What Consumers Value Most in Sweatshirts: A Boutique Owner’s Guide

Powered by Dear Lover Clothes

When you are selling clothes, particularly wholesale sweatshirts, you want to deliver on the customers’ expectations. At least, as much as possible for your boutique. Because every store is different and stocking options vary across merchants. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to inventory. Even so, there are a few fundamental aspects about products that customers have that you need to know and meet.

When it comes to wholesale sweatshirts, boutique owners need to focus on style, quality, and seasonality. In order to stock products that are relevant and, most importantly, sell well. We will discuss each in turn. As well as how you can assess your wholesale sweatshirts strategy to make sure it is in line. With both your product scheme as well as your overall vision for your boutique.

Style

Top of the list for most customers when it comes to sweatshirts is style. There are generic and graphic sweatshirts as well as a range of colors, textures, and even fabric compositions. Cuts also vary somewhat depending on the brand or manufacturer. Some sweatshirts are styled so as to be more form fitting. Which is in contrast to the more traditional loose-fitting version we all know well. Here, you need to consider your customer’s overall purchasing habits.

Are they more into loungewear and comfortable clothing or do they tend towards the chic? Perhaps they prefer some combination of the two? How you determine the answers to these questions will impact color, cut, and fabric quality. If your customers are a more active, gym-going crowd, then more traditional sweatshirts make the most sense whereas you will want to find more elegant examples if your customers tend to be trendsetting, luxury or style-oriented.

Quality

Quality is another top consideration for two reasons: Your price and what the customer pays. This, again, goes back to your customer demographics. Do they tend to buy more expensive or cheaper items? Frequency also matters as those that tend to buy more expensive sweatshirts do so less frequently thus necessitating less stock on hand and fewer units moving.

Opposite to this are the volume selling styles that move quickly and require some backup stock just in case. Look at your overall inventory strategy, your customers, and what you think works best for your firm, and go from there when it comes to quality. You also want to consider ancillary issues such as returns and defects which are inevitable at all quality levels but perhaps more common with cheaper items.

Seasonality

Seasonality refers to changing customer demands based on the time of the year and the relative ambient temperature of that time period. It is different depending on where you are in the world but winter is winter whether in the northern or southern hemisphere. When it comes to sweatshirts, lighter construction is often preferred in the spring and summer months whereas heavier knits are preferable in the fall and winter.

Because this is a moving target, you need to think about whether your boutique will move more sweatshirts in the spring and summer or fall and winter and then stock depending on that. Also, as we have mentioned numerous times in this article, don’t forget customer preferences which should always be front and center when making inventory decisions.