The other day, I mentioned I was going to a convention to sell shirts. The convention was PhenomeCon, a day-long event that featured the usual convention fare, speakers, vendors, etc. My company, Progressive Design Apparel, printed the convention’s shirts and setup as a vendor at the event. Ben, from our art department, created a great design for us to sell on shirts at PhenomeCon. We printed 72 shirts on smoke, aloe, independence red, city green, and lake Anvil T’s.
Ben’s design incorporated various imagery from the paranormal world, angels, skulls, and ghosts. It also had a Ghostbusters quote for a little humor–”Back off man, I’m a scientist.” Instead of normal plastisol, we used discharge and water-based black. For those that don’t know, plastisol is the type of ink most shirts are printed with. It’s a plasitc-based ink and can be a little heavy. Discharge is a chemical reaction that takes the die out of the fabric. The reason you’d do this is twofold, 1) because it adds zero weight to the shirt, and 2) it allows you to add lighter, water-based ink without the dark shirt color bleeding through. The combination of discharge and water-based black gives the shirts a light feel and an extremely soft hand.
Everyone loved Ben’s design, so I boxed up the shirts and headed south to Columbus, Indiana’s Crump Theater, location of PhenomeCon. We knew our audience. Or so we thought. Turns out we got lots of compliments on the shirts there as well. But we didn’t sell very many. Why?
It wasn’t the price; no one tried to haggle. It wasn’t the design; lots of people told us it was cool. It turns out that there was a unique physical characteristic that the majority of the audience shared. And this hampered our sales. In fact, it entirely hamstringed our success.
Lesson learned?
Know your audience.
Don’t just know what your audience likes. Know who they are. Know why they like what they like. Know why they don’t like what they dislike. Knowing who your audience is and not just the perfect item to sell them will make sure you don’t end up like me, with a box of product and a convention of interest.
3 responses so far ↓
Nathania // April 24, 2008 at 8:10 am
That’s a tough lesson, but thank you for sharing it. Knowing your audience is so key to success in almost everything.
And it can be difficult to balance your passion versus what the people really want/need.
Ah, the journey continues.
devonellington // April 28, 2008 at 12:13 pm
What was the unique physical characteristic? They were missing arms?
Even if they were all in suits, they could buy a tee shirt to wear later.
Michael Lombardi // April 28, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Nathania,
Yes, a tough lesson indeed. Thanks for your comment. I enjoy your blog.
devonellington,
Well, I’m not trying to call anyone out on what is perceived by some to be a “flaw”. I’ll tell you this: If I expect a normal range of people to show up so I can sell them cute toe-socks, what happens when the vast majority of people have 12 toes? It’s not unheard of, it’s just uncommon. Unfortunately, it’s in bad taste to say to your next client, “hey we didn’t do so well at an event, your members don’t have any special traits we need to know about like having 6 toes on each foot, do they?”
Does that make sense?