Get Started Selling Dancewear at your Studio - Easily and Profitably! With Special Guest, Niki Arias - Director of Marketing, Revolution Dancewear Good afternoon, everyone, this is Suzanne Blake Gerety from www.dancestudioowner.com. I m really excited because today our topic is selling dance merchandise at your studio and I m more excited because we have our special guest Nikki Arias. I had a chance to meet Nikki last summer. Shi is not only a smart, intelligent person who knows a lot about the dance business, but she s really fun to be around and has a ton of information. That s what makes her the Director of Marketing for Revolution Dancewear. We re so excited that you took time out of your day to share a little bit with us on this topic, so thanks Nikki. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. It s something not only in my line of work I love to talk about, but personally I grew up as a dancer and a dance teacher, all that sort of thing. So it s something I love, just like everybody. No, that s awesome. I think that s what I was going to ask you. As a dance studio owner we have the costume piece of our business, which is very important, but equally we have the topic of our dancewear, our dress codes and getting our dancers in the right attire for class. A lot of times as a studio owner myself and having grown up in this industry we have struggled with not only making sure our kids get in the right dancewear for class, which is 36 weeks out of the year, but we focus so heavily on the costumes, which are obviously key, but that s for one day. We work all year for that and then for 36 weeks out of the year we re sort of what do we do with dancewear, are we leaving money on the table, but it s so expensive to stock merchandise in your studio in a traditional model. So, if you just want to give us a couple of tips on how to get started if you want to offer dancewear to your students. I m going to try to touch both on selling dancewear in a general way and then, also, things that are unique to Revolution because it is very different than the typical way that studio owners are used to having to sell dancewear in their studios. The easiest way to get started for most everybody out there is with a program that doesn t make you have to carry certain minimums or stock in your studio. I think that the number one hesitation we see from studio owners when we re out there talking to them is they don t have the space and they don t have the money to start with the inventory. With Revolution there s no minimum order and we only sell to studio owners, so it takes out the competition that you have from retailers and anything else and there are different ways of doing it. There are studios out there that might have a little bit more space and want to stock it and be able to sell right then and there and they can certainly do that. Then, also, there s people 1
that go the slimmer route and have sizing kits or something like that. They take orders, place it with us and then fulfill them later on with their students like the next week that they come to class. In short, the quickest and easiest way to get started would be with a sizing kit or some sort of model like that. It s cost effective. You don t have to put hardly any money into it. You get a full-size run of whatever you want to start selling and there you go. You re off and running with little commitment or money on the table. That s really helpful. So the size kit is something they could get directly through Revolution Dancewear. Does that give them each size like a 2, 4, 6, 8? How does that work? Yes, we have a sizing kit for all of our shoes. It is the left shoe only of a complete size run. For instance, you have a ballet shoe that s perfect for your intro ballet students. You would probably want our small sizing kit and that would have sizes 12 through 4, so you would have 12, 13, 1, 2, 3, 4 and it would be the left shoe only. It comes in a nice small but presentable box for you to store on your shelf. Then when your kids are in, whether you do it at registration which is a nice way to do it or just take the first 10-15 minutes of the first class of the year, you re able to size them using that sizing kit and then can call in and place the order afterwards. We ship same day here from our warehouse and what s nice about that is you can size them and collect their money, call us and place your order and since we ship same day you ll have the product for the next time they come into class. So you don t have to feel bad if you don t have money on your own to put out there for the inventory. A lot of our customers do collect from their students, place the order with us and because of the quick turnaround on shipping you can have that product the next day they walk into your studio. Great. That s helpful when we re talking shoes. I think this is one of the dilemmas we run into at our own studio and I ll just share a little bit of the lessons we ve learned. I always like to say let us spare you some of the headaches and mistakes. It used to not be that easy. There are some things that aren t that easy, but you guys are sort of leading the way on this and that s why I wanted to have you on this call. We have at any given moment an in-studio dance shop where we had to build a separate entrance so that we could stock some of the other dance retailers products. You know this. Some of them will say you cannot sell this product to your students without an entrance. So what did we do? Years ago we had to blow a door out, put in an entrance and do the whole thing. So at any given moment we have to have about $10,000 in inventory in our shop and it s exhausting because as you probably see the top sellers are not always what you can predict and then everybody runs out of size 11 in toddler tap shoes the first week of class. It happens. Those little kids feet are not regular. Right and you re stuck placing the reorder. You fill out sizes, but you only need the one size and so on and so forth. Exactly. You probably have had classes like this if you go to any of the trade shows where the general public comes. We ll tell parents our dance code actually is quite pretty. Especially in our preschool programs if they want to wear any color leotard that s fine, but sometimes a parent will look at say what is a leotard? They have absolutely no idea. 2
