As the fall sports season tentatively gets underway and schools around the country undertake their own reopening plans, team dealers are increasingly turning to their key vendors for assistance in getting the right product to the right places at the right time during this school year unlike any other. Coupled with their ongoing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, these vendors have answered the call with programs ranging from advice on reopening to product introductions to shipping and billing options.

Team Insight surveyed many of these vendors about their Back-to-School 2020 efforts benefitting team dealers and their schools. That response is impressive and we present their comments in their own words here in Team Insight Extra.

BISON

As part of Bison’s new athletic fund support program, schools can now earn up to $500 from Bison for their athletic fund. Bison is shipping daily for facilities maintaining their gyms and sports fields and is building more so schools’ sports equipment is ready when they are.
New this summer, K-12 schools in the United States are eligible for a five percent factory direct rebate for all purchases of Bison sports equipment made by September 30, 2020, through a qualified Bison dealer. Checks must be made payable to a school athletic department or school booster club, maximum $500 per school.
For more: 800-247-7668 or www.bisoninc.com/rebates.

SANMAR

SanMar’s Rachelle Manning, Channel Manager for Sporting Goods, provided this update on what the company is doing to help prepare its vendors for this Back-to-School season.‍

SanMar has a new website – www.whatdoyouwearongameday.net – to help vendors and end users navigate through our product offerings. They can create custom individual sports fliers with school or team logos.

We offer Zoom trainings to assist our vendors with our SanMar.com logoizer, which helps our customers compare product features and to build marketing resources such as fliers and look books. Some of the trainings also cover team store best practices.

One of our new catalogs is called the 2020 Team and Fanwear Catalog. It’s just over 200 pages and each item in this catalog was hand selected by our sporting goods team of experts. We are now offering custom covers for that catalog. We guide our customers through the process to help them get the best result. Our customers can use actual school images and school mascots to fully customize the cover. Schools getting their own custom cover catalog love them and it helps our customers do more business with these schools.

Now our offerings also include Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) education. This is a change we now incorporate into our usual item selection.

GILL

Steve Vogelsang, VP-sales and marketing—Team Sports, for Litania Sports Group (Gill Athletics and Porter) provides this look at the company’s BTS efforts.

‍Planning for the return to sports has certainly become much more rocky and uncertain. We are monitoring state association guidance and plans for high schools’ return to sport; many propose delays of the start of fall sports a month or four, or switch seasons around, or outright cancel certain sports. The same goes for most college conferences. This has made selling team sports equipment difficult, to say the least.

We work with team dealers every day to modify their Selling Game Plan to find opportunities in this uncertain environment. We are equipping our dealer partners to effectively sell remotely or virtually. We have created a series of equipment selection videos they can use to increase their personal effectiveness selling our equipment, as well as a series they can share with coaches via email covering volleyball, track & field, and gymnasium equipment (see below for links).

Additionally, we now offer product rendering proposals featuring custom graphics and colors for school-specific sales proposals they can pitch in a virtual presentations.
Currently, our dealers are having some success in a couple of areas:

• First, larger facility projects already planned and budgeted are proceeding. Dealers who actively manage their open deal pipeline are converting larger orders for track equipment and volleyball equipment necessary to outfit a new gym or field.  
• Secondly, our dealers are approaching principals and athletic directors to discuss work necessary to make existing facilities safe for return to sports. And in some cases, athletic facilities are also serving as academic space to allow for physical distancing. We provide our dealers with facility equipment checklists for walk-throughs with school personnel. This provides for opportunities to sell equipment for repair, renovation or to improve multi-use capabilities. Safety wall padding, divider curtains and floor coverings are some of the items getting much more attention now.

In summary, here are the new tools and tactics we are using with our team dealer partners:‍

• Dealer-specific and sales rep-specific “Selling Game Plan” strategy calls and videos from our sales team.
• Product-specific sales videos dealers can share with coaches.
• ‍School-specific customized graphic Product Proposals for Team Dealer’s virtual sales presentations.
• Sport-specific product training webinars offered to a dealer’s sales team.
• Sport-specific product promotions through summer and back to school season covering Volleyball, Track and Field and Basketball equipment.

We encourage every active team dealer interested in selling more volleyball, track, or basketball equipment to reach out. We can help them develop personalized, actionable strategies and tactics to find and win business in this uncertain climate.

Videos For Dealers
Volleyball Game Plan
Sports Construction
Wall Pads

Videos To Share with Coaches
Hurdles
New Track Facility
Volleyball Systems

CARRON NET

Reflecting on our experience with customers in this Covid-19 world, a number of things come to mind.  

When COVID-19 reared its ugly head, because of the uncertainty (some of which remains) we reached out to our customers to find out if their orders were still on track and delayed shipping as well as billing on many orders. For that reason, we continue to check in with our customers to make sure that if we ship an order, someone will be there to receive it and ultimately pay for it.    

In some cases, we extended credit terms for our customers. It seems a little goes a long way on this front.

We are running summer and fall specials with product discounts and up to 90-day delayed billing on qualifying orders.

I think that maybe the most important action we’ve taken has been the active communication with our customers. We’ve always had that, but not at this level in terms of sharing marketplace information, gut reads and camaraderie. We’re all in this together and together we’ll weather this COVID-19 storm and come out the other side stronger than we were before.

