Author Topic: Contra deal for radio advertising?  (Read 2018 times)

Fonzico

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Contra deal for radio advertising?
« on: April 23, 2014, 04:01:16 PM »
So, my current side (and hopefully one-day main) gig is making vinyl t-shirts (and signs and vehicle decals, but that's besides the point right now).

I had a meeting today with a popular local radio station, who would like a fairly large number of t-shirts made (50-100 ish) and have offered to make a contra deal to bring the price down for them.

I am going to provide them with a quote for the full cost of the t-shirts, and they are going to counter-offer the quote, to include radio advertising spots. I don't have the details yet, although I'll update when I do, but I just wanted to see if anyone had any insight to offer - I've tried using some google-fu on this, but I'm not having much luck.

Any thoughts on what is fair here? Should it be a straight across value exchange? (ie. whatever cost I take off their order is given back to me in credit for radio time at the usual rate?) Can I try to negotiate for future services? (50% off this order, and future orders up to $X, so my costs are covered now?)

Basically, I'm selling the shirts for $18-$20, and my material costs are around $7-8. The rest is labour/profit. We run things out of our basement right now, so overhead is negligible, but I try to run things as though we were paying for office/shop space, so we will be able to in the future. I think it's reasonable for me at this point to put in some hours for "free" in exchange for some advertising - especially since attracting even one or two clients for a large format sign would be a major boost for us. Plus, in general I like the idea of building a relationship with the station, since they're major players in the community.

I just don't want to get screwed over here, nor make any unreasonable demands. They are aware that we are a small business just starting out, and I get the impression that they are happy to support us for those reasons... but also maybe think they can come out on top of the deal for those reasons?

Please, any input at all would be so helpful here. Thanks in advance.

 

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