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Post by nwbearcat21 on Aug 8, 2013 21:54:36 GMT -6
I'm at a small school with not alot to work with budget wise. My question is what do you guys do to pay for your coaching gear? Nothing crazy but would like to be able to have a few things to get us through the year. The school doesn't want to pay for it and they don't like us to use our fundraising money for things that don't go directly to the kids.
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Post by Coach.A on Aug 8, 2013 22:14:52 GMT -6
We use the gear as a fundraiser. Generally when you buy bulk from a company you get the gear at a very low price...for example we just purchased 150 t-shirts for approximately $4 each - We're going to sell those t-shirts for $15 each. We give the t-shirts to the coaches for free and use the profits for additional coaching gear.
We do the same thing with hoodies and hats.
You can get hoodies from thegraphicedge.com for under $15...then sell them for $30.
The challenge obviously is getting the cash up front to pay for this stuff. I give away a lot of gear each year (coaches, administration, custodians, athletics dept., team events, etc.) and we still come out with a profit every year. If your gear looks good you won't have a problem selling it.
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Post by keysersoze on Aug 9, 2013 0:02:05 GMT -6
A lot of vendors now will set up web stores for you. They allow you to mark up the clothing, then they collect the money from item's your team buys, then credit you money or in kind trade from the sales. You can promote this with staff and students and pay for most of the coaching gear.
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Post by newhope on Aug 9, 2013 5:43:42 GMT -6
A lot of vendors now will set up web stores for you. They allow you to mark up the clothing, then they collect the money from item's your team buys, then credit you money or in kind trade from the sales. You can promote this with staff and students and pay for most of the coaching gear. Given your situation as you describe it, this, to me, is the best option.
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Post by IronmanFootball on Aug 10, 2013 7:26:24 GMT -6
Riddell Athlete store is pretty good. You can set your mark up price.
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Coach Hoover
Sophomore Member
Assistant Coach, Ligonier Valley High School
Posts: 104
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Post by Coach Hoover on Nov 18, 2014 8:17:25 GMT -6
A lot of vendors now will set up web stores for you. They allow you to mark up the clothing, then they collect the money from item's your team buys, then credit you money or in kind trade from the sales. You can promote this with staff and students and pay for most of the coaching gear. My company, Lids Team Sports, does this exact thing and it's extremely popular not only for staffs, but for booster programs as a way to get great (Nike, not Gildan) gear AND make a profit. Other benefits? No upfront cost for the gear, the customer pays directly (no collecting cash or checks, especially bounced ones), and everything is done online (no forms to hand out or collect). We basically do the work for you, you and your organization and fans get great gear that looks like they bought it from Nike, and you make money. Everyone's happy. I don't know what other companies do, but we also ship all of our team store orders pre-sorted by customer name...no more sorting through each size of each product and then matching them up with order forms. You simply open the box, pull out an order wrapped in plastic with a name on it, and hand it to the customer. Once you start doing this, you'll never go back to the old method.
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Post by rsmith627 on Nov 18, 2014 8:28:49 GMT -6
A lot of vendors now will set up web stores for you. They allow you to mark up the clothing, then they collect the money from item's your team buys, then credit you money or in kind trade from the sales. You can promote this with staff and students and pay for most of the coaching gear. We have done this with Under Armour, and do really well with it. The players and their families alone buy a ton of stuff. We haven't opened it up to the general public ever. I'm going to run this idea by the HC.
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Post by coachwoodall on Nov 18, 2014 12:24:04 GMT -6
teespring.com
no up front cost
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Coach Hoover
Sophomore Member
Assistant Coach, Ligonier Valley High School
Posts: 104
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Post by Coach Hoover on Nov 18, 2014 20:11:31 GMT -6
A lot of vendors now will set up web stores for you. They allow you to mark up the clothing, then they collect the money from item's your team buys, then credit you money or in kind trade from the sales. You can promote this with staff and students and pay for most of the coaching gear. We have done this with Under Armour, and do really well with it. The players and their families alone buy a ton of stuff. We haven't opened it up to the general public ever. I'm going to run this idea by the HC. I recommend you do. We have great success offering our's to the public through their teams and boosters. You wouldn't believe how much some teams & communities will buy, and the online style is so much less work for you as a coach. And don't be afraid to offer Nike or Under Armour or whatever brand you prefer - when we offer our Flash Stores with both Nike and our Lids Private Label product (Gildan/Champro/A4 equivalent), the Nike product vastly outsells the cheaper options by a large margin, even though the name brands are much more expensive. People today don't want cheap, generic apparel - they want the good stuff. Don't be afraid to offer it to them. No upfront cost with us, either. If you're paying upfront for apparel sale, you're doing it wrong.
