February 2007

BUSINESS OF WEARABLES
Praying for Sales

How to sell ad specialty apparel and items to religious groups.

By Nowell C. Wisch, MAS

The second order I ever wrote as a distributor was for a Chicago Hebrew day school in 1977. I wrote hundreds of dollars in orders for that school plus four churches in the next three years. However, I had a really hard time remembering whether I sold a piece of promotional apparel during that period.

Upon further reflection I suddenly remembered that the first T-shirt order I ever wrote was to that same Hebrew day school in May 1978. I had a devil of a time finding someone to do the job, because back then there wasn’t a screen printer on every corner opposite today’s omnipresent coffee shop. My supplier was a fellow who was referred to me by one of the industry’s oldest pad printers.

"Your priest is a customer when he’s sitting on the other side of the checkbook. The man you confess your sins to on Sunday expects you to be a knowledgeable professional on Monday."

He charged a lot of money by 1978 standards to print the 60 white T-shirts that the school wanted for its summer camp session. That order was a revelation to me then, and I sold almost a dozen more orders in the next year for precisely the same purpose.

As I started interviewing distributors on what they sell to churches, synagogues, religious groups and schools, I was impressed at the diversity in sales to those religious entities today. I spoke to 17 suppliers and distributors and amassed more than five pages of notes, many of them devoted to wearables. Here’s what I found out.

Beyond the summer tee
Sales to religious groups have moved far beyond the simple T-shirt, although it remains the staple item in the wearables mix for most distributors.

For religious groups, tees aren’t just a summer item anymore.

Barry, a friend in Seattle, has been selling tees for several seasons as over wraps for winter trips. For about three years, he had been selling the church group almost 400 shirts a year for the summer camp crowd; then, he had a bright idea.

“I had a moment of divine inspiration,” Barry says. “We had a couple of 3XL shirts that had been lying around my showroom for so long that the color had faded in the light. I thought that instead of sourcing a youth small to adult XL mix, we’d substitute adult larges to 3XLs so the travelers could wear them over their sweaters and jackets.”

"Community involvement can make or break a project. A minor afghan throw project turned into a five-figure custom blanket order because a local business got involved."

The idea was a hit. As a result, Barry wrote a very nice late-fall order that resulted in several more from the same group.

While the T-shirt is the staple product for the summer camp crowd, distributors throughout the country are having success with the entire wearables spectrum.

“A new synagogue was going up in our area, and the members wanted to celebrate by getting a nice assortment of jackets and shirts embroidered with the new logo,” says Jack, another distributor I know.
Jack parlays garment sales into other items, a practice engaged in by almost every distributor selling to these groups. “Our local Catholic church has a three-day program each year for younger kids’ faith formation,” he says. A theme and logo are designed for the event, and all enrolled children receive a T-shirt, along with water bottles, buttons, lanyards and other items.

Consider the end-user
“Synagogues have purchased coffee mugs and wine glasses from us for various functions. We also have individual members of synagogues come to us for Bat Mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah items for their children’s celebrations,” Jack says. “This is something I don’t like to do, because I notice that the kids usually hate what their parents select for them.”

Jack’s last comment is an important lesson for salespeople everywhere. Considering the end-user audience is a foundational element of our profession. Often the buyer isn’t the end-user. “I’ve had to eat hundreds of dollars in rejected product that the purchaser couldn’t get his group to accept. We had one case where the church deacon bought a ‘farmer hat’ that nobody in the upscale suburban church wanted to wear,” my friend Shelly says. “The 144 pieces were returned along with a note from the director admonishing us for allowing his representative to make such an elementary mistake. The note simply said, ‘Shelly, you should have known better!’ He was right. I should have known better.”

So, remember that your priest or pastor is a customer when he’s sitting on the other side of the checkbook. “The man you confess your sins to on Sunday expects you to be a knowledgeable professional on Monday,” Barry says. “One of my responsibilities is to help him get what he needs, which is sometimes not what he asks for.”

Barry learned this the hard way from a calendar sale gone bad. “We were given a ‘blank check’ to get our church 250 refrigerator calendars. We found a nice magnetic one that was printed in full color with a landscape scene,” he says. “We delivered the product without a proof. What transpired was the weirdest situation I ever experienced in 20 years in the business.”

“A congregant ‘saw’ a devil in the cloud formation and raised heck with the priest in public at a Sunday morning service,” Barry says. “We wound up replacing the job with another calendar project, but it turned out to be charity work, since we didn’t make any money on the sale.”

Upselling success
Hard goods items represent perhaps the most numerous opportunities in religious community sales. Many groups need an item that can easily lead to a wearables sale. For years, my biggest sale to religious groups was for Vacation Bible School materials: pencils, rulers and book bags. Then I added caps and T-shirts to the orders. The hard goods drove the sale.

That’s often the case today. Distributor Kent says, “We do T-shirts for different events. We also do pens for the pews and have done coffee mugs, both travel and ceramic. They were used to welcome new members and to encourage small group get-togethers.”

Barry tries to pair every garment sale with a hard good item and vice versa. “If my client is buying polos for camp counselors, I try to get a duffle bag or cap added. When they ask for coffee mugs, I try to add a soft goods item, such as a tote bag, to round out the presentation,” he says. “I had a windshirt sale that almost doubled when we added clipboards and pens to the presentation. I got some high-end woolen scarves included on a winter prayer-group order for jackets and hats that began with insulated Thermos mugs for the hot chocolate.”  
Places of worship also present lots of sales opportunities. Congregations have a lot of spiritual and monetary investment in their buildings. This is very important, especially around the holiday season. My friend Terri, for example, has been successful selling holiday tree ornaments. “I’ve also sold pewter ornaments as fundraisers for the past three years, depicting various scenes such as the outside of the church, and statuary and wall art inside the church,” she says.

Other products depicting scenes are popular as well. Mark, a distributor in Minnesota, says, “I’ve done centennial plates, steins and coffee mugs. We decorate these items with a picture of the church and other important information or dates.”

These items are almost always resold as souvenirs to church members and visitors. At other times, Mark was able to find local businesses to sponsor all or part of the project cost.

Community involvement can make or break a project. Marsha had what would have been a minor afghan throw project turn into a five-figure custom blanket order, because a local grocery got involved. “We had a 100th anniversary design created for a cotton throw and showed it to our pastor. He mentioned it in a volunteer meeting, and the local grocery manager asked to see the design,” she says. “Since the church is in the downtown section of the community, the manager suggested that they weave local stores into the scene in an 1890s style. That got a half-dozen other merchants involved, and the group picked up the entire cost of the project. We wound up with a jacquard woven wool blanket.”

And, finally, Barry’s got some good advice about the ethics of selling to religious groups. “I don’t try to make a killing on these sales,” he says. “I do, however, make a reasonable profit, even though it’s several percentage points lower than my normal profit. My intent is to be a good citizen and member of the community.”
And that’s a blessing that we can receive every day we’re involved in helping our community religious groups through …

Happy Selling!