John LaRoy and Derek Brubaker from Apparel Redefined discuss fall branded apparel.
In the apparel industry, preparation and coaching are key for fall branded apparel. Gathering information ahead of time, educating clients, and creating win-win relationships are essential. Understanding market needs and preferences is crucial for effectively utilizing print on demand and streamlining the quote process for custom apparel orders. T-shirts hold sentimental value as they preserve memories and evoke conversations years later. They have the potential to become treasured keepsakes for generations to come.
Key Highlights
• Back-to-school apparel planning and preparation. 0:02
• Apparel production and logistics for school sports teams. 4:35
• Print on demand for event merchandise with a focus on speed and flexibility. 9:26
• Apparel production process, including artwork, garment style, quantity, turn time, and more. 14:27
Presentation Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:02
Hey, welcome. Thank you for joining us, and we are super excited here at apparel redefine. We’re, it’s, it’s that time of season. John, Leroy Derek Brubaker, how are you guys? What’s going on here?
John LaRoy 00:17
Good. How are you Curt, sorry, lost for a second there, but now you’re back, but awesome,
Curt Anderson 00:23
absolutely. So just always have those technical difficulties. So hey, it’s our favorite time of year, you know, you know, for especially for those of us that live up north, we’re trying to soak up like every last hour of summer time, but raid around the corner is just that magnificent time of year, fall. You know, it’s kids going back to school. Leaves are changing. And, of course, one of our favorite times is football. So this is a really important time for apparel. Let’s dive into, let’s talk back to school. You know, lots of exciting things going on, the events, you know, like we said, football, cheerleading. What are things that what are some top priorities that people should be thinking about with a with branded apparel? Branded apparel as we come back into school time.
John LaRoy 01:06
Yeah, you know it’s, it’s always last minute, because no one likes to think about the end of summer, right? You know it’s, it’s, it’s such a short time that we have to be outside up here in the North. I mean, we’re talking like we’re in Alaska, but we’re in Chicago, but, yeah, no one wants, everyone wants to put it off, right? And it just seems like, I don’t know about you, Curt in Buffalo, but it seems like school is starting earlier and earlier. You know, my cousins are younger. They’re going back to school next week. I’m like, Oh my God. Like, this is depressing, but yeah, preparation is key, you know, because it’s here before you know it, and the entire country is all going after the same inventory at the same time of year. So if you want something really specific in terms of a garment, you know and functionality is key. Because one thing that we know here is like, we’re all in shorts and T shirts, still, right? But in the Midwest, Northeast, it could be 85 today and it could be 55 Monday, you know what I mean. So people need to start thinking about long sleeves, unfortunately, and some hoodies. But plan for it, because everyone you know, you get into football season, and you might be three four weeks in, and you’re like, God, darn, I wish we would have had something for homecoming or, you know, the big rivalry games. Rivalry games are huge here south side of Chicago. You’ve got, you know, high schools that have been playing against each other for some over 100 years, right? And it’s always cool to have those, you know, smashing helmet designs and and stuff. But it all takes time, and having that preparation ahead of ahead of time is really, really important.
Curt Anderson 02:47
Yeah, and what’s, you know, regardless of what season we’re thinking about, you know, John, what, what time frame, you know? And like you said, you know, seems like summer just started. We just started grilling, Fourth of July. Then you blink and, you know, all sudden, like falls around the corner. When Should people start planning ahead of time per season? Like, what? What’s that look like?
John LaRoy 03:06
When should they, or when do they?
Curt Anderson 03:07
Let’s start, when should they, and then when, when do they?
