Selling Stadium Cups
Let me preface this discussion by stating I have never sold a stadium cup in my life. Granted I have printed hundreds of millions of them for our industry, but I have no experience in dealing with end users. Yes, I have been doing this long enough that I have seen the type of clients that purchase stadium cups & have talked with many distributors. My discussion here will deal in generalities. What I wish is for you distributors to provide the true case histories. I do not wish for you to disclose your clients but to provide some details; such as type of client, position of person who authorized the purchase and actual use of the cup.
To properly sell stadium cups it is important to understand some basics of the drinkware industry and how it relates with our industry. The drinkware industry is made up of several big manufacturers who generally are not associated with our promotional products industry. They make large volumes of product & sell directly to the bigger users such as the stadiums at major colleges, pro sports teams, fast food franchises, etc. These manufacturers primarily offset print and have rather high minimums. The stadium cup decorators in the promotional products industry specialize more in the smaller quantities. Of this group of suppliers, some are purely decorators & purchase blank cups from the drinkware giants while some have smaller molding operations & produce their own cups. Since decorators in our industry specialize more in the smaller quantities, you will find much more varied imprint methods… including offset, screen print, thermal, and pad printing.
The importance of this knowledge is to understand, generally, whom to sell to. Don’t expect to sell the concessions at a major university. Don’t expect to sell to corporate restaurant chains. These type clients are typically already serviced by representatives from the drinkware industry. However, even with these type clients, there are openings for promotional products distributors. Yes, at a major college, you will not sell to the stadium however you can easily sell to departments on campus. Many orders are generated from departments such as alumni, development, social groups (such as greek), programming board, health department, etc. Also, suppliers in our industry provide much quicker service, so when a university has an unscheduled event, such as maybe their basketball team advancing in a tournament, then you have an opening to provide a service which can not be duplicated by the huge drinkware manufacturers. The key is, these direct reps from the big manufacturers are looking for the big sale from the big client. They do not have the resources or contacts that you should have. Their minimums are too large and production too slow to handle most clients. They will not be calling on most high schools, community colleges, university departments, churches, local restaurants, pubs, bars, banks, politicians, realtors, etc.
Now that you understand the basic type of client to deal with & have an understanding of the printing processes; let’s put it all together. Take advantage of the fact that most suppliers offer the back side imprint, even if different than the front, at no extra charge. Don’t just print a logo on the front… put something on the back. If dealing with high schools, put their schedule on the back or maybe some sort of say no campaign. Find a sponsor, such as a bank, put the sponsor info on one side & the school’s info on the other, and donate the cups to the school. It is very common for distributors to find a sponsor for all local schools, and by doing such, the distributor can receive combined quantity pricing. Each school can have their own cup color & imprint color combinations… and still get combined quantity pricing. In this way, the sponsor gets better pricing and great advertising… the schools get free cups.
Please don’t limit yourselves to “traditional” markets. Schools are not our biggest market. Many people also think of pubs & bars, and they are great clients but we actually run more church imprints than imprints for alcohol consumption. In my opinion, a huge untapped market involves the smaller restaurants. These establishments are too small to be serviced by direct marketers but still can use rather large quantities of cups. Several establishments around here use nothing but stadium cups for their beverages… even if you eat in. This saves them the expense of maintaining and cleaning other drinkware and almost everyone brings their cups home. A distributor friend has a long time client in a small college town. This client started out as a one store pizza shop that offers delivery to the school but has grown to three locations in the past two years. Every few weeks they order 20,000 22oz stadium cups with lids. During a conversation with the owner of the small chain (distributor requested this contact), he explained that he used to deliver canned drinks with the pizza but when he switched to stadium cups… his business doubled. The advertising obviously helped but my understanding is the students play games with the cups also.
Edited by jimknecht, 23 April 2009 - 10:04 AM.
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