Best Practices for Selling T-Shirts at Events

Selling t-shirts at events and conferences is a great way to grow your brand and build relationships. If you’re unprepared, you might not get the most out of the events you attend.

After partnering with conferences of various sizes over the years, we’ve learned quite a bit about what it takes to make conferences and events well worth the investment. 

We’re here to help you achieve your conference goals and sell as many custom t-shirts as possible, so here are our best practices for selling t-shirts at events and conferences.

Attend Suitable Events

If you spend money showcasing your clothing line at an event, you must choose suitable events for your brand. Costs of exhibiting, booth setup, flights, shipping, hotel stays, and food can add up, so make sure the value in return is worth your investment.

If you’re just starting to sell t-shirts, attending local events while you grow your brand and learn what works is a great place to start. Make sure you focus on your niche or target audience. For example, if you’re selling running shirts, attend local running events. Finding people that can connect with your brand and your t-shirts is critical.

Know the Ins and Outs

When you sign up as a vendor, you will receive important information from the event organizers. 

Please slow down and take the time to read through it all. The exhibitor manual will become your vendor lifeline. It will include setup, breakdown, space requirements, electricity, carpet, internet, advance shipping, and more information. 

Crazy enough, we’ve encountered certain events where fliers were prohibited. If this is something you didn’t know in advance, and you spent time designing, printing, and paying for fliers specifically for that event (like us), you’d be out a lot of money, not to mention how much valuable time was lost in the process.

It could be worth reaching out to past vendors to learn from their experiences about what worked and what didn’t if they are willing to share. Any insight you can gain is valuable to your business.

Take Advantage of Setup Time

When setting up your booth, take advantage of all the time allotted for setup. Even with a packing list, it’s easy to miss something. If you’re not making at least one run to the store to pick up odds and ends, you’re a packing master, and we need to hire you ASAP. 

For everyone else, make sure you give yourself plenty of time to prep and order your booth needs, especially for must-have items like pens, business cards, tape, hangers, and the t-shirts you’ll be promoting and selling at the event.

If you are ever in a bind and need custom event t-shirts fast, our Lightning Service will ensure you have your t-shirts in 2 days! We’ve always got your back.

It also might be worth setting up a dry run of your booth to ensure it’s precisely what you want it to be. Before any events, we create a digital mockup of how we want our booth space to work. It helps us decide what to bring and shortens our setup time because we know what we’re doing once we get there.

Make Sure Your Booth Delivers Value

Your booth is your sales pitch! When people visit your booth, what do you want them to remember? Booth branding includes your logo, colors, messaging, and customer experience.

Even if your booth’s primary purpose is to sell t-shirts, you can still create a memorable or interactive experience that they can walk away with. We’ve seen booths draw tattoos on people with permanent markers, give haircuts, or even set up a giant ball pit— and guess whose lines were full of excited people? We’re sure you know the answer to that question. *wink*

Booth experiences are becoming a standard requirement to attend an event as a vendor. In the past, while viewing the vendor requirements for a more significant conference in Chicago, they asked for more information on your booth experience and what interactive elements would be brought to the show. In short: booth experience is becoming less of a bonus and more of a requirement. Make sure you’re keeping up.

Easy Payment and Prime Placement

Another critical factor to discuss is the payment options available to your customers. How are you checking people out? Is the process easy? What’s the cost of your shirts in comparison to your competition?

Creating a sense of urgency can move products faster when selling something to someone. Consider language like “Limited Conference Designs!” or “Shirts only available at this event!” 

And if you run out of t-shirts to sell, have a backup plan. Be prepared to take orders immediately so you don’t lose customers. Ensure you’re keeping inventory of all your purchases at the event so you can know how much money you made and how many shirts to order next time.

The placement of your booth is another factor that could affect your sales, which is why we nested these two together. It’s essential to be near heavy foot traffic. Sometimes, especially if you’re new, choosing your booth location isn’t an option, but if there’s an option to be near walkways, entrances, or even next to other large attractive booths, take it.

For more marketing help, check out: Pricing Pro-Tips: A Guide to Pricing Your T-Shirts for Retail.

Build Relationships

Yes, invest in your booth space, but make sure you’re investing your time at the conference too. Events like after-parties, happy hours, or welcome parties are clutch for building relationships. People have their guards down, and they are ready to make friends. Spend time developing genuine connections with people at conferences.

This might not immediately turn into sales, but some of your most prominent fans/friends will be your biggest and best promoters, so be genuine.

Being fully prepared by researching events, knowing your options as an exhibitor, and creating an engaging space is step one in setting your booth up for success. Your audience will be excited to visit your space, and t-shirts will fly off the shelves.

You learned about best practices; now what?

We taught you some best practices for selling custom t-shirts at events. Are you feeling inspired?

Our team of printing professionals and product specialists is here to help you figure out what garments might best fit your demographic, literally AND figuratively speaking.

We encourage you to reach out with any questions or concerns; in the meantime, check out our T-Shirt Buyers Guide- a free resource to help you learn everything you ever needed to know about ordering custom t-shirts. 

Originally Published 01-24-2018 | Updated 05/18/2023