They actually have never heard of a leotard, especially if they don t have dance in their background, so they re down at Wal-Mart shopping for what they think may be dance appropriate. It s sort of like this is one of those opportunities with offering some dancewear that you can reduce all of that hassle for the parent, I m feeling from the feedback you must get from people using your products. We actually love Revolution ourselves, but from other studios what are the three things they say they love the most in terms of what you have set up. I think that number one is how easy it is. There s no inventory. There are no minimums. You can kind of mold the program and use it however you would like. Like I said, we have studios out there that don t carry any inventory. They simply use our sizing kits, then collect the money and place the orders like I described. Then the other side of that are people who do it on a larger scale and have more of a retail setup in their lobby and allow parents to browse and things like that. So you can take what you have and mold it to fit anywhere there in your studio. The second one is the additional profit. It is definitely an alternative profit source for your studio. You have no competition at all with Revolution since we only sell to dance studio owners. So when you tell your students that you re requiring Revolution full-sole ballets for that pre-ballet class they can t go and price them out anywhere else. It s great because they re going to go and price out a similar product on the Internet or at their local dance boutique if they want to and your prices, even through they re marked up, are going to be competitive and under retail, which is really great. It s a value for them. So while making money, and your time is worth the money believe me, I know all of you are looking for different ways of bringing more profit into your studio, but it s good to know that you re passing on a value and a service to your students that is worth something to them. So I think that would be number two. Number three is the quality and the turnaround in the shipping and in the customer service that you ll get from Revolution. Those are the three things that we hear time and time again from our dance owner customers. That s awesome. I want to touch upon a few of those things because we ve been on the other side of nightmares. I won t name names of vendors, but certain things where you re just stuck. You know things didn t turn out the way we thought or we ordered something wrong. Sometimes it s a nightmare for us because we made the mistake and just overestimated what we thought would happen. So let s talk about the idea of let s say a studio owner that does want to create sort of the fun of showing dancewear. We re dance teachers and studio owners we love dancewear anyway, what s the best sort of sellers or where are the good places if you do want take a little bit of a risk and stock your studio with some dancewear? Well, you kind of look at our product line or anybody s product line as two separate areas. You have your uniform items, the things you re listing on the class at registration. They need to wear this type of ballet shoes, these tights and this leotard to class. Those are, especially if you go the route of requiring that they purchase a certain brand or a certain color, the slam dunk kind of items, those basic necessities. 3
Where it gets fun and where the additional profit potential is, in my opinion, are the extras. Creating that retail environment where moms and the dancers alike are identifying products that they want and with that alternative styles in leotards. We have many different styles and colors, so that s some place where you can be like here I m requiring you to have this pink short-sleeve leotard, but on the last week of every month it s show your own personal style day at the studio. So you can wear the rhinestone crisscross back leotard or you can wear a wrap skirt with your leotard or whatever that is. That s where you can sell those extras and you ll see that parents and kids really get into that. I think sometimes that s the forgotten portion of it because it s really easy for studio owners to say okay, I get this. They have to wear a uniform and I m going to offer them this uniform and then that s it. I m done with dancewear. That s great and that s a way to do it, but there is more potential there when you get into jazz pants, skirts, dance sneakers and different types of leotards. We also have an active wear line. It s a full line of reversible active wear. It s sort of like Lulu lemon yoga-type stuff meets the dance studio. In that line we have sports bras, pink taps and jackets and things like that, cool extras. It s something that would be marketable to your parents, like dance moms that are in the lobby who are used to seeing this stuff on a retail level, which is a new profit source that you guys can tap into. It has that kind of potential. Also, there are a lot of pieces that lend themselves to branding. I know a lot of studios are looking for ways to get their logos out there and stuff like that, so that s another area that you can tap into. Exactly. You work with a lot of different dance studios, what are some of the, I guess, strategies you ve seen them employ that have been successful where they ve come back and seen you say a year later at the dance studio summit and said oh, my gosh, we had no idea. What were some of those things they did to have it be that their merchandise was a success? Well, definitely the uniform model. I mean we see that that s where people start. It s great to start and easy to start at back to school season when you guys are registering all your students. You touched on it, Suzanne, the parents kind of are wanting. They don t know they want you to do it, but they really want you to do it. It s a great marketing tool for your studio, especially those three, four and five-year-olds, those newbies that walk through the door. If you can tell them hey, mom, you don t have to go hunting and pecking for your leotards, tights and shoes for your kids. It s one less thing