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RescueShirts · July 29th, 2007

I am starting a one-man, heat press only business.

In the spirit of "working smarter... not harder", I ask the "retail AND wholesale" question.

Most of my designs are geared towards sales on my website and eBay... and are being received well by my potential target audience.

I have a few designs that some have said would do well in retail areas... i.e. one at fishing/bait stores... a few for surf shops... a few for ski lodges... etc...

My question is this... if you are selling retail and earning $12-$15 a shirt, how do you justify pressing shirts to sell for 1/3 the profit?

In other words... do you go after ALL possible dollars? ...or do you simply focus your energy on your higher profit retail sales?

I was thinking of a system where you always press "X" number of shirts per workday... i.e. maximize your heat press time by pressing a few "shirts intended for wholesale" to fill in the time you have on slow "retail" production days.

How do you deal with this question?

Or am I looking at this wrong... is "wholesale" simply the "bread and butter", while the "retail sales" are the gravy?

Brett

afrofusion · July 30th, 2007

I do both retail and whole sale.

However, for my wholesale, i only deal with custom orders from clients looking to run over a dozen or so orders per size, per colour. To offer the low rate in wholesale, you will need to maximise on large sized orders. you need to calculate cost of production and add that to cost od material. From this total, you can be able to figure out if the wholesale price set is profitable enough to justify the venture.

If managed properly, wholesale has the potential to carry the business on it's own. The prospect of repeat customers on a large order is even more appealing.

Rodney · July 30th, 2007

Quote:


	My question is this... if you are selling retail and earning $12-$15 a shirt, how do you justify pressing shirts to sell for 1/3 the profit?

Because (for example) instead of selling one t-shirt for $15, you are selling 50 t-shirts for $7. The wholesale volume makes up for the lower profit per shirt.

Quote:


	I was thinking of a system where you always press "X" number of shirts per workday... i.e. maximize your heat press time by pressing a few "shirts intended for wholesale" to fill in the time you have on slow "retail" production days. How do you deal with this question?

If you get a wholesale order for 100 shirts and it would take too much time, then outsource the production of those 100 shirts to a screen printer and only press on demand your retail/online store orders. There is still profit to be made

tshirtlady · July 30th, 2007

I do both wholesale and retail. Though wholesale brings in less money per shirt, I have a minimum order that the buyer must place.
With my retail shows, I added other items to sell with my t-shirts to maximize all the space I rent.
If you are new, why not try both and see what works best for you!!

orale tees · October 8th, 2007

tshirtlady

what is your minimun order for retail?

T-BOT · October 8th, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by orale tees


	tshirtlady what is your minimun order for retail?

....most likely 1.

wholesale prices are generaly based on volume as you know.

the bad debt risk factor in wholesale is a lot greater than retail because your mark-up is a lot less.

I personally think that expanding into wholesale is not wise until the brand demand is there for such.

Nothing wrong with giving volume prices, but *wholesale* as a biz structure involves setting up a whole new dept for an existing retail biz.

They should work and be accounted for as 2 seperate identites with in your parent company...for various reasons.

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