Parkwood

I'd appreciate your thoughts and opinions on this idea.

I have a Brother printer and I'd like to pick up more contract printing. I also own Smart Designer.

I live and do business in Southern California and thought that if I'd spend time each week to design and print sample designs on spec for say 20 businesses in a concentrated area and the visit those places and show them the samples and give em a sales pitch it might be worthwhile.

I would do two different designs per business (I can do these very, very quickly in SD) and print both of them.

I would take about a half day to visit those 20 locations and try to sell them a dozen ts from the two samples. I'd like to sell a reprint of the sample and not necessarily do a new design and have to go back and forth with approvals. I thought that if I strike out and they're not interested in doing a dozen+ that I'd just offer to sell the two samples for a total of $10 and recapture a few bucks.

If I'm successful in this, I think it would be very easy to hire a few reps (commission only) to go out and open accounts. Obviously, the initial order is nice but I would be looking for reorders. I would also ask the rep to get email addresses and approval for email, followup marketing.

I have to figure out some logistics if this approach proves to be viable. That is: payment procedures, rep commissions, custom design requests, whether to incorporate a website, ship to the account or have the rep deliver it. And many questions I don't even know exist.

Overall, the numbers in this approach can add up. Consider if I had just two, very-part-time, sales reps who made 20 calls a week. That's 40 combined and 2000 a year. So, in two years, 4000 businesses have been personally contacted. If I get 5% of those as regular customers, that could be significant.

Let me know what you think.

 

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new2dagame

Go for it ! It seems like a business plan

 

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SaphiraDesign

Opening a business like this takes time and money! You are correct about working out the kinks, i.e., payment, shipping, etc., but if you do it a little at a time it may work. You may also want to hire reps that have prior contacts in the industry. Also, just having a brother printer may not be enough. What if you get a 150,000 t-shirt order? I suggest do some research on who you would sub your work out to and get a list going. If your customer asks you if you do embroidery, you say, "of course I do". You'd pass your order on to your embroiderer and call it a day. The tricky part is the markup %. If you are already subbing it out, it will be more expensive to your customer.

 

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