Custom Shot Glasses

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For those of you who may not be aware, the shot glass market is huge in college towns and to students in general. The idea of selling customized shot glasses came to me a while ago and I have indeed given it a test.

My friend Mike and I ordered some custom printed shot glasses for our school (which you can see to the right in the image) and have been selling them. The only problem with our plan was that we got a late start, waiting until only about a month until the end of school to order and then it took another 2 weeks for them to show up. So with about 2 weeks of school left, we were not able to sell as many as we would have hoped. But with the school year starting in a couple weeks, we are expecting them to sell pretty quickly.

Pros
-Customizable to any phrase/image
-Low cost per item (usually around 80 cents each when you order at least 72 glasses)
-Easy item to sell to your friends and their friends
-Word of mouth advertising is golden for selling shot glasses, and FREE!
-High profit margin

Cons
-Possible complications with your college/university (using copyrighted images/phrases, making your school look bad, etc)
-High minimum quantity order (72 of one shot glass is a lot!)
-Lots of companies offering the printing service, tough to find a reputable and reliable supplier
-Competition

We have been selling our shot glasses to our friends for either $4 or $5. When paying only about 95 cents each including the printing and shipping, we are making at least $3 off of each shot glass. The mark up of shot glasses is amazing! When you visit your campus bookstore, your local greek shop, or even national franchise restaurants (such as Hard Rock Café), shot glasses sell for between $5.99 – $7.99. So being able to under cut the competition in the price and offer a customized product is a huge benefit to you.

We stand to make a nice little profit from this side venture, but when you take into consideration the past 3 months that they have just been collecting dust, the profit doesn’t nearly seem worth the work that was involved for us. However, if you are able to have a quick turn around with selling your glasses, then the profit is good and you can easily reinvest in more shot glasses and different designs.

What are you thoughts?

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8 Responses to Custom Shot Glasses

  1. Dennis August 21, 2006 at 1:07 pm #

    I just did an order of these for a sorority’s national meeting. Everyone liked them!

  2. Chris August 21, 2006 at 1:38 pm #

    Glad to hear it Dennis. Where did you order from if you dont mind me asking?

  3. noah kagan August 24, 2006 at 10:36 am #

    great idea. are you worried at all about trademark rights and getting sued by the university?

  4. Chris August 24, 2006 at 10:56 am #

    Noah- No not really. Our purchase was done on such a small scale that I don’t even think it would be noticed. The saying that we used “You Cant Spell Drunk Without RU” doesnt really involve any trademarks. Granted RU are the initials/abreviation for our school, however, I am pretty sure they are not trademarked by the school as they are used everywhere around town in diferent things and other things. If we did a full blown advertising campagin for these then maybe we would take that sort of thing into consideration, but it we only ordered 72 of them and we are not doing any advertising at all, just selling them to friends and friends of friends.

  5. Robert DeVore August 24, 2006 at 12:25 pm #

    Hello,

    This is a great idea. I know a LOT of people who are drunks and would love these. Could you possibly point me in the right direction of where you order these?

    Thanks,
    – Robert DeVore
    Not Your Average…

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

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    […] Chris Pund at Dorm Room Biz: For those of you who may not be aware, the shot glass market is huge in college towns and to students in general. The idea of selling customized shot glasses came to me a while ago and I have indeed given it a test. […]

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