As a bakery owner or manager, you’re likely working to keep the day-to-day logistics running smoothly. But have you ever thought about another way to make a profit? You could quite literally profit off your bakery’s name through branded merchandise.
This will, of course, be much much easier for the bakeries with a defined brand and community awareness, but no matter where your brand is at, there are plenty of benefits to selling branded merchandise such as:
- Shirts
- Hats
- Loyalty cards
- Stickers
- Pins
- Coasters
- Mugs
- So much more!
Depending on your approach, selling merchandise with your name and logo can be a great low-cost marketing strategy. Here’s what you need to know about selling bakery-branded merchandise.
Benefits
Making money is the ultimate goal and benefit of selling your bakery’s branded merchandise, but even if you only break even, there are other great benefits. As a local business, your merchandise offers a hometown vibe that resonates with your clientele. Selling branded merchandise at your bakery gives your customers a way to show how much they love your store.
Think about your “regulars:” they love your bakery’s goods and likely think of your bakery as their bakery. Purchasing a shirt or mug with your logo allows them to take your brand with them. Even if you’re just printing a handful of shirts, that can turn any customer into a free walking billboard for your business.
Before You Get Started
Before you rush out to the closest print shop, make sure you have some details in place. First, know your brand. What kind of aura does your bakery give off? Is your bakery family-oriented, quirky, classy? What makes you stand out from other bakeries in your area? It might look a little odd for a high-end, specialty cakes bakery to suddenly sell shirts with sarcastic dessert puns.
Second, know your customers. Use designs that resonate with your customers’ demographics. If you created a business plan, you likely already have that information outlined. A design that speaks to a young professional might not appeal to retirees.
After you have a good handle on your brand and customers, it’s time to define your goals. Your plan will look much different depending on what you’re looking to accomplish. Do you want more brand recognition? Do you want to supplement your revenue?
Answering these types of questions will help you decide on your budget and marketing plan.
Get It To The Printer
Most companies you’ll work with will give you design specifications, so it’s a good idea to pick your printing vendor before you start designing. It would be terrible to design something only to find out you need it redesigned in a different color mode.
You have quite a few options for merchandising vendors. If you plan to offer branded merchandise in large quantities, you may want to establish a relationship with a local print shop that can offer bulk discounts.
Another great option is on-demand printing through online services such as Threadless.
There are some really great benefits of on-demand printing. All you do is upload your design and choose what types of products you like to offer. They handle manufacturing and shipping and even give you a landing page to promote.
Obviously, they’re not doing this out of the kindness of their heart. There is still a cost associated with creating the merchandise itself, so your profit will depend on how you set your prices. But some on-demand vendors offer to print your designs at cost if you’re buying them yourself. Then you can sell online and directly in your bakery location.
Basic Design Tips
When it comes to the actual design of your bakery merchandise, it could be as simple as adding your logo to a shirt, hat, mug, etc. It’s helpful if you have a copy of your logo with a transparent background so that you can put on all sorts of colored backgrounds without a box around it. It’s also always a good idea to have a large logo and scale down than to use a small logo file and stretch it out. You’ll end up losing quality.
If you’re looking for something a little more designed, but you’re not ready to mess with complicated programs, one user-friendly design tool is Canva. They have plenty of free templates and design elements that you can use to DIY awesome branded merchandise of all kinds.
There are so many possibilities and benefits when it comes to selling branded merchandise at your bakery. It may even help supplement your revenue.
If you want to boost your revenue through efficiencies, look no further than BakeSmart. BakeSmart’s bakery management software was created specifically to meet the needs of a retail bakery. Our software offers you complete control of every aspect of your bakery, from order taking, to production, to inventory management, to nutrition and product costing. BakeSmart will help you conquer the chaos.
Schedule a demo with BakeSmart and start conquering the chaos.
