Curb Appeal

Looks can be everything in the embroidery industry.

Curb Appeal is a common term within the real estate industry. It’s a well known fact among realtors that if the exterior of a home is a turn-off to a prospective buyer, they are pretty much wasting their time trying to get that person to step foot through the door for a look inside. (Having spent time in the backseat of an agent’s car, I can attest to this fact!) Thus, they encourage the home seller to make every effort to enhance the outside areas of their property before putting it on the market, in order to improve their chances of enticing potential buyers. This is a crucial first step in the home-selling process.

The same concept carries over to embroidery, or should I say, the embroidery selling process. How do you present your products for sale? Are you one who focuses on just pitching embroidery, or do you promote the whole package? Unless you are a contract shop, you should be tuned in to the concept of selling products, rather than embroidery. After all, in most cases you are producing goods that feature embroidery as a part of the package, but not the only part. For example, a polo shirt embroidered with a company logo should be marketed as a unique method of advertising and branding for that particular business entity. And that means the total shirt, not just the logo, should be used to deliver the message. Too many times, you get caught in the crossfire between listening to the customer (most of whom have no idea what they want) and coming up with the lowest price, with creativity taking a back seat. Unfortunately, lack of product excitement can lead to lack of profits.

Step back for a minute and look at what you are offering and how you present it. Are you approaching your customers with bland, everyday concepts or exciting and inspiring product packages? For example, maybe you had a school who wanted their mascot on a royal blue cap, so you gave them a sample of just that, without anything extra. They looked at it and said “hmmm.” But what if you had taken a different approach? What if you had researched the school a little bit more and found that their colors were royal and gold? Then you did some product research and found a really cool royal blue cap with gold and white trim. Then you took the time to sew their mascot using thread colors that tied into the colors of the cap. Upon delivery of this sample (in place of the ordinary blue cap), chances are the customer would have reacted with an “oh wow” instead of a “hmmm.” Exciting product presentations can make a real difference.

Curb appeal can open a lot of doors and generate a lot of interest when approaching new customers, but don’t let it end there. Make it your signature. Regardless of whether it’s a potential customer or an existing account, continue to promote curb appeal on a daily basis. As a real-life example, several years ago my wife noticed that the staff at our eye doctor’s office was wearing bland nurse’s uniforms with one tiny bright spot – the clinic’s logo embroidered on the left chest. But the overall presentation was rather lifeless – white uniforms and dull embroidery. She came home with all kinds of ideas spinning in her head and began digging through the mounds of apparel catalogs that we routinely ordered for unique product ideas. Rather quickly, she came across a company that specialized in medical uniforms with a fashion flair – bright colors, prints, etc. She ordered some samples of printed tops with matching solid color bottoms. We then set up their logo using thread that tied into the colors of the tops. We kept the basic logo colors, but took some liberties with certain elements in order to tie into the colors in the clothing. The results were truly awe-inspiring compared to what the staff was currently wearing.

As expected, the “package” made a huge impact on the customer and led to a sizeable order. But we didn’t let it end there. My wife continued to create more product ideas and presented them to the customer on a regular basis. To make a long story short, they ordered five sets of uniforms for each staff member four times per year (at each change of the seasons). This developed into a profitable account (40 plus staff members) that all started with curb appeal. Though there may be some risk, we made it a standard practice to vary logo colors on a routine basis in order to match embroidery thread colors to garment colors and thus achieve the look we were after. The key is not to alter critical parts of the design, but just tie it in as needed. In the photo you can see a fishing tournament logo. The yellow text was originally done in red, but we really liked this jacket and it was only available with a yellow panel, so we knew that yellow had to be a prominent part of the embroidery in order to make this product/logo combination work. Thus, we applied a bit of artistic liberty to the job and changed the line of text to yellow. It achieved the results we were after and the rest is history. Curb appeal won out again! Curb appeal can certainly make a difference in the sales process, but in the real world, you don’t win every account. Though it would be ideal to create innovative product packages for each potential customer, in reality it would be an expensive endeavor, since you would be forking out your money in speculation of seeing a quick return on your investment. In reality, it just doesn’t happen that way. As an alternative, you can create a blank (non-logo’d items) apparel sample kit that steers clear of the ordinary, with a focus on the extraordinary. Use it to show the customer ideas rather than finished products. If you are really enterprising and have an auto-digitizing system, you might create a quick rendition of their design with appropriate thread colors and print it out on a clear sheet of acetate (overhead projector transparency). You can then overlay this transparent print-out over any existing garment in your collection, generating a reasonable facsimile of what the end product might look like without investing the time and money to digitize and sew-out the design on the garment. (NOTE: I’m not a big fan of auto-digitizing systems for generating production-quality designs, but some of them work well enough to create visual concepts for sales presentations.) If you don’t have auto-digitizing capabilities, but have access to an art or drawing program, you might be able to take a copy of the prospective client’s logo off the internet (or scan it from printed material). Then change any colors necessary to match the logo to the garments you plan to show, and print it out on clear acetate as well. The only real difference in the two methods is that one will be flat while the other appears to be stitched. Either way, your investment will be virtually zero, but the results have the potential to be so much more. Curb Appeal! It’s what can set your shop apart from all the rest. Let’s face it, any embroiderer can deliver a white polo with a logo, but not every embroiderer is willing to go above and beyond. And if all you have to offer is the “same old, same old,” then the only edge you will have over the competition is price, which is definitely not the position you want to be in. The end result may find you very busy sewing boring garments, but not making much money in the process. Curb appeal, on the other hand, might be just the ticket to win over customers, without sacrificing on price. By: James M. (Jimmy) Lamb Published: December 2007