JAYPRO SPORTS

Jaypro Sports continues to actively maintain a strong, safe workforce for the manufacture of athletic equipment. As schools return, we are ready to support each Athletic Department’s needs. Our ability to provide customized solutions in any capacity will continue to support the dealer through this difficult time.

Jaypro Sports continues to follow Connecticut’s proactive state mandate of social distancing, required masks, sanitizing with additional cleaning services to provide a safe working environment. We are working with each individual to make sure they are protected and are comfortable with their conditions. Working from home, limited work hours, off site, rotating shifts, whatever is needed to continue to support both employees and customers alike.  

It’s important to note that we are ready to support our dealer’s during this difficult time.

UNDER ARMOUR

Under Armour, as could be expected, has put in place a number of efforts  and “feel good stories and initiatives” to help its team dealers deal with BTS challenges.

• Virtual Armour Days for its partners across the country.
• Virtual challenges for its athletes and brand fans across the country, such as its Better Together Challenge that launched 7/15).
• Community Givebacks.
• UA athletes and ambassadors active on UA social handles, sharing workouts and insight.
• Sport Specific sell-in/informational decks.

Under Armour is also hoping to launch a Through This Together Graphic Tee online store where 10 percent of each sale will go to Donors Choose. https://www.donorschoose.org/

TRANSFER EXPRESS

What started as a way to help apparel decorators raise money for businesses has allowed Transfer Express to support COVID-19 research at Johns Hopkins Medicine.  

According to marketing manager Sue Wilcosky, “Thanks to the high level of interest in our stock Stay Strong transfer packs, we have been able to donate over $10,000 to Johns Hopkins Medicine.” Transfer Express started selling the stock transfers back in March, with all proceeds donated to support Johns Hopkins Medicine.  

“The donation is presented to Johns Hopkins on behalf of our customers. We truly appreciate the opportunity to help our customers raise funds as well as give back to a worthy cause at the same time,” Wilcosky adds.

The Stay Strong stock transfers are no longer available as a fundraiser, but the design is still available as a custom layout. In fact, Transfer Express has also introduced dozens of new custom layouts and clipart and text art that allows businesses to quickly and easily create designs reflecting the state of the world.

STAHLS

Every day since March 16, Stahls’ has been producing and hosting live educational events on Facebook Live. The schedule is planned to continue through August 31, 2020 (and most likely beyond).

According to Carleen Gray, CEO of GroupeSTAHL North America, “Since no one is traveling for business and all industry tradeshows are cancelled, rescheduled or online only, Stahls’ free online education is essential in helping customers find ways to print the custom items they can sell now. We’re showing how to print facemasks, fundraiser shirts and all types of on-demand printing our customers need now.”  

The series features garment decorating experts Josh Ellsworth and Jenna Sackett. Shows air live on Facebook every Monday and Thursday at 11:00 a.m. EDT and are geared to businesses using heat transfers, heat presses, heat transfer vinyls and more. A wide range of topics is covered, including printing team uniforms, specialty heat printing effects and printing caps.

To join the live events: https://www.facebook.com/stahlsheatprinting/

Both shows allow for viewers to interact and ask questions live. If you are not able to attend the shows when they air, viewers can find the episodes on Stahls’ YouTube Channel. Stahls’ is also presenting a wide range of additional how-to events including:

• Top 7 Heat Press Accessories on August 10
• NBM Breakaway Session on August 12 Full Day of Online Classes

For a complete listing of and links to all upcoming Stahls’ educational events, visit www.stahls.com/events‍

CAP AMERICA

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, Cap America is currently offering EQP at 24 pieces to all customers, waiving all drop ship fees and lowering our 30 Day custom overseas program's MOQ to 72 pieces. All of these moves were an effort to help our customers continue to be successful in a time when everyone is feeling the repercussions of the pandemic.
We pride ourselves on our customer service and are fully aware that our success is based on our customers' success, and we will do whatever we can to partner with our clients to ensure their success continues. We encourage constant communication with our customers — all they have to do is ask and we'll do what we can to help.

BOWNET SPORTS

Bownet Sports is known more now as a sports training company. “Train Like a Pro!” means players and coaches can train – even at home – with our line of nets, training balls and tees. We, like other companies and stores, have suffered because of the pandemic and we even had to leave our offices, twice now, in order to comply with updated restrictions. However, we have kept our warehouses open throughout and will continue to ship our dealers during the pandemic.  

At Bownet, we sought to have our core training products (nets, training balls, tees) in multiple team sports available to the dealers who are supplying coaches, players and other customers while training at home or in restricted circumstances. The key to helping our dealers is to have the right stock available when they need it, which is not a simple task trying to balance inventory, with disrupted supply lines, to meet unpredictable levels of demand.  

Additionally, helping our dealers by continuing to promote our brand heavily on social media can be a big boost to driving demand for them. We have kept our booking programs in place with more flexibility for those dealers who need it. Our dealers are our partners and despite the restrictions brought on by the pandemic, we are doing our best to keep Bownet product available for them as we all manage our way through this unprecedented time.