are sales reps smarter than a high school student?

Robert Young · December 19th, 2017, 12:26 PM

Recently conducted an experiment with a local high school as part of it... permission slips and all

I get it, these young adults may have an edge as they pay attention to what they see in the stores at the mall. BUT the sales reps SELL these embroidered items all the time.

Students won. not even close. Industry sales reps come across as just "paper pushers" , "order takers" where the students pretty much always suggested... hey this is too small, this will not work, how about changing layout to this.

amazing.

I will show this in a video soon. but the common feeling was... hey just look at the design at the size you want to embroider it. the young adults instantly SAW the problems. the older PAPER PUSHERS just assumed they would just pass it on to the digitizer or embroiderer and THEN they would go back to the client. how? why?

lazy?

ltpemb · December 19th, 2017, 02:04 PM

This has been a trend that has been picking up that I have been noticing and tracking for a few years now. It has always existed but with new Internet trends and the competition with big online retailers (there are some good online businesses but im more talking about the BIG ones) dragging things down by "dumbing" down the process...
And operating on # of orders over profitibility on orders... the mentality has shifted from learning skills and training how to manage clients artwork and expectations to learning how to sell more orders quicker to make up the difference.

Simply put the paper pushers are leveraging quick sales using tighter margins and no oversight into the actual work or process... They are handing it off cause they don't make enough money on that one order to justify spending any more time or money on it and move to the next order. (when your selling 24 shirts that retail for $14.95 with standard markup, then add a 10K stitch logo that you contract the order out and only charge $16-17... spending any more time than "take money/place orders/give items" becomes a loss.)

I mean I know how to put in competitive bids but the level of margin some people are taking are ridiculous... Ive seen the invoices on some...

The flip side is that the lower quality of work that you get from cheap/low quality digitizers has also come to be seen as passable by so many that they manage to get away with it more often than they don't.

But that has been my take on the whole thing with the bulk of local competition... there is only one other competitor within 15 miles that actually make an effort to understand before they sell.

Robert Young · December 19th, 2017, 03:10 PM

Interesting and frustrating observations! But i agree with you. Study----- in general how long do bottom feeders last in the industry vs committed persons? in general how much profit does each make?

paraphrasing here but who said something like: "if you don't have enough work then raise your prices. This will put you in contact with a different level of client" ?

ltpemb · December 20th, 2017, 05:55 PM

I have looked into both of those as well.
For some reason my local area is highly saturated with these smaller paper pushers or minimum overhead... out of garage businesses... As well as customers who would rather spend their time putting businesses up against each other to under bid the other just to save a dollar an item.

Their profit margins are generally around 15-30% margin at best INCLUDING APPAREL. But due to the lack of overhead they can maintain it... or if they go bust the ease of creating accounts and websites there is always someone new. The internet has only compounded the speed at which these businesses pop up and go down in the last 2-3 years with all the API websites that allow anyone to set up a site. And Cross compare.

Because of the lack of knowledge on the paper pusher side or even the cheap out of house people you end up even getting that kind of thing even on the contract side of things you get people trying to put business against business to squeak out an extra dollar. And the willingness to jump ship at a moments notice...

Eventually you get people who are after high quality but often times people will jump from cheap business to cheap business... because they can't conceive of the idea that "if I want good quality I have to pay for it." but that is my personal experience from the local area.

And due to turnover or restructuring of businesses who have the kind of money to spend on volume... You often get a new person is in charge who starts going "I need to prove I can save money or do it better..." Or has a friend of a friend in the industry who they can have underbid after going to the primary source spending 4 hours with them then taking their quote and going elsewhere with it to underbid. (had that happen just today after a week of helping a client)

SunEmbroidery · January 1st, 2018, 04:38 PM

I think the constant devaluation of clothing continues to hurt the apparel industry. It seems that most clothing is on sale from just before Thanksgiving into January often with a different sale price depending on the day. I love taking advantage of sale pricing for my personal purchases but it seems like the public now expects to buy almost all apparel on sale and if item is embroidered that shouldn't add must to the cost. The value of having a CUSTOM logo on a piece of apparel, a form of portable advertising, has been lost along with the general value of clothing.

Robert Young · January 2nd, 2018, 09:48 AM

but doesn't your conversation kinda help my hypothesis? STOP bottom feeding!! Do NOT deal with the people that are only Price Driven. ??? I mean if I accurately price an embroidery for an interior designer at $50. (meaning that is actually what the thing is worth) they will not bite... but if I take the SAME design and price it at $500. well... all of a sudden they bite!

You only need one out of ten then.... just sayin.