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onelooneyzeta
Sophomore Member
It doesn't take talent to give effort!
Posts: 236
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Post by onelooneyzeta on Nov 25, 2014 20:23:00 GMT -6
We have done this with Under Armour, and do really well with it. The players and their families alone buy a ton of stuff. We haven't opened it up to the general public ever. I'm going to run this idea by the HC. I recommend you do. We have great success offering our's to the public through their teams and boosters. You wouldn't believe how much some teams & communities will buy, and the online style is so much less work for you as a coach. And don't be afraid to offer Nike or Under Armour or whatever brand you prefer - when we offer our Flash Stores with both Nike and our Lids Private Label product (Gildan/Champro/A4 equivalent), the Nike product vastly outsells the cheaper options by a large margin, even though the name brands are much more expensive. People today don't want cheap, generic apparel - they want the good stuff. Don't be afraid to offer it to them. No upfront cost with us, either. If you're paying upfront for apparel sale, you're doing it wrong. I like the idea of this. Let me ask you this. Somebody on here said they could get 150 T's for $4. Sell them for $15. Making $11 a shirt. Is that comparable to what you would make per t-shirt with lids?
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Coach Hoover
Sophomore Member
Assistant Coach, Ligonier Valley High School
Posts: 104
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Post by Coach Hoover on Nov 26, 2014 12:49:36 GMT -6
I recommend you do. We have great success offering our's to the public through their teams and boosters. You wouldn't believe how much some teams & communities will buy, and the online style is so much less work for you as a coach. And don't be afraid to offer Nike or Under Armour or whatever brand you prefer - when we offer our Flash Stores with both Nike and our Lids Private Label product (Gildan/Champro/A4 equivalent), the Nike product vastly outsells the cheaper options by a large margin, even though the name brands are much more expensive. People today don't want cheap, generic apparel - they want the good stuff. Don't be afraid to offer it to them. No upfront cost with us, either. If you're paying upfront for apparel sale, you're doing it wrong. I like the idea of this. Let me ask you this. Somebody on here said they could get 150 T's for $4. Sell them for $15. Making $11 a shirt. Is that comparable to what you would make per t-shirt with lids? I'm sure you could get 150 tees from places for $4/each. They'll be your cheap Gildan tees with maybe a 1-color print, but yeah, I'm sure you could put out $600. That being said, is it guaranteed that you'll be able to sell 150 cheapy tees for $15/each? You've gotta sell 55 to break even. If you sell all 150, great, but will you? If not, you're sitting on a bunch of inventory. The online sales are nice because you don't touch the inventory and you don't have order minimums. You might pay more for the garment, but you set your profit. And people today don't want the cheap, garbage t-shirt...they want Dri-FIT, they want name brand, so you can offer it, still make $7-15 profit on each item, they'll buy, and you don't have to worry about having leftover items to sell. For example...just recently, did a sale for a small Single A (smallest class) school in rural Pennsylvania. They sold about $4500 worth of apparel and profited over $1100. All they had to do was hand out flyers to their players and parents and promote the sale. No forms, no sorting items, no leftover inventory. You can still make money, offer great product, and do it conveniently. And, when that OTHER school is sitting there wearing a cheap, 1-color screenprinted Gildan fleece hoody, and your fans are in Nike Therma-FIT embroidered poly hoodies with the Swoosh on the chest or sleeve, you look like a college or pro program...while they look basic. Raise the profile of your program. There are a lot of fringe benefits to associating your "brand" with the best name brand. Alright, I do this all day for a living and it's not why I'm here...going to talk football in another thread! lol
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Post by Coach.A on Nov 26, 2014 13:51:12 GMT -6