they have to worry about. So I think that that s the number one thing. Get them in the door and do it at the right time of year so that you can get everybody set up. A lot of studios, just like you do with your dress code, have a mandatory dress code. You can make it mandatory for which pieces they purchase at the bear minimum. You re assuring them great fit, great quality and they re getting the convenience of shopping with you, which they re going to love. So I think that s the number one thing and people don t realize, it s like oh. My parents love it and then they come back in six months and say those tights are great. Can I order a couple extra pair? It kind of just is a nice self-starter if you get off on the right foot there. Yes. I guess that s sort of what has been the theme I ve noticed lately, which is as studio owners I think sometimes we try so hard to not put an extra financial burden on our parents. We re like oh, so self-conscious. I don t want to charge them more for something else. I m 4
afraid to add on all these costs. Actually, if you switch it around and say I m actually doing them a full-service favor versus whatever price point you can come to where you could get 100% in the door, in the uniform, boom. Again, we get very nervous about pricing costumes and pricing dancewear, but if you can look at it like this is me doing my students a huge favor and mom doesn t have to get in the car and run to Target, run out the door, get online and order this and that s back ordered and I don t know if it s the right thing. I mean they have to wear these items anyway. On the flipside of that too, how often do you guys have students walk in the door with ill-fitting, even to the point of slightly dangerous, shoes or anything like that? It s a huge service to them, it really is. You have control over what they re wearing, the fit, the quality and they way they look. It means something. Think about the new student that walks into your studio a couple weeks into classes and when a mom sees your students in that class that she s observing to see if she wants to sign up her little girl, it makes a difference for your studio if they re all in well-fitting quality dancewear and a uniformed look. Yes, that s a good point. That leads me sort of to the next question which is, is there a set point? There s probably the price you charge the studio and then there s the price they can charge for the items, how does that work? Yes, in our catalogue we have a graph that does exactly that. Every year we spend a lot of time researching comparable products in the market to all of our products. We list what our cost is to the studio and then we list the average price that the studios charge. Now, that is up to your market and your clientele. We have studios out there that charge more because of their demographic. We have studios out there that choose to charge less. That is just kind of where we feel out our customers every year and get a feel for what s going on and we re giving you the average there. We outline the profit that the studio owner is going to make based on the average price they sell it for. Then the important columns are the last two columns where we break down the typical retail store comparison. That s all of the research I mentioned that we do. We find all the comparable products and we have a retail price point for that product. The last point, which is the most important, is what your customers are saving. That s the great thing about what we re doing here, we re selling direct to studio owners. We ve cut out the middleman and we re giving you the wholesale price. You re able to mark it up and stay below retail so that your dancers are saving under retail. They ll want to purchase from you and makes you be able to make a profit. That s awesome. You guys do a great job communicating that with your dance studio customers. Obviously your website has a lot of info, but let me ask you another question. Dance studios are in the business of filling their classes and making their customers happy, have you ever seen studios do some creative things with dancewear as an incentive to say students who enter the pre-school programs? They re saving on all three, but register and get a free pair of tights. What kind of creative things have you ever heard of other studios doing with dancewear? Definitely. One that we hear a lot is like you just mentioned a registration packet. Whether you have a one-time fee for registration and maybe it covers typically some of your recital costs, I 5
don t know, whatever you allocate that to, but it s a better marketing plan to have that. It s easier to say with your one-time registration fee for the year you re going to receive like a starter kit of leotard, tights and shoes. So that would be a little bit higher of a fee, but we have a lot of customers that do that. They think it s just a nice easy way because you re taking out the choice and it s easier to communicate to your parents just the one fee. There s more value in that then they have to buy a leotard and that s $18 and tights at $11. It s like no, you re going to register, it s a one-time $100 fee and it gets you into the class plus your uniform for the year. Right. It s funny. Again, it goes back to the concern that so many studio owners fret over, which we do fret over. Naturally, we don t want to make our customers feel like they re getting up charged and up charged. Sometimes the flat fee, the inclusive price makes a lot of sense and I would say that this is another place we ve moved to over time here. Our pre-school programs have been suffering because of the economic conditions in our particular demographic. So many of the moms and dads have either lost their jobs or both people have had to go back to work extra time, all those morning classes some of the registration has dropped because they re cutting out the extras. While it s not necessarily the answer, you can differentiate your studio by, like you said, maybe that one little extra incentive to participate by making dancewear not this huge stress and expense, but just an easy part of getting in the door. Yes, definitely. Another thing and we re getting a little bit into recital and costumes with this one, but everybody