I was just wondering what you "veterans" have decided to sell in your brick & mortar stores? My main point is do youhave inventory in your stores and go to events and embroider/heat press a lot of personalized one print items, or do you do more business off of commercial, team, and group orders? We have somewhat of a tourism buzz in our area for our historic districts and think that that may draw in some money for our business if we did nice designs on various items with the city's name around it.
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
That's a great idea Tim, having digitized designs promoting the tourist areas in your district. A customer could come and select a design from your catalog, add a name and date, and you have a potential steady seller there. If there's no order, you can run your machine to sew patches with the same tourist design themes. You can make the patches "iron-on" ready by using double adhesive sheets. Of course, it would be necessary to have shirts on stock in your store. Good luck again.
So does anyone on here have a specialty embroidery/screenprinting shop that sells items other than the typical shirts, hats, visors, bags, etc? If so, what are some "different" things that some of your customers enjoy?
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
Tim,
This is just to exand a little on your other thread. As I mentioned, my focus is dog shows and portraits. We don't want a lot of machines and have no intention of having to hire more help. A small shop is fine for us. Saying that, when we added sublimation, it opened up lots of doors for mousepads, cups, tiles, etc. The nice thing about that is that you can convert an embroidery file to a print file very easily. It has added a lot of work through the local chamber for gift ideas promoting the area. Profit margin is about the same or bigger and it just gives us added flexibility. It all depends on whether you just want to focus on embroidery or offer a more or less full service specialty/personalization shop. Both could be run out of your home to start if you wanted to.
I have a small embroidery & gift boutique, so I don't have room to stock alot of items. I have my standard samples of blankets, hats, bags, tees, etc. My main supplier gets my goods to me the next day, so I can still offer a quick turn-around on a whole catalog of wearables and accessories.
Besides that stuff, I stock ladies handkerchiefs...these are big with brides, moms of brides, etc. For some reason, these are really hard to find so I sell alot of those (those I keep quantities in stock). Also for brides...linen table runners (they have their new monogram put on them, and run them across the head table at the reception), and chair sashes for the reception.
I always make up samples of seasonal tees...halloween, thanksgiving, christmas, etc. Again, because my main supplier is fairly close, I don't have to keep a ton of tees in stock to be able to deliver 2 day or even next day.
I have a small embroidery & gift boutique, so I don't have room to stock alot of items. I have my standard samples of blankets, hats, bags, tees, etc. My main supplier gets my goods to me the next day, so I can still offer a quick turn-around on a whole catalog of wearables and accessories.
Besides that stuff, I stock ladies handkerchiefs...these are big with brides, moms of brides, etc. For some reason, these are really hard to find so I sell alot of those (those I keep quantities in stock). Also for brides...linen table runners (they have their new monogram put on them, and run them across the head table at the reception), and chair sashes for the reception.
I always make up samples of seasonal tees...halloween, thanksgiving, christmas, etc. Again, because my main supplier is fairly close, I don't have to keep a ton of tees in stock to be able to deliver 2 day or even next day.
I would love to know where to find those women's hankerchiefs. We just added some wedding gifts to our store and I think that those would go wonderful with that section. Would you mind sharing?
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Hard labor kills, make t-shirts instead.
I charge $11 each, which includes embroidery (1 to 3 letters). I offer a script or block font but, let the customer know that I will make the choice of which script font is used -- as you know, when laying out a 3 letter monogram, a given combo of letters can look really good in one font, and lousy in another. If they want a full name, I may add $2, depending on the length of the name.
If they want a date embroidered as well, I charge an extra $2 or $3 for that (depending on the format they want). I also tell them that a mm/dd/yy format will be done in the same font as the monogram but, a Month, DD, YYYY format will be done in a plain block font because it will have to be done in very small lettering.
Chair sashes are a big thing with the brides as well. Those are a little bit harder to source -- most of the on-line vendors I find for those don't list and address or phone number anywhere on their site; I make it my policy not to buy from sites that don't provide this information.
Men's handkerchiefs are easy to find on the retail level but, the women's are near impossible.
Oh yes, I should mention that the handkerchiefs that I charge $11 for are the cotton ones that I pay under $2 for.
This isn't a different idea but I thought I'd mention it because it has worked well for us. We are also located in a tourist area & do a lot of shirts & hats for the local chamber of commerce to sell. Even though it is a summer tourist area, one of the biggest sellers is long sleeve denim shirts. My point is, don't restrict yourself to clothing that is only worn during your tourist season & people love denim shirts!
What items do you sell more of? 
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