School Program and MORE

[SynFX 1]

OK...

Does ANYONE want to work with me to develop a program to take to

schools in your area that can generate income.  This will be geared

towards the Student Council, supplying them with order forms with

marked-up pricing to help generate money for events and such.

We need to figure out prices on specific sizes, develop order forms,

receipts, and minimum order size among other things.. What do YOU

think we need? This will help give us some more direction. I thought

maybe a website that can be ordered from that could be used to send

orders directly to the sign shop would be nice and expedite the process.

The products they would sell would be up to the STUCO. School name

or logo, sports stickers, names, or other graphics pre-made to order OR

for a small additional fee a custom job.  These of course would be sold

to the students attending the school, no outside sales.

I have thought about this quite a bit and decided to call on my fellow

forum members to see about developing something that everyone can

use that would benefit us ALL!

But why stop there.. can we develop other ideas, forms, etc to take

to other places to help us all generate more income like advertising

that we can propose to laundry mats, gas stations, car washes, and

other high traffic areas..

your thoughts everyone...? anyone will to collaborate a bit? This should

be the first of many ideas that we can all develop and share to help us

grow our businesses!

[rynecoop 0]

Cody, this sounds like a good idea but I am not sure what exactly you would want the schools to do?  Like to sell decals with the school logo, or to have them go out and get the jobs?  I think offering to make them there logos at a discounted price, and letting them mark them up would be a good idea, because then you make $ on the decals and the schools would make $ on the mark up to raise funds for certain programs, and events at the school.  Hope this helps a little, lets here some more of what your thoughts are, so I can understand a little better.

[SynFX 1]

I edited the first comment to suit your question..

[rynecoop 0]

cody I think you have a good idea there.  I would make up some sort of presentation to take into a school and present your idea to them, and mainly show them the product, and how they can benifit for selling these.  If you did this, I would personally charge about $4-5 a sq.ft. for this so that way they can charge the $9, and make a nice profit, so that way they will try to sell more of them.

[SynFX 1]

a sandwich board with the information neatly placed on it would be a great

sales tool when approaching schools or businesses for that matter about

starting something like this.  The information, layout and feel of the whole

thing needs to be professional and easily editable to be used by each of our

businesses.  Needs to be a quick copy and paste to outfit the forms, fliers,

and other printable items with your logos.

[Jay2703 704]

Sounds like a great Idea but why no outside sales. I would think selling things at sporting events would make a lot of money for the schools.

[SynFX 1]

Well I did not mean NOT at functions at home or away.. I meant outside of school events or to family etc..

Tear-Away banners, wooden signs for football or for cheerleaders or something would be cool.

[Jay2703 704]

I think it's a great idea. I did a bunch of window stickers and donated them to our high school cheer squad as a fundraiser. They plan on selling them in the concession stand at games. I thought about making them for oposing teams too.

[FatDad 2]

for those of you that are already selling to schools can you give us in insight as to how you charge them and what you do? T-shirts, signs, vehicle graphics, etc.

[tory 0]

Hi all

I can tell you schools want things cheap. My daughter is in Student Council and we are currently working on a design to use as a fundraiser, window stickers. I also sell Staff garments, the different sports Ts/Hoodies/Sweats, Student Council shirts. I think you have a great idea Cody and I've been trying for a couple years now to think of a way to streamline the ordering process for the schools, dance studios, and yacht club that order on a regular continuing basis. I don't know how to make a web page, wish I did because I need one for myself. But I do think a page to direct them to their items would work great. Once the customer places an order you could give the agreed upon commission back to the business/fundraiser etc. To make it easier maybe on a monthly basis. My experience has been these businesses don't want to be bothered with the details. So if we could come up with a way for them to make money AND not be aggravated they may go for it. I would def be interested to see this work. Does anyone here know how to make web pages and the costs involved? Went to a trade show recently saw a cool idea for allowing people to create their own shirts and it automatically sends you an order for the particular shirt and vector art. Very cool......but the price for the software was $2000 the first yr and $1000/yr thereafter. A lil pricey and not sure I could sell that much to recoup the yearly costs. But the idea of not having to chase designs or garments (they use one vendor's catalog) is very enticing. I'm all ears if you have more ideas?