needs a pair of tights with their costume. We like to have them in clean tights on stage that match their shoes and look great with their costume. We have a lot of customers who include the tights with every costume that they give. They ll just drop them in the bag and roll that into their costume fee, which is really nice. You can say this costume fee, depending on where you re ordering from, includes the accessories in a garment bag and your tights for your shows so you re kind of all set. Again, that makes more sense. That $75 doesn t seem so pricey or whatever you re charging. Right. Nikki, you ve been great to get to know. My mom and I as the dance studio owners our mission is sort of like there s so much to do. It seems insurmountable some days, but I would say having had the opportunity to grow up in this business as well we get all the leftover costumes for my daughter, dress up costumes. It s all the kids who either miss runs on orders and such, but I can honestly say my daughter is one of those kids that plays hard in her clothes and in her costumes in the Revolution tights and the Revolution costumes. She gets her mileage out of these things. She tap dances on the garage floor, everywhere. I think one of the hesitations sometimes for new studio owners who are maybe listening to this or even our current studio owners who have been in business for a long time it s that oh, my gosh, is the product well made. Believe it or not some people may not have had a chance to even stop for a minute and try on the tights or costume. I can honestly say that my five year old has worn the heck out of these tights, costumes and the shoes. I honestly can say that s why we wanted you on the call today because the product is fabulous and that you can extend that to studio owners. I would say if you re listening, definitely consider now is the time to get into this so that you don t leave that extra money on the table, which is sort of the next step. So if you re listening and you say okay, now what do I do, do 6
they pick up the phone? Do they send an email? If they just want to start with that shoe sizing kit, where do they go to get that information? Well, our website has everything you need to know on it, which is www.revolutiondance.com. You can online order and set up an account right through the website. We would just verify that you re a studio owner, so you d get a phone call if you ve never set up an account with us before. Within one business day you ll be up and going on the website. You can also call our call center. I m very proud to say we have, I think, the best customer service call center in the industry. You can call them at 800-806-1157. They re available from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Central time Monday through Friday and also on Saturday from 8:00 to 4:00 Central time. They re always here and can set up an account for you. It s super easy if you have a website or a business checking or something that has your business name and address on it that we can confirm. So there are some steps that we have to take to confirm that you re a studio owner and other than that you ll get right started. As far as staring to sell the dancewear, once you have an account we actually have an offer that we ve put together for this season called a Starter Program. We just wanted to make it as easy as possible for you guys to get started with our dancewear, so it includes two sizing kits of your choice. Those are the shoe sizing kits I was explaining earlier with the size run of the left shoe only. You can pick two sizing kits of your choice, whether you re going to get started with ballet and a tap shoe or whatever. It also comes with a tight sample kit. So you ll get one of each of our tights. It s actually a total of eight pairs. It will be a representation of all of the styles and all of the colors that we have to offer, along with a nice laminated card that has all of the styles, size information and color information. It s on a little lanyard that you can hang on your desk or at your studio for quick reference on all the different types of tights that we have. Okay. This kit is $50, which is a huge savings if you were to add up the sizing kits and stuff like that. The great part is that with this Starter Program we will credit you back the $50 on your first dancewear order, so it s free. We re going to get you started for free, basically. That s awesome. That s great. You guys make it easy. Like you said, as studio owners we do not have time to figure this out. I think you set it up nice and easy, make it really visually appealing. Obviously, people can interface with the product and just get the orders rolling. We re obviously doing this call in July. People could be listening any time, but especially consider that we talk about open house events or kick off days or free trial weeks. I mean set up their promotions however it works for them, but there s something festive and fun about being able to offer dancewear to your students. Especially, like you said, you don t have to have that risk of carrying inventory. Trust me when I say, and I ve shared this with many people I ve met, we are in the process of completely liquidating $10,000 in inventory that for years we ve had to restock. It just seems to 7
go into this downward spiral and it doesn t have to be that way anymore. You guys have really helped make it easy for studio owners to get the information out there and, like I said, there are a couple of ways you can really use this to your benefit. So I m so happy that you were able to give us some tips, Nikki. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Again, anybody who s listening if they ever wanted to connect with you by phone it s on the site www.revolutiondance.com.why Sell Dancewear? http://www.revolutiondance.com/whysell-dancewear--pages-134.php I definitely recommend at least getting started with some dancewear so you could make a little extra money to keep enhancing your studio or maybe go on a vacation here or there. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much Nikki. This is Suzanne Blake Gerety from www.dancestudioowner.com. We will look forward to growing our business with dancewear. Have a great day. 8