Do you buy your spiritwear before selling or after?
Some PTAs seem to buy all their merchandise upfront and the manage all the inventory in the school building.
Others will pre-sell all their orders and then know how much to order.
How does your group handle this? What are the pros and cons to each approach?
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Thanks for the feedback, ladies! Do you have any tips for units who may be nervous about using this method versus having the items on hand? Any tips for organization and keeping things on the "back end" running smoothly?
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In the past, we've maintained inventory during the year. Then at the beginning of the year, we'd do pre-sales for any items not currently in inventory.
This year, I went with a new vendor and tried to do pre-sales only.
I found that there were challenges both ways. If inventory is maintained, then funds are tied up when the spirit wear doesn't sell. We just have inventory sitting in a closet, the money is spent, so we no longer have access to those funds.
With only doing pre-sales, the challenge was estimating how many items would sell in order to determine the cost per item. My initial estimate was higher than what actually sold, so the cost per item was slightly higher, and we ended up barely breaking even.
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We submit spirit wear orders and have them full filled. The majority of our sales are through MH which allows us to easily filter and review orders that have been placed.
We do not keep inventory, only sample sizes. There can be a few weeks delay before delivery but we do not have issues with it. -
We do an initial Spirit Wear order based on last year's total numbers. We usually purchase 2/3rds of our total inventory from last year. Then in October/November we do a preorder sale for anyone who missed out.
So far, we don't have a ton of inventory left. It all fits on one cart in our PTA closet (which is phenomenal-our treasurer is amazing). We also sell Spirit Wear to teachers and staff at cost so we always make sure we have enough for the staff/teachers. They can only wear jeans if they are in Spirit Wear on Fridays, so that is a major incentive.
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