A Place to Hang Your Hat
As with ice cream, race cars or free money, it's hard to find someone that doesn't understand the appeal of promotional headwear. Day-to-day signs of its effectiveness are everywhere, from the local skate park to McDonalds to the baseball field. You would think that with such a wealth of cultural evidence to draw from, convincing clients to buy hats would be the easiest thing ever. "Pepsi does it. Susan G. Komen for the Cure does it. If you'll just sign this order form, you can do it too."
Sadly, it isn't always that simple. No matter how great, sometimes promotional headwear will go unsold, just as sometimes great ice cream goes uneaten and the best race cars are left collecting dust in manufacturers' garages.
There are a lot of reasons great product goes unsold, from limited client budgets and poor economies to sales flubs and other missed opportunities. One thing you can do to increase your chances of a sale is knowing how to work within the needs of your clients' markets. It's no silver bullet for sales woes, but understanding the ins and outs of your clients' markets is an easy way to go from the guy with a metaphorical truck full of melted ice cream to the guy who does well because he knows what streets prefer strawberry over chocolate.
AUTOMOTIVE
Both Tony Karlicek, president of Headwear Professionals, Frederick, Md., and Jason Krakow, vice president for Caps Direct/Design Resources Inc., Overland Park, Kan., pointed out automotive markets as major buyers of caps and headwear. And while "automotive" is an admittedly large umbrella category, covering such buyers as race teams, towing companies and audio installation stores, Karlicek was able to offer some broad advice on working with this demographic. "The simplest way to sell into this market is to be honest—do the cold call armed with ROI and a few visual samples, and explain what you do and how it will grow their business," he said. "For example, if you Google your area for racing shops, grab their logo and have visuals made, most often the customer will hear you out."
CHARITY WALKS AND RUNS
Headwear has been a staple of outdoor charity walks and runs for a while now, though unless you're working with a nonprofit giant like Susan G. Komen for the Cure, you're likely not going to have much budget to work with. Thankfully, there is an easy solution to small nonprofit budgets that also happens to serve as an excellent networking and self-promotion tool: signing co-sponsors. Karlicek explained the basics of co-sponsorship, along with an additional twist for improved co-sponsor ROI.
"Contact a local wellness center, rehab center or nonprofit and offer a side location to them for a small fee," he said, explaining that this fee would be used to offset the hat cost for the nonprofit. To improve the co-sponsor's advertising results, he suggested offering to affix a hang tag to the cap that would point to the co-sponsor's website. Once there, end-users could enter a promo code from the tag to have the co-sponsor donate a dollar to the charity. The charity gets additional cash, the co-sponsor gets web traffic, and you impress both parties, setting yourself up for future business.
For more information on working with nonprofits, see our feature article here.
WORK UNIFORMS
A central piece of many workplaces, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when selling headwear intended for uniforms. Karlicek suggested selling caps made from inexpensive, flat or unbrushed twill while trying not to compete as a commodity. "Try to make the cap part of the customer experience," he said. "Because when a customer deals with an employee, it is a touchpoint and part of the brand experience."
Yvette Dominguez, marketing manager for Otto International Inc., Ontario, Calif., suggested pairing your cap offers with T-shirts or other uniform pieces, and also getting them from the same manufacturing source in order to guarantee a perfect color match. "The caps and shirts' color match exactly because they are cut from the same material creating a great uniform option," she said.
CLOSED BACK AND STRETCH FIT
“Closed back hats (stretch fit hats) are far and away the most important growing category in headwear,” said Jason Krakow, vice president of Caps Direct/Design Resources Inc., Overland Park, Kan. “What started as a classic fitted cap in baseball, then extended into surf and skate with stretch and closed backs, has now become pervasive throughout industries and consumer targets.”
OUTDOORS/CAMOUFLAGE
Always a solid niche market, cap sales to the hunting, fishing and outdoorsman market are only going to increase now that camouflage is becoming established stylistically in the promotional industry. "Our customers are finding the avid outdoorsman loves a good quality cap," said Danny Spier, president of Houston-based Kati Sportcap. "Licensed camouflage patterns and synthetic fabrics have been very popular items."
The pattern's move to the mainstream may make it worth pitching to markets overlapping or tangential to the outdoorsman demographic as well. "Licensed camouflage has become an everyday apparel item, not just for outdoorsman," said Spier. "These items come in many patterns and colors, including pink."
- Companies:
- Kati Sportcap
- Otto International