Hi Clay,
I may have missed this on your site, but do you have hats (preferred since you can wear them every day without anyone thinking twice) or shirts with some WE advertising? Perhaps some to throw in freet and/or shirt for those purchasers of the big kits, and some to sell? I hang out with a lot of folks with similar interests (but a lot don’t frequent forums, read blade show results, etc. and have probably never heard of WE). If nothing else, If I were to have a WE hat to wear to competitions, hunting, etc., it would be a nice conversation starter to spread the word… especially after they watch a WE sharpened blade field dress :D.
Also good for giveaways at things like Blade, etc. which is what we buy most of ours for, to give to clietns who visit ad for conventions to suck draw more people into our booth.
My company uses Lids.com, they are great (options, customer service, speed, price, quality, flexibility, selection) and have great discounts. $5 to “join the club” and you get 20% off of most hats. We order more than 144 hats, so we get a 50% discount on top of that, free shipping, and the $50 setup fee mentioned below for them to create a custom logo based on your drawing or whatever you provide, etc. is waved if you order more than 36 hats(and if you order again they already have the pattern so no worries about another setup fee). Here is there discount structure(on top of the 20% discount for the $5 member fee):
TEXT ONLY: $7
Includes up to 3 lines of text, 25 characters per line
GRAPHIC ONLY: $9
Choose from the thousands of stock graphics offered online or use your own custom/company logo (additional set up fee required)
TEXT & GRAPHIC: $11
Includes up to 2 lines of text with one of our stock graphics or your own custom/company logo (additional set up fee required)
VOLUME DISCOUNTS:
36-71 custom units receives 30% off
72-143 custom units receives 40% off
144 or more custom units receives 50% off
My company has found that this model is by far the most popular because it is the easy fitted type, i.e. looks fitted, but uses spandex so you only need a couple of sizes to fit everyone (and your order can contain multiple sizes, I recommend ordering more medium/large than small based on our experience of consumption: http://www.lids.com/Blanks/Style_Blank-Letterman . Also, our most popular were the two dark colors with our logo/sogan being light in color, which was a win-win because it seemed most people preferred darker color hats, and our logo and slogan popped a lot more with the light/white and a bit of color in it (light blue and seagreen in our case, set off by the white both within the logo and the slogan). My guess is darker color hats match more of your typical persons wardrobe, I dunno.
I know they were the most popular, because I never even got one before they were gone(a few hundred in a few hours at our convention, I saw people walking around EVERYWHERE in the convention wearing them, which was really cool to see except I wanted one :), and I have worked here for 10+ years, but we gave clients first dibs, and the other colors lasted longer, but not much.
From a convention center perspective the coolest part was as I was walking around see people with the hats, as an experiment of the effectiveness, I asked them “where did you get the cool hat”, even with 10,000 booths they were able to give me directions, they remembered and helped guide me to our booth and said to hurry because the hats were going fast, and be sure to check out our “smart room” exhibit because it was really cool :), I have to assume many others were guided to our booth simply because of those hats, $ well spent IMO, I don’t know of cheaper advertising!
Here are some helpful direct links if you are interested:
Make your own: http://www.lids.com/HelpDesk/Products/CreateYourOwn
Our most popular (by far) styles and colors in M/L: http://www.lids.com/product/20012444, http://www.lids.com/product/20012444
P.S. even if you just sold them, I would buy one :).
.
