Flash Sales on Cotton

It's the time of the season when cotton growers and cotton clothing manufacturers want to move a bunch of product out, quickly.

In the past two weeks, we have received short notice of three day sales from seven different T-shirt and fleece manufacturers. WHITE T-shirt blanks (unimprinted) are selling for as little as $2.25 for the 5.3 ounce promotional weight and two dollars more for the 6.1 ounce heavyweight, in white. Gildan, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom. It's hard to think about fleece in mid-July but special offers are coming through for shorts, pants, long and short sleeve jackets, pullovers, hoods, caps and BLANKETS. Most of these are available in a variety of colors; last year in the colder climes, high schools and colleges were buying these things for football games and other outdoor activities.

We got this one special offer for large quantity Ts, 5.4 ounce (promotional weight), sizes Large and Extra-Large, WITH 4-color imprints. $2.78 each, a one-time setup of $185, and a minimum of 2,000 pieces. And this is FULL COLOR! This is ideal for a mob! One of our suppliers is offering free freight on orders over $200; that's like seven dozen T-shirts.

If your group, school, college, fraternity, sorority, civic organization or club is planning anything in the cooler weather, now would be a good time to consider fleece. As for T-shirts, they can be stored until next spring, if you don't have an immediate need for them. But like airfares, these flash sales happen with little notice and are gone in the blink of an eye.

What was it I said yesterday?

You KNOW merchants are in trouble when they are running WINTER sales in the midst of summer.

Toys 'R Us is running a "Christmas in July" Sale beginning this weekend (July 19) and running for a week. This is not unlike hotels offering deep discounts (with a deposit) now for bookings in winter. The hotels are REALLY different in that many of them are offering SUMMER prices for Fall and WINTER stays when their prices are higher.

Last evening (July 15), well after my last post, Southwest Airlines announced a flash sale. Purchase travel by July 30th for travel August 16th through November 18th, '09. Travel on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Southwest has to put bodies in the seats, and according to good ol' Yield Marketing (which is something you learn about when you study for an MBA), if you have a product and it doesn't sell at the MSRP, let us say n dollars, then see how it sells if the price is adjusted to n dollars minus r dollars. If demand increases, the price may be increased to just below the point of diminishing returns, let's say r dollars plus ten.

Basically if you have a plane with 136 seats and 50 of them are empty, it costs almost as much to fly with the empty seats as with them full. So FILL THEM UP. And if you are looking for deals, watch very carefully for other airlines to follow suit on the same dates with the same restrictions.

Good hunting.