[Benr98 40]

Tory...I'm sending you a pm

Jenny

[SynFX 1]

Hey.. since you already work with this I value the information and knowledge you have already.

I do have website development skills that could come in handy in a situation like this, however, it is limited to basic HTML and could not include Build-a-Sign tools or be able to place orders.. I do however have access to an individual or two that can produce something like this.

PAPER ORDERING -------------

How it could work: an order form with pre-made design provided by the STUCO, determined by talking with the student body, parents, and faculty to find out what they would like.. Funny sayings, images, shirts, banners, yard signs,  STUCO shirts, jerseys, custom parent shirts, custom bumper stickers, or other items.. We can also provide custom wording at a rate per square inch.

The forms: Two order forms will be provided to the STUCO, one with FULL PRICE, which includes their profit, and the WHOLESALE form that will be filled out and submitted to the sign shop. This will let them know how much they made even before placing the order with the shop.  They would order the item with quantity each week based on their orders they receive from students and parents compiled into one single form so it is easier for the sign shop.  The orders will be filled and returned to the STUCO to distribute one-time a week.

The money: This should either be collected at the time the order is placed by the student, parent, or faculty so there is no waiting done. IMMEDIATELY there will be profit for the STUCO to use as they wish, the remaining or 'wholesale' cost will go to the sign shop. 

WEB ORDERING -------

We could do a website one of two ways.. Which I think NOT having a website could be detrimental to our business and our goal with this project. This will start with US here, and potentially end with MANY MANY more shops and schools around the globe. What I believe will be best would be to have the website built at cost by one individual or a small group of people, preferably 3 or less, and charge a small fee per month to use the forms, website access, tools and features provided therein. Using such a tool will increase the income for both school and sign shop, being easier to place and fill orders.

COST of WEBSITE: There will be a monthly fee, or percentage associated with access to such a website and its tools and documents.  By being a member as a shop, will give you access to all of the forms, brochures, fliers, other promotional items, online ordering and sampling for schools to view to help with business.  With the membership, copies of the provided forms, based on your level of membership on the website/program, will be provided to YOU, the shop, so you do not have to worry about producing your own documents to provide to the schools.  There MAY be levels of membership that give you access to different things. There may be a TOTAL FEE split up into monthly payments, then with a tiny monthly reoccurring fee to assist with website management, maintainence, web hosting, and other fees associated with providing such a tool.

LOG IN: Each STUCO/School will have a log-in ID that will allow them to go specifically to their designs(uploaded by YOU) and order quantities, colors, sizes or each directly to be filled at the end of each week, with no paperwork involved other than invoicing.

EACH sign shop will then be able to log-in at anytime and view their orders for that week.

USE:  Upon visiting the website a parent, student or faculty member will be able to view the products that their sign shop offer, request new products or request custom products.  This will instill confidence when ordering these products because they can see a sample of what is being done for them.  This will beat a paper order form ANYTIME because paper forms get lost or destroyed MOST TIMES.

----------------------------------

Of course, as it stands the STUCO will have to do a tiny bit of digging or WE OURSELVES, using Tory's help can figure out some basic things to start with to be able to go to the school and hand them an order form, custom order form, and instructions on how to develop new products.

As Tory says, it needs to be a streamlined process so it is VERY EASY for everyone to get on board with it.  i believe that if we can put some focus toward this and come up with something that we can ALL reproduce and use in our own areas we will see a great improvement in our own skills and income, and perhaps get jobs from parents that order from  us.

[FatDad 2]

those all sound like great ideas!!!! Now how do you get it going from here?

[SynFX 1]

I have been talking to my web administrator.. what I think we may just do is.. I will cover the costs to get the website up and running.. my associate said that this will take some time to develop... it may be a number of months before this is a usable and complete tool.

[FatDad 2]

its been a couple months any update?

[Rodger 527]

  Stouse specializes in that sort of thing . I talked to Mike Stoeck @ the Baltimore sign show this summer . contact him @ mstoeck@stouse.com or 913-791-0684 .

[SynFX 1]

I have decided to hold off on this.. the small business development center took my attention away.. will be easier to setup and more profitable.

www.sbdctx.org