Dealing With Order Stragglers

No matter how well you promote your sale with clear order deadlines, there always will be straggler student orders that just show up well after you have placed your total school’s spirit wear order with the company. And almost always, the straggler orders come with a sad story or ‘special circumstance’ why they just could not send in their order on-time. In addition, kids grow and grow fast. Every school has a bamboo-kid phenomenon, where their kid grew a whole size in just the couple in between placing the order and receiving it back. It is for these reasons that need to have a set policy regarding returns, exchanges and inventory from the very start of your spiritwear sale planning. Without a set policy, you will likely be faced with uncomfortable situations that could result in hard feelings from some parents and also profit loss from the spiritwear sale.

Your order of custom screen printed or embroidered items are not produced in a manner that allow for returns or size exchanges. However, many of your parents will feel they should still have that option. So it is important to be ready for all of these potential scenarios before they happen, so the business of your spirit wear sale also ends smoothly.

Picking The Right Spirit Wear Items for Your School

Spirit wear sales can be as simple as offering a single t-shirt or as complex as offering a full range of garment styles, colors and design options. I believe that simplifing the selection regarding style, design and color will make your sale go smoother. Offering multiple items and color options should only be done by a school that has good records of what sold well in the past. This way they can predict what should sell pretty good in the future.

Choosing the right garments is also crucial to your sales profitability, so need to consider several factors when selecting the correct items for your spirit wear sale...

1. Profit Potential- Are you expecting this sale to be a fundraiser? If so, you will want to keep your wholesale costs down by offering only inexpensive items sold at profitable prices. Basic garments like t-shirts and sweatshirt cost different depending on their color. White items are the cheapest, Ash or Gray Heather are slightly more expensive and all other shirt colors are higher priced.

2. Size Range- Not every item comes in both youth and adult sizes. Always verify that the specific garment and garment color that you are offering are available in the full size range you require. Additionally, if you are selecting an item that is uncommon, it may be frequently out of stock.

3. On-Hand Samples- Are you going to offer product and sizing samples? Sometimes parents want the opportunity to feel the garments and see the specific sizes in person. Keeping one item per size at the front office often can prevent complaints about items that don’t fit the way the parents thought they would. The more spirit wear items you offer, the more samples you’ll need to keep on hand for sizing samples.

4. Coordinates Well With Design- Make sure the garment style and color coordinate well with the design you are going to use. Basic tees and sweats can work well with ellaborate designs. However, a more fashionable garment only needs a simple embellishment to look good. Don’t ruin the integrity of a garment by adding too detailed or too large of a design.

5. Fabric Weight- Many garments are available in different fabric weights. For instance, t-shirts are offered in 5.5 oz. fabric as well as 6.1 oz. Sweatshirts are often offering in 7.5 oz. and 9 oz. fabrics. Often the heavier weight fabric, the more expensive, but it's not always true.

6. Color Fastness- Dark colored garments that are 50/50 (50% Cotton – 50% polyester) are most often more colorfast, shrink less and are more durable than 100% cotton fabrics. 100% cotton fabrics usually feel softer to the touch and when wearing. Most elementary school parents prefer the qualities of the 50/50 for their children than that of 100% cotton shirts.

Once you understand these differing factors, hopefully making the right choice will be easier. If you need further advise or consultation, contact the company who will be screen printing the spirit wear. At Kustom Imprints, our staff is well versed in helping the customer choose the right items for their school. If you need help picking out the right items, contact us at (800) 683-5854 or find us online at www.KustomImprints.com.


Thanks & good luck picking out your items!!!

Mark D. Kuli

Design Spirit Wear Online

Kustom Imprints just added to our website a new feature that a ton of customers have been requesting. Our new Apparel Design Studio allows you to completely create an edit a design for youself. You add the text, artwork, colors - whatever you want. we then can take your design and screen print or embroider it on the garment or item of your choice.

Give it a try yourself at... Kustom Imprints Online Design Tool

School T-Shirt Design Contest Tips

I need to start by telling you in my experience, the school-wide design contest promises more risks than rewards. It is possible a spectacular design may blossom from one of your school’s students. It is also possible that your contest could also cause campus turmoil. If you hold a design contest and several dozen participants submit their designs, be prepared to disappoint all of them except for one winner. Also note the several students that didn’t win may never buy the winning design and could hurt your overall spirit wear sales.

