Swap Shirts

Wow after getting the new tank and you still want a swap shirt :) :) :)..... just kidding, There we no shirts this year.... can't put anything over on you can we?
 
What about the blue shirts a few people were wearing? I didn't look at those closely, but thought that they were swap shirts.
 
The blue one I was wearing was from a few years ago. I think last year they didn't sell so good and the club ended up with a bunch left over maybe?
 
I asked club officers about this at the swap, turns out the club lost money on them in years past due to the lack of interest so they decided not to make them this year, i was kinda bummed too since this was my first swap.
 
We decided to not do shirts this year mainly because we cannot offer them at a price point that enough people are willing to buy to even be able to break even on them. One issue is the number you have to buy vs. the number of people who are even interested and the other issue is actually making them look half way decent (which costs money).

We got the blue shirts two years ago (2007 swap). I thought they were really nice (good quality shirts, nice graphic, color shirt). We got them for the people helping run the swap and sold the remainder at the swap for $15 or $20 each. We expected to eat the cost for the swap worker shirts and basically sold the rest at very near cost (I think we were making a dollar or two off of them). We got a lot of feedback saying that was too much for a T-shirt and we assumed that is why we didn't sell many (although I agree it is a decent amount, it is a custom shirt and a fairly nice one at that).

Last year we collected money for shirts from sponsors and c_stowers Dad helped us with printing them (I think it was his Dad). As a way to get sponsors to donate, we put the sponsors on the back and just a little logo on the front-left of the shirt. I think we offered these for <$10 because of the feedback about the expense and because the costs were much lower (between sponsors and having someone we know do the printing). Still, at $10, you're hard pressed to make your money back if you only sell 1/2 of what you order and if you order less you pay more per shirt. Basically, we still ended up having to give away a whole bunch at meetings and if we did recover our costs (I can't remember) it was only because sponsors helped...which means they donated less to the raffle.

Anyway, the logic we used was that it is a bit of added work and (although I love having the shirts) in the past it has actually been an additional expense for the club.

I'd love to hear ideas on how other clubs have done their shirts and how successful they were, but that is why we decided to forgo them this year.
 
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How about an iron on logo that you supply the shirt yourself, Maybe that would be cost effective in the future? Or some kind of trinket to remember the occasion by. Anyhoo just thinking out loud!
 
I forgot all about one of our good freinds starting a t-shirt printing buisness out of his home. I am sure he will hook us up at cost but still cost is still something and like mentioned folks seem to like the shirts but don't really want to pay for them. A nice quality shirt with a nice design still would be kinda high at cost but I like having my blue one to wear to the swaps.

I will talk with my freind today about what real cost per shirt is (naturally depends on quality and design) and if we can order just a few at a time. It would be nice to offer a nice club shirt for folks to purchase and even nicer if we could offer a shirt per new membership as a perk. I personally like the big clownfish logo we used, it really stands out and kinda makes you look like a fish dork when you wear it out on your double date to a resturant like I did Sat. night! I flew straight to the resturant to meet my hubby and freinds after the swap and I was so cold in there I just left my big ol clownfish shirt on over my nicer, more appropriate orange shirt :lol:. Cory had a comment or 2 but I was warmer ;).
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14197894#post14197894 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by poolkeeper1
How about an iron on logo that you supply the shirt yourself, Maybe that would be cost effective in the future? Or some kind of trinket to remember the occasion by. Anyhoo just thinking out loud!

I had intended to look into club stickers as something different that we could offer much cheaper or free for memberships. I simply ran out of time to look into it (over the past 2 months we moved houses, drove almost 3000 miles over Christmas, and tried to execute our plans for the swap :eek2: )

I agree with all of you that it would be nice to have something, but my thought is always, "What's $10 for a shirt?" And when you only sell 30-40 at a swap (if you're lucky) with 300 people at it, you kind of get to thinking that it may not be as much of a priority for other people as it is for you.

If someone wants to take the lead on this, I'm sure the board can get you an MTRC graphic to work with, we can take pre-orders based on the final design, find out the cost for that number of pre-ordered shirts, and collect the money before we order shirts. That way, it is a 0 risk buy for the club (as a board we try to take spending your money very seriously, so straight up wasting it is not really an option), everyone wanting one can get one, and we can sell them at the actual cost without buffer for "leftovers."
 
Yep -- Last year we had shirts, and we didn't lose any $ on them because the cost of production was paid for largely by vendor donations (the folks on the back of the shirt, for those of you that have one). The Thought process was that in 2007 we didn't sell hardly any shirts because we thought the price point was too high. That year, I think the price was $18. Last year we only charged $10, but only sold 10 of them :). So the interest was not all that high. We gave away a bunch at club meetings this past year.

So since the overall interest was low, we decided not to pursue them this year.
 
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