The spring travel season is right around the corner which means your teams need basketball gear for jerseys, shooting shirts, travel and more. Finding affordable sportswear for you club is critical to keeping their prices down. But you shouldn’t have to settle for second rate products just to save a few dollars.
Here are a few tips that have helped Idaho Select get better prices and look great in Nike, Under Armour, adidas or whatever your favorite brand may be.
Tip #1 – START EARLY
Yes, this is the same advise we give on every tip. But it works! Even though your first game might not be until March, starting now will give you the most options on selection for affordable sportswear.
At Idaho Select, we learned this hard way last summer when our usual products ran out of stock. This left us scrambling and meant we had to fork over big money for rush printing and overnight shipping. It all worked out in the end, but by starting earlier we could have avoided some big bills and a lot of stress.
Tip #2 – BUY IN BULK
One rule of thumb for saving money on affordable sportswear, and most other items, is the more you buy the more you save. Similar to our tip on saving money on hotel reservations (click here to read that one) buying in bulk gives you negotiation power.
If you are in charge of your entire club’s sportswear order then you have the ability to consolidate an order in to a single (or at least fewer) orders. Even if you are purchasing your gear from multiple distributors, such as Nike jerseys and Badger shooting shirts, it will still help you to gather all your orders and do it at once, if possible.
If you are the head coach or the manager in charge of purchasing your team’s gear, try partnering up with one of the other teams in your club.
You’ll save money on the individual items and on the bulk shipping.
BONUS TIP: If you are using the same sales rep for these items they are going to like you that much more! They usually have a quota to hit each month and you are going to help them get there faster and easier. The benefit to you – if you get yourself in a bind they are more likely to try and help you out. And you never know when they are going to get that occasional sample item from Nike that they need to give away. It may just end up with you!
Tip #3 – FIND A TEAM REP
It used to be that only high schools and colleges worked with Team Sales Representatives for big brands like Nike. Not any more. At least not if you read this article.
Team reps are always looking to make their quotas (see above) but most of them aren’t required to focus on just high schools or universities. In fact, the good ones are always looking to get outside this realm.
That’s how Idaho Select started getting our Nike gear almost 7 years ago. Sure, it started with a meeting between a major university head coach, their Nike team rep and us. But as that relationship grew over the years, and as the team reps started seeing the value of working with club programs, things started to change.
Now your club can benefit too. Idaho Select works with Eastbay Team Sales Rep Bill Logsdon (bill.logsdon@eastbay.com). Bill has been awesome getting us basically anything that is available at eastbay.com at a discount. In fact, because Eastbay can sell major brands for less then most local shops and he has partnered with a local screen printer, the total cost on the sportswear after printing is often less expensive then the item would be at retail without printing. If you are interested, feel free to send Bill a quick email asking him what he can do for your club.
Tip #4 – KEEP THE DESIGN SIMPLE
After you have selected the affordable sportswear you want for your club the next step is getting it printed. Screen printing is still the most popular and most affordable way to get athletic wear printed with your club and team’s logos, numbers, names, etc.
Obviously, for quality, you want to work with a screen printer that has experience in this area of printing.
But pretty much all screen printers share the same rules of thumb:
- the more colors in the design, the higher the price
- the more locations you want to print on (ie front, back, sleeve, etc), the higher the price
- the more work required to get your graphic or logo “print ready,” the higher the price
So here are a couple of tips to help keep your costs down.
- Keep your colors to a minimum, usually just two colors if possible. In the screen printing world this translates in to their lingo as only 2 screens to set up (one for each color).
- Instead of creating two different designs, such as one for the home and away or one for jerseys and shooting shirts, consider keeping the same design but just changing colors. For the screen printer this means leaving their set up the same and just doing a quick “color change”. It saves them time and should save you money. Plus, even though the design is the same, it feels like you are getting a second design for the price of one.
- Some screen printing shops will save you money on the set up fees if you agree to have a larger number of items printed with the same design. This falls in to Tip #2 above but applies here as well.
- Design time at a screen printer is always an issue. To guarantee that you get the design you want and at lower price, see if you can provide the “print ready” art for them. BUT BE CAUTIOUS HERE! There is a reason most designers spent several years at school perfecting their craft. Make sure you understand exactly what the print shop needs first and understand the cost of them doing it for you. You might decide this is a better option after all.
How about you?
Do you have any experiences on how to get affordable sportswear for you club? If so, we and all our readers would love to hear them! Post your comments below.