On March 16, St. Louis played host to the second Shirt Lab, a quarterly conference designed to provide high-level sales and marketing training to decorated apparel professionals. For attendees arriving the day before the event, there was a tour of Lawson Screen and Digital Equipment, plus an evening networking event – complete with a Rock, Paper, Scissors championship. Sessions included personal branding and networking tips from Shirt Lab co-founder Tom Rauen of Envision Tees; ideas on how to use Facebook Messenger and automated bots to boost your shop’s marketing from speaker Matt Plapp; and video branding advice from Ryan Moor of Ryonet. Justin Lawrence of Oklahoma Shirt Company shared his journey to creating a T-shirt subscription service; Mark Coudray gave the audience industry-specific guidance based on the Profit First program; and Lori Feldman, The Database Diva, shared insight into automated e-mail marketing campaigns. Rounding out the event was an “ask the experts” Q&A session.
The next Shirt Lab is slated for May 18, 2019, and will focus on athletic apparel sales and marketing. Appropriately hosted at Washington Nationals Park in the nation’s capital, the event will provide niche advice on athletic sales, implementing team webstores for sports sales, increasing revenue with sales team bundling, and more.