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If you’ve been enjoying success in the custom t-shirt and apparel business but want to expand it, or any other business, you’re in the right place. Below are four of the most common growth strategies and a summary of each. However, one of the easiest ways to make more money is simply to save it. If you find ways to become more efficient, that means you have even more money for expansion.

Look for Ways to Get More Efficient

If you’re not already doing so, regularly check for ways to save money. Take advantage of discounts for paying invoices early and make sure you’re partnered with the right supplier of custom t-shirts in Toronto, who guarantees low prices on quality products and offers free shipping.

Another area to look into is your marketing. How many of your customers are new vs returning? If you’re still spending money to attract new customers, but they aren’t making any new purchases, this is a major concern, and you need to find out why ASAP. Unless a customer’s initial purchase is a profitable sale for you, this isn’t a sustainable model. Besides, sales made by returning customers are more profitable, and they spend more than new customers.

Once you’re sure that you’ve optimized your operations, you can look into the following strategies for growing your brand.

Market Development

Market development refers to new markets you haven’t targeted yet. The market you develop could be a new demographic that you start marketing to, selling in a new geographic area or selling your Ts wholesale if you’re currently only selling to customers.

Market Penetration

Market penetration is when you look for ways to increase sales in your current market. The most common ways to achieve this are by:

  • Increasing your market share by taking customers away from your competitors.
  • Increasing sales to your own customers.

The easiest way to increase sales and market share is by simply discounting your prices and having a plan to keep those sales volumes. Another common tactic used to further penetrate your existing market is to buy a competitor and absorb them, thereby increasing your market share.

Diversification

Diversifying refers to adding more products to your offering and attempting to sell them to your existing customers. So, if you’re already selling custom t-shirts, you would start selling custom accessories like jackets, sweaters, gym bags, etc. The ideal situation for diversifying is if you get a lot of feedback from customers who are all asking for the same product. Otherwise, most would only consider a new product after getting an overwhelmingly positive response from polling their customers.

Product Development

Similarly, product development is looking for or creating a new product(s) to sell to your existing customers; the difference, however, is that the products you hope to sell are complementary to your existing products. An example would be a leather jacket manufacturer selling a protective spray that extends the life of the jacket and which can be sold together with the jacket.

If you can’t think of a product you can sell with your custom t-shirts to extend their life or enhance them in some way, search for products that other people are selling that could complement your own and would be an easy enough up-sell. You could partner with them or buy them out.

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