Do You Want To Sell Your Brand At True?????????
August 21st, 2008As the buyer at True Men’s I have the opportunity to look at hundreds upon hundreds of brands, and looking through all of their designs adds up to a few thousand designs every season. I am happy to see that a lot of people are doing something creative and expressing themselves in a manner that is positive and original.
So if you are a designer, or if you just started up a company, or you are trying to help your company grow, then please continue reading.
I would love to see each and every single brand grow, and eventually bloom into a successful business. There are certain things you MUST have ready before you can sell your designs, without these tools you will have a harder chance of selling your goods.
The first and most important thing you need is called a “Line Sheet”
The second thing you need is called a “Price Sheet”
The third (and forth) are optional, and those would be called your “Look Book” and “Press Kit”
1.) The Line Sheet
So the first thing you must have is something called a ‘Line Sheet’. A Line Sheet is a catalog of your designs.
An important aspect to keep in mind when putting together a good line sheet is to KEEP EVERYTHING SIMPLE!!!!!! The reason you want to keep your line sheet simple is because there is A LOT of IMPORTANT information to present to a buyer.
What you SHOULD have on a basic Line Sheet:
- A clear and straight forward picture of the graphic
- The placement of the graphic on the t-shirt.
- A name and or a description of the design, i.e. “Logo tee”
- A style number for each design (this can be any series of digits, it also might reflect a certain season, i.e. “T2001SP09″.)
- The colorways of t-shirts you will offer the design on.
- The sizing you offer the T-shirts in, i.e. “M-2XL”
- The season of the product
- When you are planning on shipping the product out. This is known as your “Ship Window”, i.e. (Start ship 1/15/08.)
Check out the sample Line Sheet Below
Putting together a good line sheet will increase your chances of becoming successful.
Some extra tips:
You shouldn’t try to be too “creative” with your line sheet, there are a few reasons for this. The most important reason is, when you become too creative with the linesheet it actually takes away from what you are trying to sell, or communicate through your design, it’s like trying to have a conversation with someone inside a noisy club, there is too much distraction. A line sheet is boring. So when a buyer see’s something is as plain as a line sheet, the designs really tend to stand out.
Don’t try to put your hopes and dreams just into one single store. Try to convert your line sheet into a PDF format, this way you can instantly send them out digitally to everyone you need to.
Plan Plan Plan ahead, send your line sheet a few months before you go in to production. If you send your line sheet’s out early you have time to ask for feedback from the stores you sent them out to. You can test out what buyer’s thought would, or would not, work for them. Do this will save you costly mistakes.
Have an order deadline date. Having an order deadline date will only help you get orders!!! It will also give you time to go into production and hopefully enough time to ship within your ship window. Be sure to send out friendly email reminders of your approaching deadline.
2.) The Price Sheet
The second piece of information you will need is called the ‘price sheet’. When you send out your line sheet you should include a price sheet as well.
A price sheet is basically the prices for the products. It can be easily made in excel, without advanced knowledge of excel.
All of the information you have on your line sheet should be on the price sheet, as well as your address, phone numbers, email addresses. Buyer’s will use the price sheet to place orders, and or, use it for referencing.
Make sure that you have all the information you think might come in handy, as well as information you want to gather from the stores.
