Greater Than Sports apparel is now offered at the Durham Book Exchange! Â Her Campus got the chance to meet with the founder, Mike Borisenok, to get the inside scoop on the new partnership. Â Check out www.GreaterThanSports.com or head down to the Durham Book Exchange.
Â
Tell us about the big new partnership with the Durham Book Exchange:
If you have stopped by the Durham Book Exchange in the last month, you can see how they are reinventing themselves by not only selling textbooks but also clothing. They approached me about a month ago and explained how they are looking to draw customers to the store for clothing and noticed that GTS has a large following. When they offered the opportunity, I did not hesitate to accept. Obviously we have our GreaterThanSport.com website and as popular as online shopping is, it still only makes up of 10% of all retail sales. I feel it is because people like to see and feel the products, especially for clothing. Â By partnering with the DBE our goal is have it a win-win situation where it draws customers to their store and GTS continues to grow.
What sort of products can we find there? Are they expensive?
When deciding what products to go with, we wanted to have a variety of products. You can find men’s and women’s t-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts, headbands, and hats. With spring around the corner we wanted to keep colors bright. But as sales continue we will be adding new products, so people should track us on Facebook or stop by the store to see what we have added throughout the spring.
As a college student, I know that funds are always short. This is why we try to keep prices affordable. You can very easily walk into stores in downtown Durham and find a UNH crewneck sweatshirt for $30-$40. Our crewneck sweatshirts are $15 at the DBE. Our average price on our clothing is $15, with our max price being around $20-$25. When I started GTS a couple years ago, my initial motivation was to create a brand that people enjoyed wearing, it wasn’t about turning over profit. So we try to keep prices low to attract customers.
(These headbands are only $5!! We call the turquoise one!)
If we want to customize an order, who do we contact?Â
I tell people all the time that GTS is not a screen-printing business; it is an athletic clothing business. With that said, we are always looking to do custom orders for customers. Whether it is for a team, a group, or an organization we will print custom designs on GTS branded apparel. Our lead designer, Kelly Sullivan, is creative and innovating as it gets and always does an impressive job with designing the apparel. By choosing us you not only get our GTS branded apparel but we also can usually beat other screen printers prices. We don’t charge for screen fees, color changes, or two-sided printing. We usually just do just a flat rate per shirt. If anyone is interested they can contact myself at info@GreaterThanSports.com
Are there more colors and products offered on the website or just at the Durham Book Exchange?
From a business standpoint it is impossible to offer all colors and products at the DBE. At the DBE you can find the products and colors that are recently trending. On our website you can find and buy all of our colors and products offered. GTS up to this point thrives off of customer feedback. So if anyone is looking for a particular color combination for any of our products we are very flexible and always encouraging people to contact us.
Are you still looking to expand your team? What kind of people are you looking to hire? Where can you apply?
To me the most important thing is having the right people. The one thing that I have noticed about the team members that I have right now is that each one of them is passionate about their part of the puzzle. I like to create a culture of creativity that brings out the best in each team member and I am confident that each one of them will tell you that it is fun to be apart of GTS. My goal right now is for GTS to spread across college campuses, starting with UNH. With that I am looking for sales representatives. A sales rep basically works on their own time promoting GTS and collecting orders. Typically a rep makes $5 for every product that they sell. So if a rep collects 100 orders then they are going to be looking at a cut of $500.  Also with sales increasing, production is increasing. We screen print all of our products in-house, here on campus in Durham. So we are always looking for people with screen-printing experience. As our GTS team is all made up of college students, hours are always flexible.
Rumor has it GTS is coming out with new women’s clothing, is that true? Can you provide us with the inside scoop?
Obviously when I started GTS, all of the clothing selection was from myself (a boys point of view). Kelly Sullivan who has been with me from the beginning has really developed into a great designer. She started out by just drawing and printing designs for GTS. Now she creates the design and designs the actual composition of the clothing. So we now have more of a women’s view of product selection. Expect GTS to be releasing very new and innovating women’s active wear. Kelly and I have been developing these products for some time now and we are very excited for them to be available at the DBE. Kelly approached me and asked me if I have noticed that when girls buy our crewneck sweatshirts or t-shirts, they cut the neck so it is very loose fitting and shows their shoulders. So we will be coming out with tops that go along with that theme. As always you can stay updated by following us on Facebook.
GTS Facebook page:Â http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greater-Than-Sports/104962176225739?ref=ts