A few years ago, my wife and I sponsored the local hot air balloon races for the first time. It is an annual event that draws thousands of people from all over the United States and many more from overseas. They all come here to Western Nebraska to watch this amazing event. My wife, Shannon, had mentioned that riding in a hot air balloon was on her bucket list, so as part of our sponsorship we were able to take a ride together. It was one of the neatest things we have ever done. I couldn’t get over how quiet it was up there … until the pilot fired up the burner.
Through this sponsorship we became the official supplier of souvenir T-shirts for the event. The yearly festival takes place over the course of one week. We set up a booth and it’s a full team effort as we are selling a lot of shirts during the week. The struggle we have is to not over-print shirts and have hundreds left over, so we do multiple setups throughout the week.
It is frustrating for the staff to tear down a job knowing they may be setting this up again tomorrow, but that is part of the challenge. I would rather set up the screens again and ensure that we have the proper number of shirts available for the next event. We learn a little more each year, and very much enjoy being a part of this event. This will be our fourth year involved, and we feel very confident we can help make it a huge success.
Sports & fanwear
Other special events we do revolve around sports. That is the huge majority of what we do in our shop. We are very fortunate to work with all the sports teams, from youth leagues up to the local community college. We not only provide them with their uniforms, equipment, and team wear, but we also provide them with fanwear. Most of the teams request that we build an online store. They seem to appreciate the simplicity and the money raised from them. I strongly recommend getting set up with one of the many online store companies. This will open so many new opportunities for your business.
One of the most stressful challenges we have in our shop is the fanwear and team apparel to send the teams to a state or regional tournament. We work with over 10 schools in our area. Sometimes we have as many as five or six teams heading to state tournaments at the same time.
The biggest challenge is waiting to hear from the coach to see if they won the district championship. If they lose, their season is over. If they win, the clock starts ticking. Most teams win districts, and then head to state the next weekend, which isn’t too bad as it gives us four working days to get them done. Usually, the teams are very good about using the shirts and colors we have in stock, that way we don’t have to worry about anything going wrong with the freight.
Wrestling, on the other hand, is a whole different beast. All the district wrestling tournaments take place on Saturday. The kids must finish in the top four at districts to qualify for state, so naturally we have no idea who qualifies until the tournaments are over. Only the wrestlers and parents of those who qualified will want to purchase the fanwear, so even they have no idea about what we do in such a crunch.
So we must pull off a job that would normally be a two-week turnaround in only two days. We have to crank out a custom front design with the school information and a back design with a list of wrestlers and coaches. We then open an online store and leave it open for less than 24 hours. Finally, we print all of the orders and separate them by individual orders so we can deliver them to the coach the next day. This is very stressful as we have no room for error. But if you are fully prepared for this and your staff is ready to go as well, you can pull it off and be the hero.
Usually, we have a design for the front of the wrestling shirts in mind, if not already completed. All coaches are a little different in how they handle this. Most coaches I know (myself included) are the most superstitious people on the planet. Therefore, talking to them about a state shirt before actually qualifying is an absolute no-no. You can actually lose a customer over that, as I found out the hard way when I was still learning the business 25 years ago.
We do sometimes create designs ahead of time, but we never show them to the coaches until the time is right. We have a few coaches that are not as superstitious as I am and they will reach out early just in case they win, but that does not happen very often.
One of my favorite special events is selling shirts at wrestling tournaments or baseball tournaments. The customer asks us to set up a booth and then we offer names and numbers on the back of the tournament shirts. We sell them the shirts we printed for the event, and they pay extra for the name and number to be created on-site and applied. We have done this for years, and people are still excited when they see us setting up. As anyone who does fanwear knows, kids love to see their name on the back.
We set up for a Father’s Day Baseball Classic tournament every June. This will be our 30th year at this event. When we first started doing this event, everything was done at one location. We would haul my camper down to the diamonds and park it right in the middle of everything. My wife would take orders and double-check the names and numbers. I’d have the back bedroom set up as my CAD cut room. I’d type in all the names and numbers, and then cut them on the plotter.
Next, I’d weed all of that on a small table inside the camper, which means I couldn’t cut very much material at one time. Plus, it is the end of June and 90 degrees in there, so the material was a little challenging to weed. We heat-pressed the shirts as fast as possible, of course. We’d tell the customer to give us an hour to finish it up, but rest assured, they would come back in 10 minutes just to make sure we didn’t get it done early! We’ve revamped the system a bit now.
These days we do all the heat pressing at the shop and deliver the completed goods to the ball field. This adds different challenges than everything being on site. The staff on site has no idea when the completed shirts will be delivered, and that means they have a million people asking for their shirts. This is quite stressful for them as it is never ending. But at the end of the weekend, it is very much worth it. I personally love seeing all the kids walking around the tournament wearing our shirts.
Smaller events
Other events we provide for throughout the year are family reunions and fundraisers. We love these events because they mean so much to our customers. I would suggest to anyone to promote family reunions starting in March and get them thinking about their summer get-togethers. We usually do an ad campaign to promote these events and get potential customers thinking about our company. My biggest advice on these types of events is to be sure you make the apparel very personal to them.
Get them involved in the design so it means more to them in the end. The same goes for fundraisers, especially when raising money for someone who passed. We do a lot of these to help loved ones pay for medical bills or funeral expenses. One hard lesson I learned years ago is to make sure that if you are using a photo of the deceased, the closest family members know you are using it. We made some shirts for the family of a young girl who had passed, and the aunt handled the order. When the parents found out she did this, they were very upset. Just be very careful with that.
Make the most of all types of events, even fundraisers. That is why they are called special events. They often have a huge impact on your local community.
