Tips for selling live event apparel

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a sports guy. Being so involved with all the sporting events in my area is awesome for me. I get the pleasure of meeting most local young athletes through my profession. Some I meet by selling them a football helmet or a baseball bat inside the store, but I get to know most of these young men and women by selling official event fanwear at their tournaments or events.

We sell at wrestling tournaments where 400 to 600 kids from 4 years old to 18 years of age spend the whole day on the mat with the goal of winning that first place trophy. We do something at these tournaments that no one else does: We set up the plotter and heat transfer machine right on-site. We custom cut individual names and apply them to the back of the tournament shirt right in front of them.

The kids love this, and so do the parents. We offer them without a name as well, but on average, 95% of them get the name. We love the youth tournaments because mom and dad don’t mind getting their little grappler a souvenir T-shirt, especially if they win the tournament. It makes for a wonderful keepsake.

Old West Balloon Fest

We sell at large community events as well. One event is the annual Old West Balloon Fest held in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, every August. Hot air balloons come in from all over the country to participate in this fun event. People flock to our small town to watch the colorful balloons take flight. People arrive at the launch field at 5 a.m., and we are there with the official event T-shirt. If this sounds a little familiar, you may have read the article that my buddy, the legend, Lon Winters wrote about a while back (GRAPHICS PRO October 2024).

Father’s Day Classic

Another fun event we do is the Father’s Day Classic. It’s a baseball tournament hosted in both Scottsbluff and Gering Nebraska, a community with a river separating two small towns. The tournament hosts over 50 teams that come from throughout the Midwest. This event is huge for us.

We park our camper on-site and turn it into a self-contained print shop. We set up the plotter in the back bedroom using the dresser to put the laptop on, and we set the plotter on the bunk beds. The heat transfer machine sits on the dining room table. The couch and the bed are used as a place to lay out the completed orders. The kitchen countertop is our weeding station for all the names and numbers.

My wife helps with this event as well, so it makes it a family atmosphere. She works outside under the awning and is in charge of selling the shirts and getting the correct spelling for each name and the player’s number. She then hands that to me, and I cut them and heat transfer them right there. The kids and parents think this is pretty cool.

This tournament is a little different than most as we sell a lot of shirts to the dads. The kids like to buy them one for Father’s Day. We normally only sell shirts to the athletes, so it is nice to sell extra shirts for this event. This year will be our 29th year at this tournament, and it is one of the largest events we do. We typically heat transfer between 300 and 400 names and numbers over the two-day event.

We also provide the garments for many of the sporting events that the host of the event sells on their own. We print the shirts at the end of the day on Friday, so we can leave the screens on press for the weekend. If they need more shirts over the weekend, we are able to go to the shop and print more shirts for them. They really appreciate this as it allows them to not be so risky in the number of shirts to buy and the sizes to choose from. They know that if they guessed wrong, they have the option to get more shirts.

No discounts

The very first tournament where I sold T-shirts over 32 years ago was a youth basketball tournament hosted by the local YMCA. I will never forget this tournament as it was a huge learning experience for me. This was a two-day tournament. I set up the table and filled it full of printed tournament shirts.

This was a huge tournament with over 400 little hoopsters there. The event coordinator had told me the company that sold them in the past usually sold 200 to 300 shirts, so I planned for that. I started with 250 shirts, praying they would all sell. I was a brand-new business, and I knew this could be a huge boost for me to get my new company going.

Back then, I did not have the luxury of starting with a conservative number and printing more on the automatic press as we needed them. I was a one-man show and had to print them all ahead of time. I prayed I didn’t print too many or print incorrect sizes. This was a huge gamble for me at that time. Well, when I packed everything up at the end of the first day, I had sold a whopping 18 shirts.

You can imagine the panic I was in at that point. “What have I done?” That boost to my business is now going to put me in a really bad financial situation. This was going to be a very expensive lesson to learn.

I showed up Sunday morning with my tail between my legs, nervous as could be. The very first customer that came to my table asked this question: “Have you discounted your shirts yet?” I said, “No, and I do not plan to. Why do you ask?” He said, “The guy that is usually here always discounts them to half price on Sunday.” And there was my lesson. My competitor had trained everyone that if they wait until Sunday, they can buy them for half price.

I must be honest, a large part of my soul said to do that as well to get rid of the 200-plus shirts still on the table, but something told me to stick to my guns. I deserve to be paid for the work I put into to these shirts. Before the tournament ended that afternoon, I had sold every shirt with the exception of one XXXXL. I sold 249 shirts at full price, which was only $10 in those days. To this day, I have never discounted my work at any of the events we have done. We have trained our customers to buy right away to guarantee their little athlete gets a tournament T-shirt.

We have always enjoyed selling at these events, as it gets us in front of so many people, which is great advertising. It also gives us the opportunity to meet so many potential customers. We have a sporting goods store as well, so this is huge for us. For me, personally, I have made so many friends at these events.

Now that I have been in this business for so long I will often make a shirt for an athlete, and their mom or dad will tell me they have all the shirts that I made for them when they were young. Though this sometimes makes me feel old, it makes my heart happy to know that I have been around as long as I have. I love being involved with the community and selling at these tournaments and events. I believe the screen-printing industry is the one thing that gives me that opportunity.