that is 12 x faster.

                    Lets break this down into an actual job.

                    You are doing a family vacation to a theme park. Part of their tradition is making shirts for the whole family. That's 3 brothers, and their spouses, plus 2 kits a piece. Then a couple of sisters and their spouses on the other side of the family (plus kits) That's a total of 10 adults and 10 kids. Its a 3 day trip, so they want 3 shirts each. 60 shirts total.

                    If the design is that 7x7 how long will it take to do?

                    Hobby cutter:

                    5 minutes a shirt x 60 shirts = 300 min of machine run time. Plus you have to load and reload it 30 times. That's an extra 30 minutes of loading time. 5.5 hours of your hobby machine just cranking along.

                    Commercial cutter:

                    at 12 times faster you are close to 45 seconds a shirt
                    45*60 = 45 minutes of run time on your machine, with only having to load it up 2x.

                    Then you are ready to finally place them on the shirts.

                    Your job goes from being done a few hours after the kids go to bed, compared to trying to stay up all night, passing out at 2am.... then waking up in the morning and doing it for another hour or two.

                    This is quality time with your family & friends or time used to make more money / more sales.

                    So how much did you make an hour?

                    Lets say it takes 3 hours to press all the shirts, fold them, etc.

                    Hobby cutter - 8.5 hours of work for 60 shirts

                    Commercial cutter - less than 4 hours of work for 60 shirts

                    You double the amount of money you make per hour of work! You take this extra time and market on Facebook, attend events to meet more people, spend time with your family, spend more time building up your home based business.

                    1 hr 17 min
                  11. Episode 89 – You’re Missing out on Free Advertising

                    Welcome Christina Nicholson from https://www.mediamavenandmore.com/

                    First of all, let’s get the freebie here out of the way, because it’s an amazing gift from our Guest JUST for our CASPodcast listeners!

                    It’s a course outlining her one of a kind strategy on getting free publicity for you and your business – just visit this site to register: http://www.PitchPublicityProfit.com

                    BUT – listen to the entire podcast first. Because it’s a good one.

                    First, we talk about how I found Christina, what that has to do with my Dad, and how I got hooked on this idea of PR.

                    Then we’ll tell you how that relates to YOU and your business. IN your town.

                    You’ll get some background on what makes Christina a pro at this and how she’s helped small businesses boom in the past.

                    Then we’ll go over the 3 Simple Steps to Free Advertising

                    Step 1: Personal Brand – become an expert

                    Step 2: Pitching the Media
                    Step 3: Keep Profiting off of free tv, magazine and radio spots

                    And finally, we’ll brainstorm some custom t-shirt business free advertising opportunities.

                    This is a GOOD one! Full of new ideas. You don’t want to miss it.

                    Part of your homework in this episode is to review some of our recent Success Stories and think about how you could use something like this in YOUR quest for free advertising: https://coldesi.com/success-stories/

                    35 min
                  12. Episode 88 – Relationship Building With The Ambassador to The Printerverse

                    We first heard Deborah on her own podcast featuring Ford Bowers, President of SGIA – and both she and Ford provided tons of value to their listeners.

                    So, of course we wanted to share that with YOU.

                    Deborah runs the largest social group of Printers in the Universe (#Printerverse), hosted on LinkedIn, and has been a print customer for years. So during this episode she’s going to bring us a view from both OUTSIDE the custom apparel niche market and inside it as a consumer.

                    This is another episode you don’t want to miss!

                    We discuss how social relationships are one of the keys to success in the t-shirt business today and one of Deborah’s other passions Girls Who Print.

                    Here are ALL the places where you can find Deborah online:

                    Print Long and Prosper

                    Deborah Corn
                    Intergalactic Ambassador to The Printerverse
                    https://www.printmediacentr.com/

                    Have You Been PEACOCKED? #ProjectPeacock

                    Listen Long and Prosper! #PMCpodcasts

                    https://podcasts.printmediacentr.com/
                    Podcasts from the Printerverse have landed!

                    Chat Long and Prosper! #PrintChat

                    Join us Wednesday’s at 4PM ET for #PrintChat

                    Network Long and Prosper!

                    LinkedIn: Print Production Professionals
                    https://www.linkedin.com/groups/107023/
                    Girls Who Print #GirlsWhoPrint

                    59 min
                  13. Episode 86 – What Success Looks Like in DTG Printing and More!

                    Great interview with Mark Biletnikoff from https://www.contract-dtg.com/

                    Mark got his start with direct to garment printing as a novice in 2010 and now has both a retails space and a rapidly expanding contract t-shirt printing company. During our talk, we and Mark Biletnikoff describe his biggest failures, great successes and what he’s done to grow to 12 DTG printers, 2 screen setups, embroidery, vinyl and more...

                    Here are just a few questions Mark Answered:

                    1. In your road to becoming a successful business owner, what do you think was your biggest hurdle to overcome?
                    2. How do you keep customers coming back?
                    3. What was your biggest order mistake, and how did you handle it?
                    4. If you knew what you know now about owning a business, what would you have done differently in the beginning?
                    5. How important is the quality of the garment to your sales/customer satisfaction?
                    6. What are the top 3 biggest mistakes a t-shirt shop can make?
                    7. What is the most ridiculous request a customer has made?
                    8. How do you handle inventory? Stock?
                    9. What is the exact role of a contract printer?
                    10. What would you suggest is the best way for a home-based business to find one?
                      11. 1 hr 10 min
                    11. Episode 87 – What to Do When Bad Things Happen

                      What to do when something goes WRONG

                      Your equipment will break.

                      You will lose the internet for 3 days
                      You will ruin the shirts
                      Your supplier will be out of blanks, supplies, catalogs
                      You’re going to have a bad month.. or 3

                      Nothing can prevent bad things from happening. And just because you have a small business or a home based business doesn’t mean you’re immune to the effects of what happens to EVERY business.

