MERCHANDISE
Several folks have asked me, so I want to clarify our merchandise situation. There are two ways that you can purchase PCPHC bling. There is the traditional way, and the new online store.
The Traditional way is that our merchandise team, Ken and Sharon, with input from the BOD, decide that we need new shirts, or hats, or visors or hoodies. They make a call on the color, long sleeve or short sleeve, which logo, etc (And then I suggest more tye dye and they say no and we move on). But then they make an educated GUESS how many of what sizes we need. Large, XL and XXL are the most popular sizes, and a few smalls, mediums and XXXL. But it’s a guess and this usually means that within a few months we will have just a handful of those shirts left. Mediums, Smalls, XXXL usually are the leftover usually. But if we don’t order those–you can bet your bottom dollar that someone will come up and want one. Those shirts finally get blown out at Clearance prices below what we pay for them. Like everything else, shirts have gone up, so we make anywhere from $6 – $10 profit on those shirts. Our local vendor has to have a minimum number of shirts (72) to even turn their machine on. So we only buy shirts and big items like that once or twice a year, and cross our fingers that we made the right call on color, sizes, and type of merchandise we buy. Ken and Sharon are really pretty good at this, they have a good sense of what sells and what doesn’t.
The New Online Store uses new technology where they can make a “one off” shirt of any color, or shoes, or tote bags, or beach towels. This technology is available to anyone and a few of our crowd have this ability too. That allows the purchaser the choice of what color, size, type, etc. We can only use the items that they have in their inventory though. If you have looked on that store you see stuff is kind of expensive, but we don’t make much at all on sales from that website. The $20 shirt costs $16, so we only make $4 off that shirt. The shoes that sell for $62 cost $54, so we only make only $8 on that sale. We could raise that margin, but the idea is that we want people to have Parrot Head memorabilia, I want to see those shoes in Patches, or that beach towel on the beach. It’s a convenience service, and it doesn’t cost us a dime to sell things on their website. But now I have a matching set of coffee cups with our logo on it. I was tempted to do the shower curtain behind my wife’s back, but I thought better of it.
There is no connection between the Traditional and Online store. If you don’t like what you got from the online store, you can’t bring it back to us, you have to deal with the company.
And one other thing: The one off shirts aren’t as durable, at least the logo and image is not as durable. If you wear the shirt a lot, and wash it a lot, the logo will fade a lot faster than the Traditional shirts we buy from Inktrax here in town. Don’t cut the grass or wear to the beach, or work on your car in those shirts, cause the more you wash it, the quicker it will fade.
Bottom line–we don’t make a killing on merchandise either way, we don’t try to make a killing. But when you see expensive stuff on the online store, remember we make a tiny profit on those. We aren’t trying to get rich on merchandise sales. I hope this explains things a little, and of course don’t hesitate to reply back with questions or comments.