John LaRoy 03:13
I mean, we try and be like, a month to six weeks ahead of time, because, like, right now too, you know, like, just on top of football. You know, October is breast cancer awareness, right? Susan G Komen walks all over, all over the country. We’d really prefer people to start thinking about that now, because especially with that, like, the entire country is ordering pink, and there’s a limited availability of pink, so you really want to get ahead of that. So I would say, like, what you should be doing is four to six weeks, because it will take, usually about a week or two to get the design work down right, and then, usually we set up an online store, disseminate that out, let people order for a week or two. Takes a week or two to produce and then disseminate out. So I mean, it happens quickly, but those three sequential steps need to happen, design products, online store, give people time to order, then we have to produce it and get it out as well. So, yeah, I mean, four to six weeks, right? That’s what you’d like to do, yeah,
Curt Anderson 04:14
yeah. So dB, let’s, let’s pull you in. So you know, you’re doing a wonderful job helping people, you know. And for you know, I won’t call anybody out, but I know I’m a last minute guy. So, you know, when somebody comes into you kind of walk us through the apparel, redefine process, you know, hopefully they’ve given you a little bit of a runway. But what does that look like? You know, for a starting point for that first time customer? Yeah,
Derek Brubaker 04:35
for sure. And I think it’s, in a sense, it’s getting better, because people kind of see, oh, I got burned last year because I wasn’t prepared enough, you know. So I we are seeing the emails of our more, I guess, accustomed to the apparel process say, Hey, I’m pushing this your way. Be prepared, you know. Or. Something like that. We vetted you. You know, for this online store, it’s coming, but on the other side, you know, you’ve kind of pinpointed your repeat offenders that you know that aren’t going to change. So you can prepare for that a little bit. But I mean to what John said, it’s it’s the logistics of it all. We can turn that around in seven to 10 days. And no problem, 10 times out of 10, it’s just the I don’t have my artwork ready, and I need it in 10 days, or I need it in 10 days. It needs to all be packaged and delivered in 10 days, you know. So it’s, it’s more so about the logistics. You know, you have people that, here’s my artwork. I know I’m last minute. What can you do to help me out? And, you know, you succumb to help those people out, you know, especially because, you know, maybe they do a little something for you. And you guys kind of have that, you know, said relationship. But, I mean, it’s just gathering and farming as much information as you can ahead of time, you know. And that’s one thing with a smaller sales division that we’re kind of trying to build out that formality of of these programs. I mean, we have our guy, Ben, that’s coming on, that you guys are going to kind of assist with a little bit more, you know, and create more literature, you know, for people to just be like, here, this is what you can fill out. We can start to promote those kind of things. You know in that preparation email blast somebody six weeks out that is somebody that orders right around this time of the year, you know, you know, on the button every time, and just keep them ahead because, you know, just educating people that they have no clue that people are buying up every safety pink t shirt in the world. And it’s going to be a problem to get that, you know? I mean, it’s one of those things where it’s like, yeah, we can turn something around really quickly. But if I have to get this one piece from a drop ship vendor that takes three to seven question mark days, you know that that puts a lot of stress on the production team, you know, because John and myself were yes men in the terms of, can you do it? Because we know it can get done. We have the staff to do it. And, you know, we do it, you know, nine times out of 10 when, when it is some critical rush, I mean, but yeah, I mean, I would say I’m a little bit more prepared in the aspect of that, so I’m trying to ask the right questions. But when John comes to me and says, Hey, I got cousins weekend in a day and a half, and you need to come up with some art, you know, it’s it’s okay, I know how to get the ball rolling and get the shirts ordered, you know, get that art request out there as soon as possible, and just notify everybody that, hey, it’s coming. But, yeah, it’s and the year is just like, what John had said, it’s like, holy crap. Where’d the Summer Go? August 1, everybody’s kind of putting their heads down in the books. I didn’t do anything all summer now, all my projects, events, they’re, they’re coming to fruition. Or, you know, even teachers that have been off, you know, back to school. They’re like, Okay, I got to do my couples weeks worth of work before everybody comes in, you know? And they just, they need it quickly, but, you know, we’re happy to service that. And, yeah, it’s just, you got to coach people to become better and better, and you don’t want to let somebody down for them to be that lesson like, Hey, you’re going to have your shirts next week, not this week, you know, it happens for those softball teams and and things like that, to where first week you’re wearing wife beaters, and then the next week you’ll have your jerseys, you know? So, yeah, it’s, it’s just preparation and, you know, trying to coach your clients into becoming ideal clients. Yeah, I
Curt Anderson 08:41
you know, dude, there’s so much that value that you just dropped there. You know. Love the word coaching. You use the word educating, creating those Win, win relationships. And that’s, you know, and John, we talk about that, you know, how do you out teach the competition? And that’s what I love about apparel redefined. You know, we’re doing these lives, putting out information, putting out content. We want to create this win wins, because, you know, nobody’s winning when everybody’s stressed out last minute. We’re in our wife beaters at a, at a, you know, at a softball tournament, that type of thing. John, let’s talk about, okay, so school. We’re back to school. Obviously the big, you know, football cheer, there’s, there’s a lot of other sports out there, you know, lacrosse, field hockey, other things, what are some of what other sports? What are schools are coming to you at a pear redefine, what are people coming to you for?
