S&S Activewear business advice

5 Steps to Attracting Sustainable Customers

Better for the environment—and better for your bottom line. When your shop adopts sustainable practices like recycling, using water-based ink and eschewing chemical cleaners, you attract like-minded customers.

“The clothing industry needs to change—shops that don’t adopt a forward-thinking green ethos will be left in the dust,” says Dominic Rosacci, CEO of Denver-based Superior Ink Printing. “We adopted this way of thinking after learning it takes 500 gallons of water to make one conventional cotton shirt. Producing nearly 60,000 shirts a month equals 32 million gallons of water passing through one small production facility.”

The good news is that making this switch could be more beneficial to your bottom line than you thought. As Millennials lead the charge in supporting more environmentally conscious businesses, their beliefs are fueling a new economy. Let’s break this down by the numbers:

  • Between 2014-2018, sustainable product sales increased by 20%. Today, that figure is 22%. By 2021, it’ll rise to 25%.
  • Millennials are more motivated to change their buying habits. That’s why 75% of Gen Y buys sustainable products and most have said they’re willing to pay more to support environmentally conscious businesses.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at what you can do to make your shop more sustainable.

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5 Winning Video Strategies Every Screen Printer Should Use

Businesses miss a huge marketing opportunity when they don’t use video, experts say. “People like bite-sized nuggets,” says Sam Sprague, founder and CEO of Portland, OR-based Sprague Media LLC. “Video and social are all about gaining access and attention.” If a picture tells a thousand words, imagine just how many you can express with a short 30- or 60-second video. In fact, videos elicit a more visceral, immediate response from your viewers than reading a blog.

The biggest stumbling block for business owners though, Sprague says, is Continue reading “5 Winning Video Strategies Every Screen Printer Should Use” →

S&S Activewear business advice

7 Creative Ways to Find New Customers

Prospecting like a pro? Kevin Pendergrass, co-owner and sales rep at Shawnee, OK-based Pendergrass Promos, has it down to an art. Pendergrass targets 10 new businesses a week with a gift-focused campaign. “We send a promo item in the mail to introduce ourselves,” he says. “This separates us from our competitors because it cuts through the clutter—and gets our name in front of prospects loud and clear.”

Seventy-one percent of buyers want to hear from sellers when they’re looking for new ideas to drive stronger business results or to solve a problem, according to consultancy SalesPop. Even better, 82% of buyers Continue reading “7 Creative Ways to Find New Customers” →

S&S Activewear business advice

Turn Challenging Customers Into Loyal Clients

A decorator was in a bind: His customer’s event was the next day, and the PMS colors in the art file didn’t match the ones listed on the purchase order. To make matters worse, the decorator couldn’t reach his client, so his team had a 50/50 chance of choosing the correct color. Unfortunately, they chose wrong, and the client was unhappy with the order.

Customer expectations are more demanding than ever before and the need to ‘get it right’ each time is extremely high. Marshall Atkinson, a Phoenix-based decorated-apparel success coach who offers hands-on training via his Shirt Lab events, concurs and cites this statistic below as a reason why decorators and distributors need to take this seriously.

According to Microsoft, 54% of global consumers say that they have higher customer service expectations than they did just one year ago. In addition, 52% of people worldwide believe that companies need to take action on feedback provided by their customers.

To keep up with these dynamic requests, customer service and problem solving must be a priority in your decorated-apparel firm. “Business today doesn’t work the way it did in 1987,” Atkinson says. “You have to continuously evolve your customers’ experience. That’s on you. You have to teach your new hires how to work with all types of customers.”

4 Challenging Customer Archetypes

Here are four types of challenging customer situations—and how you can turn them into opportunities.

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