Custom Apparel Startups

Episode 97 – Beat The Competition: Rebranding, Restructuring or Reinvesting

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After listening to Episode 96 you should have a great insight on your competition. Chances are there are many custom apparel shops in your area, but only a few seem to be direct competition.

Holding tight to your business structure and running a great business should put you on the path to leading the pack. These include:

  • Mastering your craft
  • Having awesome customer service
  • Delivering orders correctly and on time
  • Balancing the right price for the right product
  • Have a solid sales / marketing plan

    • The above are essential to leading the pack of your competition. If you are lacking in any of the above, spend the time and effort to take things to the next level. (you can try listening to more podcasts first, as we cover all of these topics)

    However, sometimes it's not that simple. What happens when the competition is so much better at all of the above?

    For example, imagine you own a small donut shop. You make some delicious glazed donuts and people line up every morning to get their coffee and breakfast.

    One day a new donut shop opens up. They:

    • Are in a parking lot easier to get into
    • Have brand new automated machines which means less staff cooking, and more to serve customers
    • They have new coffee equipment that lets them whip up lattes at 2x the speed
    • They are priced better because everything is less work for the staff
    • And.. you tried the donuts.... they are really good.

      • How do you compete with this? You notice your line is shorter and profits are down. You cant lower pricing, you can't serve customers as fast.

      This story can be true of any business, how do you handle if your market seems saturated or the competition in your niche is beating you across the board

      What's next?

      You have some choices to make that involve:

      Rebranding, Restructuring or Reinvesting

      Rebranding - This involves changing the look and feel of your company. It can involve a complete name and style change, or just an overall look to help appeal to your demographic.

      Reasons to Rebrand:

      • You are selling to too tight of a vertical / niche market and need to expand
      • Only selling spirit wear but want to open up to corporate
      • Only selling ladies dance apparel and want to offer sports apparel too
      • Your message and business don't match
      • Your company is Tampa Embroidery - but now you offer UV printing and t-shirt transfers (in fact that might even be more than 1/2 your business)
      • When people are looking for you, they might make assumptions about what you do.
      • Your style / name / message seem dated in a sea of modern competition
      • Which one of these granola bars would you buy for kids

        • Restructuring - This is when you change the way your business operates. It can involve any facet of the business.

        Reasons to Restructure:

        • Need to improve sales force
        • More sales people, or new sales people, or ANY sales people
        • Production methods are inefficient
        • Alter the flow of production, tracking of orders, etc
        • Removing product offering
        • You might offer engraving, but the machine is old, slow and you aren't making much profits
        • Changing pricing structure
        • Focus on pricing that brings in larger (or smaller) orders
        • Going ONline - or focusing locally

          • Reinvesting - Putting more money into your business to revamp it. Taking from profits and putting back into the business for the sake of growth / maintaining business.

          Reasons to reinvest:

          • You've got old equipment that doesn't perform.
          • Slow machine
          • Breaks down
          • Quality of the product is down
          • You've got old technology
          • You are using a transfer style that was in its peak in the 90s
          • You are still loading embroidery jobs with tapes
          • Your computer is running windows 98
          • You don't have anything new to offer or different than the competition

            • Obviously, we are a bit biased because we are in the machine business, but we hear about companies reinvesting consistently. The results are amazing. We have embroidery companies who see the value in offering UV prints. We have companies running a 20 year old embroidery business than realize no one local is offering bling.

            Reinvesting is one of the ways long standing companies stay on top. Bringing in new technology and new structured for the business to outpace the competition.

            Be sure to build a plan and make changes like the mentioned above after you've determined one or all of these are necessary to win.

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