John LaRoy 09:26
Yeah. I mean, obviously you have your, you know, your big three. But the other stuff that’s, that’s out there, you have rugby, you know, rugby, they they train in the fall to get ready for the spring season. That kind of coincides with football. Lacrosse is a huge one. You got soccer, boys soccer for us here in the Midwest is also in the fall, but you have, like, a lot of walk a thons to right? You know, you have big events, you know, early fall, late fall marathons, five. Ks, three, KS 2k. Whatever, whatever the case is. And he also the political season. I mean, you can’t, you can’t escape it, whatever side you’re on, or if you’re in the middle, whatever. But political teas are everywhere right now, family reunions, Labor Day picnics. There’s a lot of stuff coming up in a short window of time, Halloween parties, you know, there’s, there’s always a reason to get dressed up or or celebrate community, right? And what we talk about all the time, what a better way to do it than branded apparel. One of the things too, is, I really think that, you know, we talk about setting up an online store in the traditional way of doing things. And one thing that we’re armed with this season that we weren’t in the in the past was this print on demand, right? You know, if we can, we we don’t need to be in a situation where our backs are against the wall all the time. If we can coach the customer like, hey, it’s three days before your event. We can’t set up an online store. We have enough time, but we could send you a link really quickly, and we get your shirt up, and it could be print on demand. It has to be this t shirt in this time frame, and we can get it done for you. So again, it’s that way of not saying, No, I can’t do everything you need, but I could do this and meet your demands. So that’s really nice that we’re able to do that this year more than we’ve ever could before. We would still do it in years past, and we would screen print it, and it would piss everyone off in the back, but just had to get it done. You know, like Derek said, we are, we are definitely yes men, but now we could say yes, but here’s, here’s the other solution that will work for you. Yeah,
Curt Anderson 11:39
that’s great. So you know, again, event coordinators, teachers, coaches. You know, so many folks that need you know, fam. You know celebrations. A lot of weddings are in the fall. You know, October fest. You mentioned Halloween. You know, my goodness gracious, it’s, you know, I hate to mention it. You know, Thanksgiving is going to be around the corner. So there’s, you know, a lot of things coming up. You know. What I want to dive into is, you know, for print on demand. So say whether it B to B, you know, business, business relationship, or that consumer out there. Just walk us through, give us like a one on one. What? What do you mean by print on demand? What is that?
John LaRoy 12:11
Yeah, so that’s the ability to sell without any inventory, right? Inventory commitment or pre order. So what we were talking about before is hosting an online store the way that traditionally works, get your design, pick your products. We host an online store, but in that process of week, two weeks, whatever that is, nothing’s actually produced as it’s ordered. There’s a time bound duration on that where stores created, let’s say, tomorrow, and then that’s open for a week. When that store closes is when we start doing all the magic, ordering the blank garments, scheduling the decoration and putting everything on on par, and then getting ready for fulfillment. Now print on demand. The second that piece is ordered, it goes to print. So you’re limited because we don’t stock every item under the sun to have that stuff on our shelf and go to print. So you’re limited on the amount of options, but you make up for it in speed, right? So print on demand, just in time. Printing, you know, no commitment to inventory, not an unlimited SKU base, but a really sizable SKU amount here, especially some major news coming in the industry. SNS just bought out alpha Broder, which is a massive shift in the industry. There used to be three big players. Now there’s really only two in the distributor side, but that will enhance the ability for us to get more SKUs into the print on demand catalog, which will help our customers, so we’re excited about it. But yeah, that’s the big difference, right there. You have a time bound store versus a store that’s kind of open, 24/7 365, printed on demand, smaller amount of volume of selection, but quicker to market. Yeah, that’s
Curt Anderson 13:55
fantastic. And just, you know, as you’re saying, Derek, you know, just you know, being the Yes Men that you are satisfying the market. We’ll start. I know you guys are super busy, so we’re going to wind down a little bit, you know, could you tie in a little bit of a checklist again? Somebody comes to you, if I’m coming to you brand new, say, I just inherited a new sports team or whatever, and I want to be that educated customer to you and make your life a little bit easier and just really make it my better for me. What are some things that I want to have? Friend of mine, when I knock on your door, you know the make this a winning situation?
