When life gives you lemons …
mix up some marketing solution
In our last post, we talked about making sure you have the sizeable rock and roll fan base before you invest resources in selling them T-shirts. Otherwise, your next challenge may be figuring out how to get rid of all those unsold cartons of clothing that are now taking up valuable real estate in your bedroom. (You could use the T-shirts to cover up the scars of experience that now tattoo you.)
Ideally, you needed to test your market to gauge how receptive they are to your T-shirt. Maybe it’s:
- the design
- the quality
- the promotion
- the price
Maybe they don’t even know you well enough to risk buying your T-shirt.
But, sorry, Charlie, it’s too late for that shoulda-would-coulda advice: you ordered 5000 shirts, wisely ordering in large quantities to lower your per-unit cost, and only sold 100 of them. Now what?
There are two quick ways to make sweet, refreshing lemonade out of your sour situation:
- sell the T-shirt as a standalone product while improving your marketing that does the selling:
- test various ads
- test different price points
- use your T-shirts as a loss leader in promoting another of your products (”Buy this now and get a fantastic T-shirt, absolutely free.”)
There are even more ways to make this a profitable situation: by separating your T-shirt in its 4 P components as spelled out in Marketing 101:
- the physical product itself
- the price you charge
- the place you offer it
- how you promote it
This opens you up to combinations of possibilities, such as partnering with another business which sells its products and include your T-shirt as the free bonus.
So what do you think: Have you ever found yourself in this position? Did you or do you have cartons of T-shirts? Did you find a way to get back all that bedroom real estate the cartons were occupying? What challenges have you faced? Comment below now:
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well, my first challenge is that I read too slowly, because it took 88 seconds not 57.
The back-stock dilemma is why I haven’t used a printer for brochures or business cards for easily 10 years. I edit, tweak, fix, and test too frequently, and don’t want to get stuck with boxes of brochures I hate, or business cards without a new phone number. My 5 year old HP printer does a great job, especially on Avery “snap-out” cards, and I’ve been asked “who’s your printer,” on more than one occasion.