[chapindylan]

Hey everyone! I'm in Florida and was thinking about selling my 5k themed shirts at a 5k next month. They have 1,500 already signed up, the vendor fee is $100, and as of now there are no other t-shirt vendors there.

I'll be putting the name of the race on the shirts along with the funny designs that we usually sell.

My questions are:

1) Do you think it's a good idea to do a 5k as a vendor?
2) How many shirts would you bring/expect to sell knowing the info I just shared?

Many thanks everyone!!

 

[LindaLittleHat]

I've volunteered at an annual race and found that the runners never carry money on them unless they didn't pre-register. Then they usually only have the exact amount.

 

[Rjcreative]

Selling at Marathon events (even 5K's) can be very lucrative. From what I've heard, the best success comes from the Expos prior to the event or on race day. Since this is a 5K, they may not have have an Expo that Runners can attend.

If there is no Expo, you will have to figure out if Runners or their supporters will stick around after the race to buy merchandise. They might or they might just be too tired after the event to want to walk around and shop.

If your on the fence about this, why not just attend the event as a spectator? This would give you an opportunity to see what the turnout would be and if there's any business potential.

Another marketing approach would be to take Post Cards and Business Cards with your contact information on them and hand them out to people that are attending. Cant hurt, right?

 

[circlecity]

Don't a lot of races give the participants a t-shirt for entry? Not sure if that helps or hurts any other sales.

 

[gorilladiver]

If you are putting the name of the event on the shirt, make sure the event name is not trademarked, you could run into copyright issues, printing the shirts without permission.

 

[LuluStar]

I'm not sure if shirts will sell at this type of event. The $100 fee isn't too high - but I suppose investing in inventory to sell would be...

But I have another idea for you - do you do heat press stuff? Every year there is a cheerleading competition in my city and a heat press guy would come with some cheer themed shirts - some just with generic cheerleading designs - and some with the name, city, and date of the competition. But what was a huge hit was he would heat press the girls' names on the back of them with plain old black vinyl letters. (Not knowing how heat press stuff worked at the time - it was like magic to all of us! haha) The shirts were then proudly worn to school the next day. He sold tons! He officially became the "super cool t shirt guy" of our annual competition.

Maybe you could customize the shirts they already give out with people's names and nicknames? Either on the top back or down the sleeves would be cool too. Before the race starts? Sometimes they have a night before pasta party- or an expo as mentioned earlier - maybe there? When do they get their shirts? I just thought it might be a safer alternative then investing in a lot of inventory - just in case the runners don't buy. You can always find another use for letters - but not for specific race/date shirts. Of course you would also want to check to make sure customization is approved by the race people and look at the t shirt design to make sure there is even space to customize...


Another thing you might want to consider is the "feel' of the race. Is it super competitive? Is it for fun? A mix of competitive racers and just happy to be in shape doing it for fun runners? Charity runners? Is there a theme?

If it was me - I would go as a vendor - not invest too much in event specific inventory incase it's a total bust - and get the feel of the race and customers there. That way if this was an annual even I could plan ahead for the following year and try to establish a rep as "the t shirt person" of the race. You could also find out if it's not worth it! And decide to never go back.

It would also be interesting to find out where the race people are sourcing their shirts. We have a "Shamrock Run" every St. Patrick's day and a local screen printer prints all the shirts for that race. If they are outsourcing to some random company maybe you could establish a relationship with them and become their local shirt provider? Hey - you never know!

 

[binki]

We have shirts to order at events and it is murder. Do 2 or maybe 3 designs and break than down 10% 2xl/m each and 40% each L/XL. Work on selling what you have than doing production. End of story
.

 

[LindaLittleHat]

To personalize the race shirts at the events with their names would you charge by the letter or max number of letters? What would be reasonable to charge? Thanks!

 

[binki]

$10 but you better be prepared for a line of people. Remember. This is a impulse buy. If you have to do production then you need the bodies for sales and the bodies for production. If you have people waiting to buy that will walk. I don't see the upside in doing personalization.