I'm in the process of selling spiritwear hoodies & Tee's to a middle school. Most my business up to this point has been for sports teams where I put out and order form and the kids would purchase and although the money went through the school, the school never made a profit from what I sold.
This year I've been asked to make the schools spiritwear that the school plans to resell to make a profit for themselves. I haven't set my price yet per piece. Question... Whats considered a good satisfactory profit that I should expect them to want to make on a hoodie? What about a tee? I want them to see it as a good fundraiser for them but at the same time I want to make sure I'm making the most profit for myself as well of course... Thanks for you help!
I'm a PTA president and we usually get about $5 a shirt. One company also gave us free backpacks if we sold enough and we like those incentives because we usually do an auction at the carnival and auction them off. Just something to think about.
You have to be careful when pricing school spirit wear. The $5 profit mentioned above seems about what my schools tell me. However, when you start trying to add in your profit, you may find it hard to keep on your normal pace, so that you don't price the items out of the reach of the kids. Some schools will have good luck selling tees for $15-$20 dollars, so they can get their $5 profit and meet the cost of the shirts. Others will not. I've had the best luck with middle schools doing white shirts with one color print or rhinestones and selling to the school for $5-$7. That way they can still get their profit margin and the shirts are not too expensive for the kids. Of course, that's just in my area where not all of the schools are located in higher income neighborhoods. You'll most likely have to play around with your pricing. I've not had much luck with hoodies at the middle school level, but they do great at high schools.
This is my take on this.
When you were selling directly to the students you were selling a product.
Now that the school has asked you to make shirts for them to sell you are now selling a service.
Let me give you an example:
If I were selling t-shirts at a local event I may sell them for $15-$20 a shirt.
If someone came into my shop and asked me to screen print shirts for them to sell a a local event the cost may be around $7 a shirt. (Depending)
When you sell a service, charge for your services. What is is going to cost you to make the shirt for them. Your profit comes from this. You make a shirt you get paid, if they do not sell all the shirts, they take the loss. If they sell them all they make money. But you still got paid for the service you provided.
I have done a spiritwear sale for our local middle school for the last three years. I give them the best price I can and they up it by $2-$3 and that is their profit. They have done well the last couple of years doing this. We try to do a different design each year and different colors.
Selling spiritwear to schools 
