Custom Apparel Startups

Episode 98 – Beat The Competition: Turn Competitors To Partners

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After listening to the past two episodes you might find you have a few competitors that are clearly going to be long term struggles for you.

They might have a great formula down for business practice, production, sales, pricing, etc. These competitors might be right in your vertical market or maybe is a market close to yours.

You may sell spirit wear, and they focus on sports uniforms.

You might deal with dance, and they deal with ice skating.
You may sell corporate wear, and they do as well but offer a different decoration method. Screen printing vs embroidery.

Either way, they are here to stay and you might have to go head to head with them on some sales.

What else can you do?

Turn your competitor into a partner

So first why should you? Aren't they the enemy!?

  • It makes you look like a good company/person
  • If you and your competition are friendly, customers will trust you are a good business/person. "Oh, yea... Marco from The Print Shop. Yea I know him, we have worked together on projects..."
  • If you are friendly with Marco, he is less likely to be hostile towards your business. Respect you / your staff / your customers.

    • People outlast business

    • You never know what will happen with Marco and his business.
    • Maybe he will call you up to sell you his business one day.
    • Maybe he will downsize and ask if you are looking for an employee, he has a great person for you.
    • Maybe his embroidery equipment will die and will outsource to you.

      • It puts customers #1

      • You want to get 500 shirts with 1 color as cheap as possible. Let me send you over to Jackie's shop. she can do this fast and cheap.

        • Competition becomes a friendly challenge vs a war

        • You are like sports competitors that practice and compete, but after the game you can go out to eat together.

          • What are the things you can do together?

          • Refer business when it should be
          • You don't have an engraving machine, they do. Send the customer that way

            • Outsource

            • Customer wants hats, shirts, bags and engraved glass awards
            • You do all the rest. Take the order for the awards. Your new partner sells the award to you at a discounted rate so you can mark it up.

              • Partner up at events

              • If there is a local event, make one big booth together. Pool resources and agree on the specific products you will show off.
              • If you get leads / sign ups... split them up.

                • Create an economy of scale

                • Do you both stock the same caps? Order them together and save $$ for qty discounts.

                  • Enter a new market together

                  • You both have wanted to get into the restaurant uniform business. Partner together to maximize potential
                  • This is great if you are both small, and have a large business that's hard to go up against. Join forces.

                    • How do you get started?

                    • Make the first move
                    • Call them, email them, visit them
                    • Compliment their business
                    • Tell them you want to work together
                    • Advise you want to join forces to improve each other
                    • Have some of your strengths ready to share (especially you researched them and it compliments their weakness)

                      • Attend events

                      • Go to events where your competition will be & meet them

                        • Refer them business in an obvious way

                        • Call them and say. Hi this is Marc from MM Embroidery. I have a customer here who needs 20 awards made. I've been hearing you are the shop to go to. I am going to send him your way, his name is Jose.
                        • Once you do this... follow up with another call or email. Tell them you'd like to work on doing this together more often.

                          • Share struggles with them

                          • Maybe a huge plant closed down and you know all the apparel businesses are suffering. Come at them with this and say, I'd love to work together on getting our business back up.

                            • We surveyed 100 business owners and 80% are currently doing this. There will be times you get burned and times you make out like a bandit. Keep your guard up while also opening up a friendly relationship. The more you do it, the better you will get.

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