# Contacting new business or schools: offline marketing tips for t-shirt printers



## TeddyRocky (Mar 23, 2007)

I put my apparel line on hold for now, and decided to screenprint at the same time. I need steady income coming in and would like to establish the screenprint part of the business first. I am all set legally, have a warehouse and office, now I need clients. One of the disadvantages is that I am located in a warehouse district, and probably won't have any walk-ins, but instead it'd be by appointment only. I am making advertisments of special deals and find that some places it would be better to leave it at their door, some places would be better sent through the mail. I am trying to target contractors, small business's with chains, schools, town sports teams, and new business's. My question is, how do I know who to contact? 

Do I send it to the principle for a school? The coach for a football team? Is there a database where I can get new business names and address's? And how do I go about sending these through the mail without regular postage stamps? Anyone else have other ideas? Thanks!


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## Tenacious (Apr 11, 2007)

*Re: Contacting new business or schools*

Go to your "Chamber of Commerce". You can get the addresses of every company in your city. It will get expensive to mail those out unless you have a hook-up, or drop them yourself. You can Drop a phone book add too. That gets expensive. If you got a warehouse and an office before you got clients you better work quick!

When I got started I hit marketing/advertising agencies who focus on promoting small businesses/bands/. If you hook them up so they can resale you get tons of repeat business from them. They already have clients and always get new ones. Just make sure it's worth your time. You can always tell them they get special prices b/c they do a certain amount of business with you. It's much better to be doing business and paying the bills than standing around owing money. The business will come once you get your reputation out. You can always up prices later and blame it on textile prices or whatever. They don't know.....otherwise they would be in the printing industry themselves.


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## forfeitclothing (Apr 25, 2007)

*Re: Contacting new business or schools*

I agree with tenacious. But the Chamber might overwhelm you a bit, I would go to all of the Schools and drop a Business card off, with a nice sale or something like "10% off first orders" or schools or something. And I own a clothing line, and Probably around 30-40 Times a week I get asked "Do you screen print?" "Can you screenprint _______ for my band/organization?" "Do you design?" So, If i were you.. I would set up a deal with a Decient sized Clothing company, or multiple clothing companies that target differnt people (for variety of clients) And Hook them up with a deal. Something like "Hey, I'll throw in 50 free tee shirts, or I'll take 25/50/75 cents off of every shirt if You Put My company in your links on who you print with.. And if everyone that asks you refer them to me. 

Thats what I would do, Im not even that big of a clothing line, but i get asked that multiple times a day, and I have set things up with designers to where I refer people to them for free designing, but eventually they quit with that becuase they end up getting so much business and ask me to stop reffering becuase there so busy! So Find some clothing companies for sure, We get asked alot more then bands about printing and designing.

This was my first responce, hope i helped.


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## TeddyRocky (Mar 23, 2007)

*Re: Contacting new business or schools*

Thanks guys. I am trying to work quickly, it just took some time to set up shop. You both have great tips and I'll definitely check them out. I also realized the USPS doesn't have any special Direct Mailing prices, instead they just give you choices for different applications of the stamps (either digitial, regular, or pre-printed sticker). So all those companies that send ads pay 39 cents per mail? I couldn't afford that...am I misunderstanding something here? Also if I wanted to print for schools, how do I drop off information or even mail it to them? What is the official name for an administrator for a school to mail it to? Vice principal perhaps? Still a little lost.


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## forfeitclothing (Apr 25, 2007)

*Re: Contacting new business or schools*

The school question is a good one, Ours is a local place, I know how our football coach did it was, The local place put a banner on the football field for screen printing, which was used by the middle schools, and the high schools, so All the schools started using that becuase of the convience, maybe try something like that, or if they have a school paper, advertise in that.


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