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Finding the market for screen printing caps

Surveys show that hats are the second or third best-selling item after shirts. Caps can be an opportunity to increase your screen printing sales and profits. Selling prices vary widely for caps. Some sell for $30, and even the old foam caps with mesh fronts and backs that used to sell for $3-$5 are now marketed as “trucker hats” that sell for $15-$18. These foam fronts are less than $1, and the 5-panel and 6-panel tops are $2-$3. Therefore, there is a lot of profit potential from the maximum limits.

Ask a teenager or college student how much they paid for their hat, and you’ll probably be surprised to hear prices that are much higher than those paid for shirts. The potential for high profit margins makes caps a product to investigate.

Companies buy caps for many reasons. Hygiene laws require occupations such as food handlers and medical product manufacturers to wear caps. Dirty caps are thrown away instead of washed. Restaurants have employee turnover and need new limits. Companies like UPS want to project their image and the local UPS manager has the authority to buy local. Power, gas, and water meter readers need covers so homeowners aren’t alarmed by a person in the bushes at the homeowner’s home. A company may provide boundaries as a morale booster, safety award, or billboard. Companies have many reasons to buy caps.

The capitalization market is actually a collection of market segments. The cap that a person will buy for his own use mainly depends on the age of him. Companies buy based on usage. Knowing the purchasing habits of individuals and companies gives the decorator the opportunity to maximize the sale price and the size of the order.

the age of a person

Students usually pay the highest prices. That price could be anywhere from $12-$30 per cap. However, your parents may only pay $8 to $10 for a cap, and grandparents may only pay $5 to $6. So age is the first clue to who pays the highest prices.

Although we recognize people by age, the real differences are self-esteem and cost. For students, it is very important to wear proper fashion or wear a cap. Young people still growing are worried about their self-esteem. The “right cover” identifies the young man with his companions. Just a 6-panel cap is acceptable for many of these youngsters. However, for a young man on a skateboard, just a foam forehead usually worn crooked on his head communicates to his friends that he is one of them.

Students often get the money to buy the cap from their parents and are therefore less cost conscious than parents who have to earn the money before buying a cap. So the students will pay more than their parents. Grandparents are the least fashion conscious and the most cost conscious, because they are retired on a fixed income and are the least concerned about what others think of their appearance.

To find the student cap market, we must first find what interests students. Your school, team, and images that bring students together are good places to start. During basketball season, a basketball with the team name written across the basketball can be a very simple and eye-catching image that conveys a clear message. The same approach can be used for all sports. Artworks that students consider “cool” will turn obedient buyers who bend to group norms into compulsive buyers who must have that limit.

The market segment for the cap can be clearly identified to minimize the time and cost of sale. The school will have a class president, student athletic association, or similar organization that can accept prepaid fundraising requests using a sample decorated cap that will be displayed. The same image can also be offered to former students who request the 5-panel cap on a prepaid basis.

This form of marketing can range from a school class or sport to events, tournaments, or any occasion that brings students together. In each case, the sale must be to the students with the students’ agent acting as their sales agent in exchange for compensation.

This method of sale allows for the use of a retail price that will be paid by the students. That price can be determined by looking at what students pay at the mall or by asking them how much they paid. The decorator will obtain a much higher selling price by selling directly to students at a sales agent discount than by approaching the school administration who has no budgeted cap funds and who would request three competitive bids.

To sell to parents, we again need to find what interests them. That could be golf, fishing, hunting, team sports, patriotism, and a variety of other topics. Using golf as an example, golf caps sold at the pro shop at a public golf course will command a high price and half of that price will go to the pro shop as markup. The selling price must match the prices currently charged in the pro shop. The net selling price received by the decorator multiplied by the number of caps produced per hour will show that this market segment is more profitable than t-shirts. Group and tournament sales are the best way to get a foothold on golf courses, because custom décor that isn’t in shop inventory will be what the group wants.

The use of a company

Companies are not driven by self-esteem, but by corporate purpose and cost. The purpose could be part of high-priced staff and customer entertainment where corporate image is more important than cost. In most situations, cost is an important consideration and the decorator may be faced with competitive offers.

Marketing for corporations is more complicated than for students. First, who makes the purchase decision? In a corporation that could be any one of several people. The Sales Department may want limits on customers. Human resources may want hats for a group outing. Production may need to keep hair out of products. Requirements like these can be met without going to the Purchasing Department.

A purchasing department will be more motivated to obtain the lowest cost than the other objectives of the requisition department. A large company with many employees may have numerous potential buyers of caps. Therefore, understanding the decision-making process is important. So once a decorator knows who to talk to, who has to approve the purchase? At each approval level, caps must be sold again to complete an order.

Decorating a sample cap to win over each person in the approval process is a measured gamble. Shoppers often can’t see the product they’re being asked to buy without first seeing one. A decorated display of exactly what the customer will receive can be a strong “closer” to a sale when the motivation to buy already exists. However, creating art and going through all the other steps to produce a cap is expensive.

So decorating samples is probably an unwise business decision, unless you know that the sample is presented to the decision makers and that the decorated sample will substantially improve your chances of getting an order. When these conditions do not exist, a similar decoration should be used for other clients. These samples can also serve as endorsement by other companies of the decorator’s ability to produce excellent work for the sales prospect.

So the starting point with corporations is to figure out what their plans are and how the caps fit into those goals. Company representatives may never have considered using a cap to achieve their goals. Certainly, many products are promoted on caps. Just watch a golf tournament on television and almost every golfer wears a hat to promote something. Local businesses can do the same and get financial help from their vendors who provide cooperative advertising money to get their name or brand on the cap.

Easier is to go to companies known to use caps and then displace the current provider. To move to another supplier, the offer must meet or exceed the conditions of the order. We all think of price as a condition for an order, but often other conditions are more important.

Many corporations are image conscious and want the image on the cover to match the sign on their business entrance, stationery, packaging and sales literature. That means colors must match PMS standards. The font or logo must be a photographic duplicate. If you can meet this condition and the other provider can’t, then you have a better offer.

Other conditions may be your proximity to the customer, how quickly you deliver, the personality of the seller, or the help you provide to improve the art. To find out which conditions are important to the customer, ask. When sales prospects talk about past purchases, they often reveal important conditions that another supplier did not fulfill well.

After the client has talked at length about executing previous orders from art preparation to delivery, and you’ve asked questions about the order, then ask, “And by the way, how much did you pay?” If the price was too low, you will need to justify why your price will be higher. If the price meets or exceeds your expectations, then you will know to charge what the other supplier charged and will take the order based on conditions other than price. You always want to leave open the opportunity for higher prices.

Note that no mention was made of contract decoration. This market segment requires substantial production assets that many stores do not have. In addition, contract work generally results in low prices for the decorator and less than optimal prices for the middle man. From a financial point of view, it will be better to cut out the middleman and draw your own conclusions about the price a customer will pay. Contract work can also mean competing with foreign production where labor rates are very low and employee benefits are even lower.

conclusion

When surveying local decorators, you will most likely find that all decorators (people with transfer machines, screen printers, and embroidery shops) are decorating t-shirts, but few sell many hats compared to t-shirts. Caps are not as competitively priced as shirts. Decorating a hat is different from a shirt, and there is a learning curve to climb. However, the rewards can be substantial. Caps can be that opportunity you are looking for to make this year a better year than last year.