Images Magazine Digital Edition August 2018

KB BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT www.images-magazine.com 30 images AUGUST 2018 undue – and unpaid – risk. The trick is to get paid for the preparation work required to secure these orders. The minimum assets you need to provide for the customer include: • Some form of mock-up to show potential buyers • Accurate pricing information • Garment specifications • Production dates/times To create a saleable ‘package’, you’ll need to improve on this minimum offering, adding quality and consulting to help the customer create the most cost- effective and attractive product possible and market it properly. The difficulty isn’t in creating the asset package so much, but in convincing your cash-strapped client of its value, and that starts with valuing it yourself. Shops tends to hate orders from this type of customer because they make the mistake of treating them in an identical fashion to the classic, large-run orders they receive from their trusted sources. Do you often dole out free labour on basic mock-ups and art alterations before any agreements are made? While this may pan out with larger orders, speculative, small runs aren’t guaranteed to cover these costs: hence, the requirement for a different approach to this market sector. The ‘product’ This is why you need to create a pre- order package that collects valuable assets and makes selling easier. Packaging these assets and educating customers on the pre-sale process is your justification for charging for work we might have performed gratis for larger, more secure customers. Packages should include: • High quality mock-ups of the decorated product made for social media promotion and/or files to print preview flyers – i.e. not wireframes or simple art mock-ups that we might use for a usual quote request • Forms, online or off, that enable the simple collection of order information and include everything customers need to know about production and delivery schedules • Garment/accessory specs or sheets that provide necessary sizing and construction information • Optional: online ordering and/or payment systems for previewing and collecting information and/or payment before production. The value proposition Still feeling reticent about charging a profitable amount based on the time required to create this finished package? Then you need to remind yourself of the very real benefits these tools provide and which will help you to justify the cost to your customer. For example: • High quality mock-ups using images specific to chosen garments/accessories are not only more enticing than self- made, generic mock-ups, they prevent the ‘surprises’ that may occur if you’re only showing design previews, or when finished garments don’t match generic mock-up templates • Organisational forms make it easier and less onerous for your customer to collect information. Moreover, online tools can entirely remove your customer from chasing the orders, payments and information necessary to realise production (leaving them more time to Some ecommerce solutions will allowyou to quickly and simply create a virtual sample on the vendor‘s website Pre-ordering allows brands to test how popular certain garments are without paying for samples A high quality mock-up is more enticing to audiences than a generic image