[drscotty14]

A customer agreed for me to make his shirts. i ordered the shirts. now he wants me to give him the website i order from so he can choose a few more shirts, like polos etc.... how would you handle this? i dont neccesarily want him seeing the prices i order at just because it doesnt seem very buisiness minded. should i feel that way? also, is there a site that customers can go to that they can pick which types of garments they want without prices shown?

 

[Louie2010]

Tell them you buy from a variety wholesale suppliers and that the companies don't like you giving their information out to retail customers.


If he persists, look him directly in the eyes and ask, "why would you need that information, when I can show you what is available"? That usually stops questions like this in their tracks.

 

[nypdofficer1]

Or if it's not too much for you, print out a few on paper and show them. Or if you have Corel or adobe, save the images of the items he's looking for and then crop out the information you don't want him seeing like price and website. If you have the time, make it all fancy looking as if it's an e-catalog. That should make them happy.

I think that will work for you. You can then use this for other customers.

 

[Louie2010]

I agree at the minimum you need to be equipped with some type of catalog of pictures. Ideally you have physical samples of the items you sell.

 

[drscotty14]

before i started screen printing, i remember a screen printer giving me a link to a website that i could choose which blank shirts i wanted my design printed on. i remember there wasnt any pricing. does anybody know of such a thing?

 

[igraphics]

You can go to SanMar and he will be able to see all of their products that they offer. It will show a price, but the price shown is retail and you can only the "wholesale" price if you log in.

 

[mesewsatx]

Many wholesalers have generic sites. You can set your own up with San Mar (if you have an account with them), for example with your logo and set your own pricing.

 

[nypdofficer1]

If you have your customer snooping around the Internet they will eventually find a price that they will expect you to meet and question your markup prices. Just get a catalog together of items you can offer or as Cody mentioned use an option like SanMar offers. The choice is yours. Don't make your customer work and look for things. You want to show them what you want lol.

 

[ScreenFoo]

Any decent supplier is not going to deal with your customers anyway. I actually talked to a longtime customer a few years back about how one of the suppliers in Denver cut him off, because his principle business occupation was not printing.

As mentioned, Sanmar, Alpha, and Imprints (Imprints is who I've dealt with the most) have options for rebrand websites, as well as prices with markup, that you shouldn't have any problem linking to from your site.
The one we have lets us set markup and allows anyone put together a "shopping list" of shirts, style, color, and size picked, and emails it to your quoting account.

Check out "http://www.yourapparelsource.com/" --it's Imprints version of this. You just upload your logo, and they'll make you a subdir--like "http://www.yourapparelsource.com/drscotty/catalog"

And Cesar's got a great point--lots of people complain about markup, and find a 'good deal' on their own shirts. Point out to them that your markup is because you're dealing with the quality control, and you go to bat for them if something's wrong--if one shirt has a mill defect, and they're paying 3x what they saved to set up the print again, instead of you replacing it on the spot, they learn their lesson.