Derek Brubaker 14:26
Yeah, for sure. Well, the first thing you’re going to ask me is, can I get a quote, right? And then you’re not going to have any of the information that I need to give you that quote. So, I mean, typically it’s going to be, do you have artwork? Because that’s that’s the biggest thing. Do we need to facilitate that in house? Do we need to get vector? Are we doing digitizing for embroidery? So that’s a good start, because then we kind of know what we’re playing with in terms of color, decoration type, and you know what cost is going to go into that application. Then it would be what is. Your garment style. And then that’s going to be, do you have something later on the house that you love? Have you seen something else? You got a picture of the tag, you know? And what quantity are you looking for? And then, typically, the one that kind of gets kicked under the rug as a salesperson is trying to figure all that out is, when do you need it by, you know? So that’s where you kind of have to depending on the client. I guess that changes. You know, if you know somebody that’s coming in and you’re like, Okay, I got two weeks. They’re they’re just looking for this order. But then somebody might hit you with the zinger once you give them the quote, okay, how fast can I get it? Oh, no, that doesn’t work for me. And then it’s, you might have to pivot on your end to say, Okay, well, we can’t do this in that time frame, but we can do this. So, yeah, I mean, I would say art garment quantity, then you probably should be asking turn time we got a lot of cool automation to where we’re really just having to get as much data up front as possible, because it’s really helping our staff filed to go from CRM to our internal production software. So then I would say, we’re looking at, are you picking up? Are we shipping? You know, because then you have to allocate that transit time to their shipping time. If it’s going to Texas, if it’s going local, it’s kind of a breeze. You can drop it off if extremely necessary, or, you know, it’s going to be there in a day. And then, yeah, I mean, send a quote, and then that’s, that’s kind of it. There’s obviously a lot of different stipulations in between there. If you’re going with the store route, you know, there’s, how long do you want it open for? What is your expectancy on these products to, you know, turn around it because, you know, B to B could open up a store for, you know, 365, days a year, and you could get 100 orders a day that will justify us to print on a daily basis. You know, whether that’s print on demand or we bulk it every two to three days, you know. So typically, you know, John has his fitness company online, and you know, we do that every five days, you know, and it all is in a print on demand fashion, because there’s a bunch of different designs on there and different garments and different applications that are involved. So, yeah, you just kind of have to assess the situation and group things as best as you can. But it’s a little bit further than our intro checklist. But it’s because it’s something that there’s always going to be that question that you know, you didn’t think about, and they have some obscure request, you know, hey, can this go to two locations, or can everything be bagged up and labeled? You know, it’s just a very case by case scenario. So something that you know is a good point to bring up, because we’re, currently trying to just develop that, you know. So it’s takes 10 emails out of a 36 email thread. You know, that’s unnecessary,
Curt Anderson 17:48
yeah, just knocking down that process. And again, not your first rodeo. And that’s just so comforting for somebody that’s new, you know, they’ve got 100 different things going on. This is one of them on their plate. They can come to apparel redefine, just get these things pulled off their plate and just have that piece. That peace of mind, knowing that they’re just going to get phenomenal quality material, you know, quality products branded. You know, fulfilling that brand promise John, that we always love to talk about. So let’s start winding down. John Leroy, parting thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share as we’re gearing up for this wonderful fall season. What do you want to share here? You I,
John LaRoy 18:24
you know, I think I want to say, like, as it sounds like I’m writing my eulogy here, but as you get older, you know, just appreciate the time. You know. I, you know, you’re a business owner, business owner, basically a business owner of the sales department. I can’t believe that it’s already four. Already fall, you know, and it’s, it’s it flies by. The kids are heading back to school. And one of the things that I can say is that there’s a couple things that, like, bring you back to moments in time, right? Like the song you heard for the t shirt that you were wearing, right? And, like, again, last minute, I dropped on Derek, hey, I’m going to a cousin’s weekend up in Door County this weekend, and we need shirts for it, right? And, like, you put a date on it, you remember it, it might be 10 years from now, and I have shirts from, you know, a cousin’s weekend 10 years ago. And it’s amazing the memories that are attached to that T shirt. And what a cool thing to do, at a really reasonable price, to have something for the rest of your life until you know your wife or your mom or someone says, Get rid of that shirt. And you’re like, hell no. But it’s amazing the power of a T shirt carries and to be able to attach that to an event and have it be like a conversation piece for the rest of your life for something that’s really so simple as a t shirt is pretty powerful. I get out there and order some T shirts for the for the fall season.
Curt Anderson 19:55
That’s right. I couldn’t agree more. So guys, we’ll wind down and again. Thank. For your information, your passion, your expertise, here on helping our friends out there, just making that process just a little bit smoother. I love the checklist I did. John, we’re gonna have to talk about that, you know, getting that, that you know, that pre season checklist for folks, just to get that off and Derek, thank you for sharing your passion, your expertise. Just a master class on how to, you know, really go through this process seamless. We’ll be back here next week with another amazing, wonderful topic and conversation so from apparel redefined, thank you guys. We’ll see you next time.
Derek Brubaker 20:29
Thanks. Curt, thanks. Curt, you.