Challanges

Robert Young · April 11th, 2017, 09:42 PM

OK but if the "race to the bottom" did not work.. WalMart would not be in business!

Do you agree??

When I was "empire building" years ago I would target a town... pick one... let's say Nashville...

FREE digitizing for ALL embroidery shops in that town for 90 days...shut out quite a few digitizers that way... built a business. My point is YOU have to be more AGGRESSIVE than your competition or get out. If 90 days did not decimate my competition I would add months to that. Business is a competition... either you are in or you move on. sorry.

ayugup · April 12th, 2017, 12:32 AM

Well Business is competition, and just like everything people will go to the cheapest price.
Some of My customers are returning because of Good Quality
Truly the reason Walmart is in great position, is because they have everything. JCPenney ( although a lot cheaper than many stores) is closing multiple stores. Payless is the same.

Truly The Competition is everything, But the American Dream is Dying. Each Walmart store has about 8 Self Checkout lines, and many people are shopping online. and Many American people are losing jobs
I just had a customer who bought shirt for $2 From Amazon. My cost of shirt is $5 or more. How can i sell For $2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6.

In My area, there are people who come just to steal stuff and we have to watch everything.

So The More bottom you go, The More you lose. Its true you have to adjust to Market, But If i drop too low, then what the point of me working.

Robert Young · April 14th, 2017, 02:05 PM

If your client can buy a shirt for 2 bucks.... then why can you not?? We are stuck going through our "normal" distributional, promotional products channels... why? our clients are not so why are we?
Since I offer a service... no bottom there. no cost of goods sold. BUT yet here I am... even though I targeted areas to gain market share my base price is ALOT higher than most digitizers! During the FREE trial periods we hoped to gain a relationship. Touting value added ideas:

Design backup up by a nationally recognized company every 12 hours! (Rackspace)
24/7 access to all your design history... no charge
Experienced digitizers
Website for ordering/quoting/edits/revision
Net 30 terms
Not the best in all aspects of digitizing of course and we never have said so.. BUT when you need a specialty item done we are their go to provider. Many clients have starting digitizing for themselves or have offshored to save money.. but when needed they still come back to us for the very difficult or specialty items. win win

ayugup · April 15th, 2017, 01:17 PM

You are right about that
Mostly i get my shirt for around $5 bucks

minimalist · April 19th, 2017, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Young

OK but if the "race to the bottom" did not work.. WalMart would not be in business!

Do you agree??

When I was "empire building" years ago I would target a town... pick one... let's say Nashville...

FREE digitizing for ALL embroidery shops in that town for 90 days...shut out quite a few digitizers that way... built a business. My point is YOU have to be more AGGRESSIVE than your competition or get out. If 90 days did not decimate my competition I would add months to that. Business is a competition... either you are in or you move on. sorry.

Not necessarily. Walmart has another side of their success that you and I pay for on a daily basis. Just about every time a new store is built there are numerous tax breaks they receive from the city that affect the prices they can get for their merchandise. You or I will not get the same deal. With construction comes infrastructure upgrades. Those are paid for by you and I in the form of gasoline taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes. Their employees generally don't have health insurance due to the low pay and guess who again gets to pay for that in the long run. We could go on and on but I think you get the point. Business is competition but not a level playing field according to the grantors of the "special privileges".

I get it, you lowered your prices to zero to drive competition out. I'll throw in a quote from the FTC:

Pricing below your own costs is also not a violation of the law unless it is part of a strategy to eliminate competitors, and when that strategy has a dangerous probability of creating a monopoly for the discounting firm so that it can raise prices far into the future and recoup its losses.

Is the above quote contradictory? Sure, it's done all the time. Just look at Apple's itunes and expensive storage devices for that medium. Nobody seems to care.

Concerning the low price issue I'll put it this way. Everybody want low prices but those same people want their Walmart stock portfolio to go up in value at the same time.

minimalist · April 19th, 2017, 01:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ayugup

Well Business is competition, and just like everything people will go to the cheapest price.
Some of My customers are returning because of Good Quality
Truly the reason Walmart is in great position, is because they have everything. JCPenney ( although a lot cheaper than many stores) is closing multiple stores. Payless is the same.

Truly The Competition is everything, But the American Dream is Dying. Each Walmart store has about 8 Self Checkout lines, and many people are shopping online. and Many American people are losing jobs
I just had a customer who bought shirt for $2 From Amazon. My cost of shirt is $5 or more. How can i sell For $2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6.

In My area, there are people who come just to steal stuff and we have to watch everything.

So The More bottom you go, The More you lose. Its true you have to adjust to Market, But If i drop too low, then what the point of me working.

The American Dream died when one party said "there outta be a law". That party bought themselves protection in the form of regulation.

If you want to play the game reduce your expenses and only concentrate on things that are profitable. I assure you that it's much cheaper to buy a bucket, squeegee, and a bottle of soap for $30 then washing windows for $5.00 rather than paying loads of personal property taxes on your inventory and machines each year.

The point of your work is to benefit you. Anything else is a false pretense.

naldopr · April 21st, 2017, 02:00 AM

Mmm �� they get cheaper prices in the other place same brand of shirt? I call my distributor and let them know if no action is done ✅ I stop buying from them! I haven't seen an business succeed by been cheaper. At the end how the paid them self?

ayugup · April 21st, 2017, 08:19 AM

Well then what about Gildan, Dickies( I don't order from dickies anymore), Riders by Lee( I carry Lee), French Toast is carried by cotsco and rainbow and almost now every company you deal with is carried by some other big companies.
Even though I do monogramming, That the main reason I'm surviving in Business. Because other than that Kids want aeropastle pants ( which I dont carry )

When I talked to alphabroder, Big Wholesale company, They said walmart get cheaper than them, and even they can't compete with walmart

ayugup · April 21st, 2017, 08:29 AM

Funny Story I got to tell you, I work in a Family Business in Louisiana
There is a Bus System which gives out uniform money to employees so they can buy the uniform, they are funded by the public.

They are Given 250-300 dollars, so they can buy uniform. 2 times a year they are given money. They suppose to buy uniform shirt from another place where each shirt cost around $40. and then they come to me to monogram. Now they sell some good Shirts. They are 100% polyester, thick quality, have multiple pen and 1 Glasses Holder.

Its almost like this shirt but 100% polyester
http://www.lapolicegear.com/operator-tactical-polo.html

Now This is what they actually do with the money, They Buy polo Shirts from Walmart ,plain, for like $6, and then they come to monogram for almost $6 each. and sometimes they bring 1 or 2 shirts.

The rest of the money, they spend on themselves. Such as nails, shoes and everything like that.

Now what do you guys think about this story