More Martial Arts School Income Streams with Shopify Store

Merchandise and gear sales are a great complimentary income stream for martial arts schools, particularly Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai Academies because we have so many items that we can offer to our students.  Jiu-Jitsu Gi, rash guards, boxing gloves, shinguards, etc., the options are endless unlike the space we have in our academies to house the inventory, that's limited.

There's a saying in retail, "The longer an item sits on the shelf, the less value it has."  Consumer tastes change and inventory has a habit of disappearing (shrinkage), sometimes through theft and sometimes because we take it for personal use.  Either way, the costs ultimately add up.

I'm not advocating for anyone to ditch equipment and merchandise sales but rather to supplement through another channel.  Open up an online store that can sell 24/7 without schools owners fronting the money for inventory.  

A few years ago we opened up a Shopify online store as a means to sell apparel through a pay per order process meaning, we supply the designs and pay the cost of each item per order when it is ordered.  The supplier we use for this is www.printful.com.

In essence the only cost you'll have is for design and a small fixed fee for the subscription.  Also don't forget to factor transactions costs in to your orders  Often times Shopify Store operators choose to link and allow purchases via PayPal and they require a cut.

Check out our online store here for some ideas: 

https://beta-academy-dc.myshopify.com

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