Weekly runs keep the excitement coming to your audience and a new offer. Products are rotated through a "New Release" collection. If you haven't read "10 reasons to have weekly runs", jump over to there, then come back when you finish. 

There are a few reasons why you want more than weekly runs offered to your customers. The second kind of offer is known as your standing offer.

Your standing offer fills in the gaps your weekly run may leave.

Let's dive in below.

 

Shop anytime

Using the weekly run model, you post a new offer every Tuesday and close on Sunday. What if a customer hits your site on a Monday, but there is nothing to buy, or your site is locked? The customer will bounce, and you may lose what could have been a sale. Imagine you had a standing offer organized in different themed collections they could shop from. What if you want to take a week off or get behind on your weekly runs? You risk an entire week of not having something to offer your customers, but your standing offer would still be available. Over time, your standing offer may become bland towards your customers, so you can work to move them to the clearance section and use your weekly run to spice up your website.

What kind of products should be in your standing offer? Let's cover those next.

 

Extras

When placing your weekly run order with a vendor, my technique was to order an extra print if it was one I thought was popular. This would create a margin for me if I made a mistake on the press. So I had an extra ready-to-go if I didn't make a mistake, yay! I would list it on my site as limited stock and ensure it only had a quantity of 1 vs. unlimited. Be mindful of the price you listed it at if another customer had recently just purchased at full price.

Remind your audience during your weekly runs that you can't guarantee that print will be offered again. However, it should be a surprise when you list it as an extra.

 

Unlimited stock

Some vendors offer prints (Screen Prints, DTF or Clear Film) that don't run out of stock often or are good about restocking. Once you identify those vendors, you should list their mock-ups as a standing offer on your site. Unlike the extra screen print listing example above, do not add a quantity to your unlimited stock listings. 

The unlimited stock gets tricky when running weekly runs, as you must be mindful of your cut-off time and material orders. You can place your order every Monday like you do your weekly runs, but this could affect TAT if a customer order Tuesday and you wait a week to order. You also want to avoid placing multiple screen print orders too. Further, what if you have five different vendors listed for your standing offer and get five other orders with one print from each vendor? Shipping costs will be high.

Ultimately, stick with 1-2 vendors max for your standing offers.

 

In house creation

I loved making bleached tees and vinyl tees as well. My favorite part was getting an order, creating my materials the same day, ordering the tees, and receiving them the next day with S&S Activewear. Also, my TAT was significantly shorter than when I used screen prints. If you have created products you can make in-house and don't rely on another's vendor's stock, these mock-ups make great standing offers. The more mock-ups you start, the bigger your standing offer collections grow.

If you offer both vinyl and sublimation in-house and order screen prints, make your vinyl and sublimation products your standing offer with running screen prints weekly.

 

Seasonal

The weekly runs with the Product Drop Organizer provide a new theme every week for 2023. Christmas is dedicated to its week to run. However, this is one theme I recommend running for more than a week, then closing. This is an example of a seasonal offer. Consider adding more mock-ups to the drop and offer a bit longer or adding extras to your standing offer.

However, we want to watch deadlines because it is easy to get stuck with seasonal inventory. Staying ahead of the timeline with sales and destashes will significantly reduce the likelihood of being stuck with this inventory come tax time.

 

So What

Creating weekly runs complimented my standing offer well. They each filled the gaps the other left.

I didn't have to worry about there ever being a time a customer had nothing to buy, but I also found a solid routine that made it stress-free on what new themes I could offer each week.

I'd love to help you plan your drops and dive deeper into creating a standing offer in my Product Drop Organizer club.