The price is the dollar amount you see on the invoice. It is the easiest and simplest way to interpret how much something "costs".

Often times, we fail to take into account the invisible costs of doing things. While this type of accounting for every little thing in your life would be exhausting, you should build and develop awareness about the true cost of services and products offered by your business.

How do you figure out your effective hourly rate for apparel?

Based on my calculations, if you're working with Forever Fierce, your EHR should be $500-1,000 per order. I estimate that you should spend no more than 2 hours total on this entire experience per order. If you're spending more than 2 hours of "time on task" for apparel, something is wrong and we need to fix that.

I am going to walk you thru this exercise.

Total time: High estimate: 1.5 hours, low estimate: .75 hours

Example profit per order: $750

Orders for the year: 4

Profit: $3000

End of Year Effective Hourly Rate High End Time Estimate: $3000/ 6 hours= $500 per hour

End of Year Effective Hourly Rate Low End Time Estimate: $3000/ 3 hours= $1000 per hour

But what about that local guy? What is the true cost of working with them?

Total time: High estimate: 10 hours, low estimate:6 hours

Example profit per order: $1000 (lets say someone has us significantly "beat on price")

Orders for the year: 4

Profit: $4000

End of Year Effective Hourly Rate High End Time Estimate: $4000/ 40 hours= $100 per hour

End of Year Effective Hourly Rate Low End Time Estimate: $4000/ 24 hours= $166 per hour

As you can see, invisible costs will eat you alive. The best way to improve your profitability and buy back your time is to work with experts and vendors who take things off your plate. You need to avoid working with vendors where you're essentially buying yourself another job.

Yes, you may save a couple bucks up front but the real math will make this abundantly clear who is the better vendor.

My goal in year 1 for all clients is to help them develop a game plan for running apparel orders. There is a formula to this process. Every gym is a little different. While we have a framework for success, there are some details and factors specific to each community that we need to discover to make this a success.

Here are experiments and tweaks worth your time:

Incentives: Tweak and tinker with your incentives. Is it cheaper if someone preorders apparel?

Deadlines: Does your gym do best with shorter or longer deadlines?

Social proof: What social proof ideas can you come up with to encourage people to buy?

Designs: Try classic logo designs, try unique and different designs. Which sell best?

Marketing: Which marketing messages got the best response? Text? Announcement before and after class? This is much easier to track than you think.

Here are a list of experiments NOT worth your time:

Offering more designs- More designs=less sales. There are a handful of gyms that defy this rule. I can count them on one hand. Do not waste your time offering multiple designs in one order. It rarely works out.

Print on demand online stores- These stores are a waste of time. There is nothing compelling about something available 24/7/365. Those stores suffer from a variety of issues but the main issues are lack of originality with designs, long lead times, and poor quality.

Creating your own designs- Thinking fiverr or your GM on canva designing something is not going to fix your sales problem. Paying your staff to do apparel designs is a waste of your money. If your vendor has the capabilities to do artwork, there is no reason to pay your staff to do this. Similarly, going on a freelance site and paying someone to do artwork also falls in the same category. Most of the time, the artwork is not print friendly and needs a complete overhaul prior to printing.

So in summary: Work with your vendor to formulate your game plan. If your vendor does not offer this or is not helpful in this area, find a new vendor.

What is your effective hourly rate?

Let's estimate very conservatively and say it is $100.

Let's say you're working with a vendor who is unresponsive to your e-mails. It's been a week since you've seen a mock up. In the past, you just knock out an idea on Canva and send it to the printer to save time but lately, you can't think of anything and come to think of it, the past 2-3 designs you designed didn't sell that well.

It's three weeks before Memorial Day and you're running out of time to get your order going. Now what? You decide to skip the order. You realize you're not going to be able to get this order going in time and decide to skip it. Better luck next time!

This is costing you thousands of dollars a year. The math is very simple.

A conservative profit estimate on an order is $500 per order. If you skip 1-2 orders a year due to the scenario we outlined before, that'll cost you $500-1000 of net profit. Now, going back to your hourly rate. Say you wasted 3 hours tinkering on canva. That's another $300 out of your pocket. Then, you spent another hour collectively following up and trying to get a hold of your current vendor. That's another $100.

So right now, you're out $1,400 and that is a very basic example. Before people work with us, they do this 4 times a year! These invisible costs matter as a business owner and now that you're aware of this, what are you going to do about it?

The above scenario is quite common for most gym owners. They work with vendors who don't have a streamlined process specifically for gym owners. They work with inexperienced vendors when it comes to retail and strategic planning. Your current vendor never stopped to think, run numbers, or do any research about the ideal time to order hoodies. You're having to constantly follow up with your vendor and the communication is spotty.

When you work with us:

We become an extension of your team. We will message you to remind you when it is time to order.

No artwork or design fees.

Feel like a priority- a dedicated 1:1 account manager with a decade of experience working with gym owners.

We will provide a strategic plan for apparel- ideal ordering windows, suggested designs, garment styles that sell, marketing templates and sales tactics that work.

There is no contract or extra fees for any of these value added services either.

Our pricing is based on the design itself so you get the most competitive price.

If you're ready to get started, today's the day.