August 2007

Show Me the Sunglasses

“What’s your problem?” Wasserman asked.
“Our company just changed its logo,” the caller said.
“I had the biggest grin on my face – you just couldn’t imagine,” Wasserman says. He realized a new logo meant an opportunity for new apparel products, accessories and, of course, additional sales.

And, indeed it did. Rather than just order 160 shirts with the new logo as he had originally planned, the client rethought his order and tacked on 100 additional pieces, including hats.

What many distributors might not consider is how much value accessories can add to an order. In fact, Wasserman says, prodding clients to buy accessories is necessary, since they rarely consider them in the first place. “I don’t do it with pressure,” he says. “I do it very calmly and explain what the purpose of the item is.”

How to sell accessories on top of an order for, say, T-shirts, however, can be easier said than done. We highlight some distributors’ best tactics below.

1. Get online. Not every distributor has the means to pursue sales online, but for those who do, apparel accessories are a hot category, says K.C. Hughes, vice president of LT’s Inc. in Portland, ME, which operates 25 online stores for clients. “We’ve sold a bunch of umbrellas and ties,” that way, he says.
Since end-users tend to place small orders online, accessories are often a target product, Hughes says. Plus, for online stores to maintain their appeal, they constantly need to change and evolve – an ideal arena for the ever-changing accessories market. “Stores tend to get heavy on accessories,” he says. “We’ve done everything from cowboy hats to bandanas.”

2. Research retail. “Accessories go up and down with trends,” Hughes says. Fanny packs, for example, hot 10 years ago, “have run the gamut,” and are now passé, replaced with, say, urban courier bags worn by Gen Y and Xers. Visors, once hot, then cold, are now back. Keeping track of what’s hot and not is crucial to accessory sales.

The promotional products market “tends to lag six months behind whatever’s hot in retail,” says Trae Taylor, owner of Herndon, VA-based Peak Incentives. To keep up with so many changes, Taylor follows the retail market religiously.
Also, understanding how consumers buy and wear accessories is key to sales, says Robb Fine, CEO of Indianapolis-based Fine Promotions Inc. Men today, for example, don’t have one or two nice watches, as they did a generation ago. “In today’s world, every man has four or five,” Fine says.

3. Cross-sell with orders. Any distributor who presents an apparel item without an accessory to go along with it is selling himself – and his client – short, Taylor says. “We don’t ever show a golf shirt that doesn’t have a vest on it,” he says. “It’s an instant upsell.”

That, he says, is a key sales strategy for selling accessories, and one every distributor should use. When a client’s working hard to impress product recipients, it’s hard to refuse an inexpensive accessory that will complete the product offering that much more – and increase the brand name among the audience.

4. Bring in manufacturer reps. When Bruce Jolesch wants to make a sales pitch to his top clients, he does so by bringing in a manufacturer’s rep to show in great detail just how special a product is.

That sales tactic works particularly well with accessories, especially those with a higher price point, says Jolesch, president of Schroepfer Wessels Jolesch (SWJ) in Plano, TX. “A lot of apparel reps today are independent contractors and a lot of them have a showroom next to their office,” he says.

Providing one-on-one, detailed attention to end-users often helps them not only see the value of an accessory more clearly, but makes them feel more special, and, consequently, more generous in their purchasing decisions.

5. Focus on samples. When Fine visits clients, he almost always wears or brings samples. He recently visited a university wearing a new tie he picked up from an industry supplier. Three different clients at the university asked where he got the tie.

Watches, scarves and ties are particularly ideal for this sales tactic, he says. Seeing the product in person and being able to touch it does much to encourage clients to buy, Fine says. The details of fabrics and colors have far greater impact in the hands of a client than as a picture in a catalog.

6. Ask 20 questions. “We don’t take orders here. We do interviews,” says Thomas Aufman, president and CEO of Allison Park, PA-based Aufman Specialty Advertising Inc. “I ask, ‘How are you going to use the product? What do you expect to accomplish? What’s the event?’”

Few distributors ask enough detailed questions to really add on accessories to a client’s original jacket order. When a representative from a local hospital contacted Aufman recently, he didn’t just take the hospital’s original order for T-shirts and call it a day.

He also sold the hospital accessories that helped boost the original order from $1,000 up to $25,000. “If I hadn’t asked questions and put issues in their minds,” they might have stuck with their original order, Aufman says.

7. Cut prices to boost budgets. Connie King knows her clients have a fixed budget. But King, president of Fort Lauderdale, FL-based TheMarketPro, has a sales tactic to combat their limited finances.

When a recent client asked for a polo shirt, the buyer originally looked at $25 shirts. At that price point, King knew she would be hard pressed to persuade the client to tack on accessories as well.

But then King found another shirt of equal quality for $10 less. That allowed the client to also purchase $3 sunglasses, $2 first aid kits and $1 sunscreen bottles as well. “It’s a better use of money than going for just one premium product,” she says.

8. Custom fittings by big brands. When Microsoft was looking for an apparel product reward that would make its executives feel special, Tom Goos saw an opportunity to sell the software giant some accessories as well.

Goos, vice president of Seattle-based Image Source Inc., used a selling tactic that makes even the most seasoned apparel buyer swoon. He suggested that Microsoft consider adding Nike golf shoes to the product rewards executives would receive at the company’s golf outing.

These shoes came with an added selling point: Nike representatives would be on hand to custom fit and design the shoes for each Microsoft executive. “They walk away with a shoe custom fitted for them, which is really cool,” Goos says of the 150 pairs he ended upselling to Microsoft for more than $70 a pair.
Sunglasses fit well into custom fittings with manufacturer reps as well, say Goos and Jolesch, who’ve brought Maui Jim sunglass reps, for example, onsite to client events. ■