Custom Spirit Wear

Are you looking for the best in custom spiritwear for your elementary, high school or collage? The Foundry offers premium customer service and production that fits your budget. If you’re in the Seattle or the surrounding area including Bellevue, Tacoma, Bellingham and Olympia contact us today for all your custom apparel programs.

We wanted to put something together to help guide those looking to create custom apparel for their school fundraisers. We’ve been filling custom spirit wear orders for Seattle schools since we opened and have learned a thing or two. You’ll find these details helpful in simplifying the ordering process, picking out the garments, marketing your project and setting up the pricing. So let’s start at the top.

Simplicity in ordering custom spirit wear

The first thing I really want to emphasize is how important it is to keep it simple. As you can imagine taking and filling order from parents and children presents unique challenges. So take a simplistic approach, especially on your first go around. This means keeping the product assortment limited and the print simple and easy to execute. Work with as few colors in your art as possible and limiting the color and styles available in garments. Keep in mind that tees and hoodies are sized so for example, 1 tee shirt style can be 8 different sizes between youth and adult. Add a hoodie style to that and you’re managing logistics for 16 different items.

Keep the product assortment simple and the print or embroidery easy to execute.

I would also consider using an online tool for gathering orders, this is a service we can provide through our site or you can look into an ecommerce platform that will help you manage the orders and take payments online. It’s imperative that you keep a good log of your orders, mistakes in the aggregated order can cause a lot of headache and strain on your margins.

Picking the right garments for your school fundraiser.

You’re going to want to look for quality products that are not too fashion forward. No one wants to pay for a budget box tee anymore but also keep in mind that the contemporary fitted styles probably are not going to fit for a broad range of your consumers. There are a lot of styles on the market that are made of quality material and have relaxed but still relevant fit. You can browse our garment catalog here if you’d like and we can make recommendations based on what’s currently working no problem.

Quality garments that are not too fashion forward.

Make sure that the products you choose have companion styles in youth, ladies and adult unisex. This way you can cover a range of sizes without rethinking your designs. Also make sure that the products will be available in the future when your order collecting is complete. We can advise on projected inventory levels and recommend similar alternatives in the event of an inventory issue.

Make sure that the products you choose have companion styles

Lastly anticipate on ordering long and never order to the exact amount. This will give a buffer if there’s a blem at the print shop or a customer requests a change in size. You’ll also find that once everyone sees how awesome the products turned out there’s a second sales surge you can take advantage of if you’re prepared.

Marketing your Spirit Wear project.

It’s important that you have a clear and achievable marketing strategy. That means utilizing email, social media, word of mouth and printed flyers. Draft an email and social media post about the spirit wear project and ask the school administration and PTA to add it to their online networks. Include the link to the online store and give details about the order due dates and delivery date. We can provide you with digital mockups that you can use as product images in your marketing efforts.

Utilizing email, social media, word of mouth and printed flyers.

Create a printed flyer with a QR code linking to the store and information about your spirit wear program. You can easily generate QR codes online here. Make sure that your online store is mobile compatible if possible. You’ll want to post those flyers around the school where students, staff and parents will see them.

Setting up the pricing.

It’s important that you price your spirit wear products so people of your school community can afford them and but you can still generate funds for your cause. This is another reason why keeping your project simple is important. Having fewer styles drives up volume in each design making them less expensive at the print shop. Also simple designs with few print colors are less expensive to produce. Also consider the cost of your sales platform into your margins, you time is valuable to so don’t be afraid to give up some of the profits to help automate the process. Remember that errors are costly also and preventing them is good business sense.

Having fewer styles drives up volume in each design making them less expensive at the print shop.

We recommend that you try and work on what we call ‘keystone pricing’  this is when you take your costs and double them for your retail price. This give you a 50% profit margins and puts your products at a low market price for comparable products at retail. If you put thought and purpose into your spiritwear people will want to purchase your products and support your efforts. Going the extra mile doesn’t always mean doing more work, it means acting more intentionally and building better partnerships.

When you’re ready to start your Spirit Wear order you can reach out to us at the link below. Also remember that we offer premium custom stickers, tons of custom accessories and printed banners should you need them. Thanks for reading!