I like the idea of this. Let me ask you this. Somebody on here said they could get 150 T's for $4. Sell them for $15. Making $11 a shirt. Is that comparable to what you would make per t-shirt with lids? I'm sure you could get 150 tees from places for $4/each. They'll be your cheap Gildan tees with maybe a 1-color print, but yeah, I'm sure you could put out $600. That being said, is it guaranteed that you'll be able to sell 150 cheapy tees for $15/each? You've gotta sell 55 to break even. If you sell all 150, great, but will you? If not, you're sitting on a bunch of inventory. Your math is way off...you'd need to sell 40 t-shirts (not 55) at $15 a piece to make your money back on a 150 t-shirts that cost the school $4 each. You can get up to a 4 color print for under $5 if your purchasing over 140 t-shirts. Here's price grid for "The Graphic Edge": thegraphicedge.com/resources/tshirtpricing.aspHow much does a Nike Dri-Fit 4 color print t-shirt cost the school if they purchase it from your company? How much will I need to charge the kids for this Nike Dri-Fit shirt to turn a similar profit (i.e $10 profit per shirt)? The extra t-shirt inventory is really a non-issue for us. T-shirts take up virtually no space and we love having them for giveaways, prizes, thank you gifts, etc... Getting rid of t-shirts isn't difficult. The new families in our program love purchasing "last year's t-shirt" design...especially at a reduced price ($10 instead of $15 which is still a $5 profit per shirt for us). We also see a spike in sales around Christmas for our leftover gear. We usually have our parent reps take care of selling the gear...so it isn't really much extra work for the coaches. I understand and respect your argument about having high quality gear....that being said, a lot of people just want a plain cotton or 50/50 cotton-poly t-shirt. In my opinion there's virtually no difference between a plain Nike tee and a Gildan plain tee...except for cost. Yes it would be nice to have our entire fan base decked out in $65+ "Nike Therma-FIT embroidered poly hoodies with the Swoosh on the chest"...but the reality is, if we're charging $65+ for these hoodies we wouldn't be able to sell nearly as many. store.nike.com/us/en_us/pd/ko-2-training-hoodie/pid-533975/pgid-555361 *Add custom embroidery and shipping to this cost plus the school's profit mark up and I imagine you're around $65 to $70 at least? I can get Gildan hoodies for around $15 each when I purchase in bulk. Charge $30 for them and make a $15 profit per hoodie. The other advantage of using Gildan hoodies is that they offer way more stock color options....I often have a hard time finding stock Nike or Under Armour gear in brown (our school color) Personally, I'd like to see 75% of our fans decked out in affordable team gear, rather then 25% of our fans decked out in expensive top of the line gear. Just my opinion, but I respect your views as well.
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Post by Chris Clement on Nov 26, 2014 14:55:05 GMT -6
Brown is indeed a nightmare colour for tshirts.
I agree that it's much more important to get everyone in your gear. Dri-fit shirts aren't really appropriate for wearing outside of the gym anyway, they look too much like you're in gym class. Cotton t-shirts are cheap, look decent, and you can sell a ton and promote your brand.
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Post by huskerhoyahawk on Nov 26, 2014 18:20:11 GMT -6
I feel lucky as the guy we buy the players gear from gives us the stuff for free because we give him so much business with 100 kids ordering gear.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using proboards
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Post by runitupthemiddle on Dec 4, 2014 8:51:17 GMT -6
We have an ongoing fundraiser Squeeze pops and Gatorade That is ran through our booster club accounts And that is coaching gear and supplements our summer Pay cause our school won't pay anybody but the head coach for Summer pride and camps and 7-7
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agame
Junior Member
Posts: 378
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Post by agame on Dec 5, 2014 1:27:34 GMT -6
We're provided with nothing... Lol
Can only imagine the feeling of earning money as a coach rather than spending money as a coach!
That's Euro ball for you! Lol
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Post by wolfden12 on Dec 5, 2014 10:58:30 GMT -6
See if you can work some free promotions and advertisement for gear.
For example, say you have 6 coaches and you want to get each coach a polo ($30), hat/visor ($15), pullover ($60), shorts ($15)and shirt ($15). This is $135 a coach and a total of $810. If you charge for program ads and or stadium ads give to them free or at a price to offset the cost. I have also offered a sign in the end zone.
I have also had to handle it out of my own pocket. At times, you need to take care of your own. Look for quality prices and not label. Shop within your means.
Many of the previous posts are right on. Our online store gets so much business or if we hit a number that coaching gear is free. We reach out to families, students, teachers and the community to hit the number.
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