Build Your Business: Management

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June 1, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked the biggest change that La Tonna Roberson, sales manager at Dallas-based Roberson Printing & Graphics and TShirtShopDallas.com, had seen in her shop in 20 years. “A year ago, 60% of our sales came from in-store orders; 35% from email and telephone; and only 5% came in via our e-commerce site,” she says. “Today, our online sales are through the roof, at 80%.”

However, that sea change didn’t happen without much effort and many quick moves. When local lockdown orders came, Roberson’s team posted a pop-up button on the company’s website: “Shop Our Virtual Showroom Now.” Staff members hopped on Google Meet to e-guide customers through the showroom with product closeups.

“Customers couldn’t believe what we could do online,” she says. “It’s been a huge, huge hit. The days of doing business the old way are outdated. With e-commerce, you sell products to anyone, anytime, anywhere — even in your sleep.”

Even though Roberson’s offering in-person appointments again as COVID-19 shows signs of subsiding and state governments loosen safety-related restrictions and protocols, most of her customers still choose to shop online. “That excites us, since we can focus more on what we do best: printing,” she says, revealing the shop’s overall sales are up 8% as of this past February.

Roberson’s experience illustrates what’s been happening across the decorated-apparel landscape the last few years, but accelerated in 2020. “For a decade, cutting-edge shops have been selling via e-commerce,” says Mark Bagley, director of marketing at Brother Intl. Corp. “However, over the past 12 months, we’ve seen exponential growth of even the smaller garment-decorating shops investing in e-commerce solutions as they change the way they’re doing business with customers well beyond their own city limits.”

E-commerce will become the norm, not the exception, according to JP Hunt, co-founder of InkSoft. “Historically, global e-commerce transactions and volume grow yearly,” he says. “The next generation of entrepreneurs in our space will be digital natives. This ‘Digital Darwinism’ will force laggards to adapt or perish.”

Along with other industry experts, Hunt predicts e-commerce and print-on-demand (POD) growth eventually will rule the day. “Short-run length, fast fulfillment and smaller — but more frequent — transactions will be usual course of business,” he says. “Pivoting and optimizing for both e-commerce technologies and print-on-demand capabilities is a winning mix.”

While online stores are a huge boon for many shops — with the ability to pull customers from anywhere and bolster cash flow since you’re paid upfront — others must catch up or risk being left behind. “If you outsource everything or don’t have in-house customizing options, this will crush your profit margins and limit what you can offer,” says Howard Potter, CEO of Utica, New York-based A&P Master Images. “You need stellar artwork, since clip art won’t cut it. You need staff to fulfill orders fast, because if your lead time is longer than seven business days, you’ll lose the customer as quickly as you got them.”

To stay competitive, smart shop owners are revamping their shop operations, with robust online stores, holistic ERP software and streamlined workflows.

Shops Embrace Change
Roberson laid the groundwork for changes at her shop by sending an email survey to clients with a cheeky message: “COVID sucks and so does our site. Please help us fix it.”

She learned that her customers just wanted a simple ordering experience — with emails that informed them about their product’s progress — with great results. “We overhauled with a less-is-more concept,” she says. “The site displays our 20 best-selling products for online ordering, with an easy-to-understand, quantity-based pricing tier.”

Since face-to-face interactions have slowed, the Roberson Printing & Graphics team puts more energy into showing their personality via emails, video chats, blogs and social-media marketing. To counterbalance that, Roberson automated about 90% of her administrative processes.

“With the help of automation software, small shops can streamline their [administrative] workflow for a fraction of the cost it takes to hire employees,” Roberson says. “Without automatic workflows, we spent countless hours speaking to customers and completing these tasks. Our shop production increased by 27%.”

Potter upgraded his shop’s software to handle the 200 online customer stores his team manages even more robustly. “We also ensured our production times for 24/7/365 stores five business days or less,” he says.

Since his team has created and managed online customer stores for a decade, Potter used 2020 to perfect the process from all angles. “Our clients of all sizes are taking advantage of this online platform that helps them with free marketing and getting their brand out there,” he says.

These days, buyers expect an easy online-ordering process and fast delivery, like the “Amazon experience.” That means decorators are tweaking their operations to offer a print-on-demand service that gets short-run orders out the door almost instantly. During COVID-19, many shops started sending orders directly to individual buyers, and that fulfillment-partner role isn’t likely to change.

“You need to get really good at e-commerce; inventory; bagging and tagging; and shipping to different locations, since all this gives you a bigger margin,” says Bruce Ackerman, founder of Printavo. “We’re seeing 30%-40% of shops doing this, so it’s a good sales weapon to have right now. Even when in-person events happen again, online stores will still have their place in your sales services since people are used to ordering this way.”

Closing the Online-Store Gap
Of course, webstores play a central role in facilitating e-commerce in the wholesale print space. “Webstores and e-commerce align with what consumers expect, need and want,” Hunt says. “Online ordering is the simplest, fastest way to purchase products. Making it easier for consumers to do business with you removes costly friction and frustration.”

In 2020, lots of decorators started offering fundraising webstores for existing and new customers. These stores are built and maintained — and orders are fulfilled — by decorators, who send the customers a cut of the profits. Generally, you always should pitch and present the value of online stores to all your customers, regardless of whether they do fundraising.

Hunt sees decorators struggling with the same technology-adoption challenges. “The implementation gap is the one I see most, where shop owners just don’t carry out their strategy,” he says. “It’s hard to implement and fully execute.”

The second hurdle Hunt sees is that decorators don’t assign people with the right expertise to drive online-store initiatives. “You need the right people in place to make this a reality,” he says.