                      Here’s what’s happened to me before:

                      Our $10K per day shopping cart web service provider’s server went down – customers calling – no way to process orders.

                      Power went out in our area for several days. Lose customers? You bet.

                      Waited 3 weeks for a shipment of blank shirts to come in – they were bad. Bad workmanship.

                      My fault, no. My business, yes.

                      Each of these only happened once (okay, maybe twice). Let me rephrase that – they happened more than once and continue to happen occasionally. And it does really SUCK.

                      But there’s less panic. Less lost business. Less blood pressure intervention needed because now we know what to do!

                      That’s what this episode is about. Inspiring you to come up with a plan for WHEN SOMETHING GOES WRONG

                      Here are some basic rules for when anything bad happens:

                      1. DONT PANIC!
                      2. DONT MAKE IRRATIONAL DECISIONS
                      3. DO EXECUTE THE PLANS YOU HAVE IN PLACE BECAUSE YOU LISTENED TO THIS PODCAST
                        • Equipment failure
                        • Know your vendors contact info and procedures for getting help
                        • Understand what’s under warranty and what you’ll have to pay for
                        • Set aside emergency funds
                        • Have a company you know you can contract out the work too so you can still service your customers
                        • Internet is Down
                        • Make sure you have paper back up forms so you can still take phone orders
                        • Sign up for a plan with your cell phone provider so you can use your phone as a hotspot and bypass local internet
                        • You ruined shirts
                        • You’ve got to order for wasteage – especially if you are ordering something custom or that’s not showing tons in stock at your supplier
                        • Have a defined policy about this – what do you say to customers? How will you compensate them for a delay?
                        • Your Supplier is out of XYZ! Maybe a ship sank, or a factory closed or a production run failed quality control – there are lots of reasons why your supplier might not have what you need…
                        • Keep Stock of what you NEED to run your business. For most equipment, inks, toners, papers, substrates and parts there’s either no expiration date or it’s pretty far out. Don’t order this stuff just when you need it. Keep it on hand.
                        • Find an alternate product or supplier.
                        • Bad sales months happen.
                        • Keep a cash reserve
                        • Identify what financial resources (like credit cards) you can use in an emergency
                        • Listen to the how to sell more next month podcasts.
                          • 1 hr 15 min
                        • Episode 85 – 12 Steps to Grow Your Home Based Business

                          Learn these 12 steps and grow your home based business:

                          1. Start thinking about it and treating it like a business
                          2. Evaluate your profitability
                          3. Look at your equipment
                          4. Define and Amplify your Niche... who do you sell to now? DO more of that.. Shirts for sales teams. Dance and Cheer. no effort into anything else
                          5. Dig deeper into current customers … call to ask for more business, ask what else they do/order
                          6. Then expand product lines to match where you can.... koozies, bags, promotional items
                          7. Create a solid referral plan - find a way for customers to refer you, ask for referrals, give out coupon codes, etc
                          8. Live Social - BNI, Chamber of commerce, charity groups, church groups, sports clubs, car clubs
                          9. Go online - build a web store and get your customers visiting. pick products your "niche" might buy and push to them via email / flyers / word of mouth
                          10. Partner with other businesses - you don't sell signs? partner with a sign company. award company, paper printer
                          11. Hire freelancers - get people to write for your website, send emails for you, do accounting, do art (even work with your kids, spouse, etc)
                          12. Expand your niche to a second market... repeat first steps
                            13. 1 hr 25 min
                          13. Episode 84 – Good Better Best (Sales Strategy)

                            It’s surprising that something that works so well, and has for so long, is still not a common practice for the custom apparel and promotional products business.

                            Good Better Best pricing works. It works so well that it’s still being studied today – by the organization like the Harvard Business Review in the most recent case. And that’s what inspired this Episode of the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast.

                            What is Good, Better, Best (GBB)?

                            It’s a strategy to offer 3 levels of products. Each containing different features and coming at a different price. “Good” being the minimum level your brand is willing to offer, “better” being an upgrade at a marginal price increase, “best” being the highest level your customer base would be willing to spend on apparel.

                            What are the GBB approaches?

                            Offensive plays aimed at generating new growth and revenue

                            Defensive plays meant to counter or forestall moves by competitors

                            Behavioral plays that draw on principles of consumer psychology.

                            Moves away from Binary (A or B) (1 or 0)(e.g. my way or high way) “Buy / Don’t Buy” to more choices, gives the customer a sense of empowerment rather than an ultimatum.
                            Customers tend to decide more quickly. They focus on what they want, rather than just deciding to buy

                            How to make a GBB?

                            – Consult apparel suppliers

                            – Ask customers
                            – Look at old orders
                            – Compare to other businesses
                            – Look at big brand online stores

                            Get out and figure out how to add Good Better Best to your sales process!

                            57 min
                          14. Episode 83 – Insights From The Apparel Geek – Monty Mims From Sanmar

                            Join us in this episode when we discuss the world of blanks, apparel, Sanmar and more with the Apparel Geek, Monty Mims. His experience in the industry will provide you insights on how to improve your business, choose the right apparel, sell to your customers better and overall improve your expertise on custom apparel blanks.

                            Monty is a member of Decorator Relations with Sanmar. One of his many goals is to build strong relationships with the decorated apparel community and help people like you succeed.

                            You can contact Monty at https://apparelgeek.com/ or find him on twitter @apparelgeek or Instagram @apparelnerd.

                            1 hr 9 min

                          About Custom Apparel Startups

                          From the publisher's feed

                          The Custom Apparel Startups podcast was started simply because we love both the apparel decorating business and the idea that almost anyone, with a small investment and a little dedication, cannot only start their own business but thrive!