If your school still believes a design contest is a good idea this year, the following criteria should be considered when conducting that contest.

1. Be specific at the start of the contest about the desired design elements for the school’s spirit wear.

2. Make sure to note that the winning design may have to be altered to be production ready for spirit wear printing.

3. Make sure the all submitters understand that all artwork copyrights are retained by the school and not the artist.

4. When voting is conducted, make sure the names of the student artists are not displayed next to their design. You only want the voting to be about the designs and not artists.

5. If the design voting is an internal decision and not student wide, then have the decision made from a panel of parent/faculty judges. Make sure the judges have something similar to a point system based on specific criteria on how to pick the winner. Absolutely make sure the judging process is transparent to avoid potential controversy.

6. When making the selection, make sure a well written notice has also been created for those who did not win, so they feel the process was fair and their artwork was still a great design, just not the one selected.

2010 - 2011 Spirit Wear Designs Video

Just out from Kustom Imprints / http://www.kispiritwear.com/ , a quick 3 minute video that shows our new school designs from three different artwork categories. Traditonal spirit wear designs, Surfwear style school designs and our Class of 2011 designs.

You can see it a couple different ways. Click to see it embedded on our website at..
http://www.kustomimprints.com/Spiritwear/KI_SpiritWear_Video.lasso

or just go to YouTube and see it at..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNv69hnyG38

It's our first video or anything like this and I'm excited about the way we can put together our new designs and show them to exsisting and potential customers in this type of quick to view format. Look for many more in the future!

Thanks for reading - MDK

Customer Supplied Designs

Some of the very best designs I've seen while working at Kustom Imprints has printed for have come directly from the customers. Our art department does a great job, but the work from outside "non" professional artists often is specatular. The problem is often some of the worst designs I've ever seen also have come directly from our some of our clients too. I've seen it a couple time when an over-zealous parent has used artwork from their own budding child Rembrandt and consequently their spirit wear sales went flat.

Using a design from one your school’s students or parents can be a great idea, but make sure that it does not compromise your full school sales potential. Ask a friend who will give you an honest opinion. If the design idea is fantastic, but still in need of improvement have a professional artist develop the art concept to a screen print -production ready design. We have many great customers who just show up with an idea and let us to the work. Our art department at Kustom Imprints often offers this design service for no extra charge often.

Here is more on ouw web site... Supply Your Own Spirit Wear Design


Thanks - and have a great day!!!!
MDK

Your Spirit Wear Design is Most Important!

I believe the most important part of your spirit wear sale is picking the right design. Just like location is to a resturaunt, the right design will make students and parents go out of the way to purchase spirit wear this year (Or not.) Spending a little time to figure out what is the best design is for your school will always be worthwhile.


When choosing the design, you first do a little research. Review what has been done at your school in the past and discover what has sold well. Second, see what other schools have done too, though your district or group PTA / PTO organization. Last, review school spirit websites that have school designs to get an idea of what can be done. A few minutes on the web can yield many great ideas.

Important factors to consider in picking a design…

1. The design should have broad appeal. A really ‘cutting edge’ may make a few people absolutely love the design, but many others may hate it. Often the simpler designs have more universal acceptance.

2. The design should sell well through all grades. A cute, cartoony mascot may be a hit with the younger kids, but also may be unpopular with the older students. Keep all grades in mind and know design options that appeal to the older kids may ultimately sell the most.

3. The more colors in the design, the more expensive it will be. Each imprint color adds extra costs, so a great design with 6-8 colors may not be practical as a spiritwear fundraiser.

4. The design needs to look good on all garment sizes. If you are ordering garments in a wide range of sizes, keep in mind your imprint size is going to remain constant. You will want you design to look good on both a youth small as we as an adult large t-shirt.

5. Make sure the design translates well for screen printed apparel. Sometimes a very detailed design looks great on paper or a computer screen, but will be disappointing if screen printed on a garment. Often very thin lines, very narrow gaps and multi color gradients do not screen print as well.

Our company, Kustom Imprints has a ton of designs on our website. Click over to our Design section at http://www.kispiritwear.com/ and see several options of traditional spirit wear, 'surf wear' style school designs and also how you can submit to us your own design.

For your next spirit wear sale - Make The design Look Great!


Kustom Imprints School Spirit Wear Design Section: http://www.kustomimprints.com/Spiritwear/SWDesigns.lasso