Of course, if you partner with an industry-specific, online-store vendor, such as InkSoft, Printavo, OrderMyGear, DecoNetwork or Spirit Sale, you’ll know what you need to hit your goal. The InkSoft and Printavo online-store tools also connect to apparel suppliers’ real-time inventory.

“A good technology provider has well-developed resources and tools to ensure their shop customers can be successful,” Hunt says.

If you’re new to running customer stores, Ackerman recommends creating one for a customer with good engagement via social media or an email list. Make it simple, with three products: lower-end (tote for $15), mid-range (T-shirt for $20) and higher-end (hoodie for $25). “As you go, correct every pain point or bottleneck in the process,” he says. “You have nowhere to go but up. We’re seeing shops do $1 million a year just from [webstores].”

Ackerman points out that some shops charge $100-$200 to set up a store or ask for a monthly maintenance fee. “You can use year-round stores to push through your slower seasons,” he says. “Some shops change products and designs from season to season. Others offer limited-run — or cart-open, cart-close — offers to increase FOMO.”

The ERP Advantage
Integrating shopping carts and digital storefronts with shop-management software automates and streamlines the transmission of quotes, orders and purchase orders between suppliers and the software with real-time prices and inventory information,” says Dana Drinnin, global strategic account manager at Aptean, which offers Impress enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

She says nearly 60% of the time she talks to shops, they’re struggling to manage orders since they don’t have an ERP solution in place. There are several benefits, including decreased labor costs, increased order accuracy and faster order fulfillment. An integrated solution allows rapid and accurate order processing that occurs throughout the day.

“This is especially important for [direct-to-garment] (DTG) products with a quick turnaround, since customers expect immediate printing and shipping of their items,” Drinnin says. “The pandemic has accelerated DTG and POD by at least five years.”

Before the pandemic, music-artist tours fueled 90% of Chicago-based Culture Studio’s business. “In 2020, our business shifted to 100% e-commerce and retail,” says CEO Rich Santo. However, since the shop had developed an ERP platform called Stokkup.com in 2015, the team successfully changed its workflow model on a dime.

Now available for all screen printers, Stokkup.com gives shop owners an end-to-end way to manage core functions: client communication (orders and art approvals); overall workflow (scheduling machines and managing capacity); and shipping and distribution. One of the platform’s core functionalities is to batch orders into bulk as they enter the system.

“When multiple orders of the same product come in, they get grouped together for decoration,” says Oscar Flores, Sr., software engineer at Stokkup.com. “This allows shops to increase their profit margin, and still screen print rather than switch to digital printing.”

A challenge that shops will face in this area, according to Flores, is figuring out an accurate production plan. “Do you have the infrastructure in place to keep up with on-demand and bulk orders?” he asks. “Or will you need to sub out to other printers to keep up with demand? Do you have a team that’s knowledgeable about the e-commerce space who can properly manage the products and orders as they come in?”

Seamlessly transmitting orders into an ERP platform — along with product and artwork details, as well as other order information — simplifies the order-entry process and limits human interaction. “Your ability to accommodate multiple customer stores, shopping-cart sites and platforms with a shop-wide system is essential, as additional integrations mean more exposure to a company’s products and potentially more online orders,” Drinnin says. “That also helps streamline your workflow when you’re a fulfillment partner and need to get orders out ASAP.”

Communication between the ERP solution and e-commerce platforms like InkSoft gives a shop owner real-time inventory visibility to eliminate order delays.

At Roberson Printing & Graphics, the team uses a straightforward system: When a customer places an order online, it moves onto an “orders” board and automatic emails go out to staffers letting them know to procure blanks. Any art uploaded by the buyer is uploaded to the client’s folder in the cloud server. All customer correspondence also gets saved to that folder.

“Our customers can login to their accounts and see their order status in real time,” Roberson says.

Getting Clear on Workflow
A huge part of a shop’s success is integrating its e-commerce system into its production workflow. When Tyrone M. Robinson III, owner of Opportunities 2 Serve, works with decorators, he first maps every decorating process — including customization options — end-to-end in the shop and identifies
bottlenecks as they appear.

“This visualization helps leaders and employees understand their roles better because they see what’s happening and how they interact with their software,” he says. The most common bottlenecks are the same as the solutions: people, process, systems and technology. “[Success involves] almost always tweaking a mix of those.”

To get started in your own shop, analyze the next job that comes in the door. “Look at each step and determine the time it takes,” Brother Intl. Corp.’s Bagley says. “See where you can decrease time in certain steps and if software tools can help with efficiency. Finally, complete a return-on-investment analysis to see if it makes sense to invest in the software based on your shop’s specific needs.”

Since POD and one-offs are standard in e-commerce, Bagley suggests finding ways to automate artwork preparation to be more profitable with short runs, while also increasing production of customized shirts per hour. “The time it can take to prepare the artwork to be printed, pressed or embroidered on the garment is usually the same for one garment as it is for hundreds or more,” he says.

Even smaller garment-decorating shops can benefit from automation software, Bagley says, especially when it comes to deskilling the tasks to lower the learning curve for new employees. “Software tools can help create and apply shop settings for specific garments and tell the equipment what to do if you scan a barcode,” he says. “This makes it easier to train new employees and decrease misprints.”

Brother offers its customers different software tools — whether coded internally or through authorized third-party companies — that provide workflow automation to its DTG printers. “With our GTXpro series of printers, we provide a software design kit that allows shops to create their own software tools,” Bagley says.

Nicole Rollender is CEO and co-founder of New Jersey-based Strand Writing Services. For more information or to comment on this article, connect with Nicole at strandwritingservices.com.