Skip to content
No setup costNo inventory risk20% back to your club
Get Started

Program

Spirit wear fundraising for swim and water polo programs

Team stores for high school swim and water polo programs. Parkas, towels and team gear, built and shipped by us, with 20% back to the club.

Swim and water polo have one item that dominates everything else, and it is not a hoodie. The deck parka is the definitive purchase in both sports: athletes are wet, sitting outside, often before sunrise, and a parka is functional equipment rather than an optional show of support. Where other programs have to persuade families to buy, these programs have families asking where to get one.

The audience is small and the schedule is unfriendly. Meets start early, they last a long time, and spectators are outdoors at a pool in the cold. That produces very low casual attendance and a family group that is present at everything.

The budget pressure is also different. Pool time is a direct, recurring, often substantial cost, and programs without their own facility are paying for water by the hour. That is an unusually easy thing to explain to families when asking them to support a store.

When the demand actually arrives

Water polo in the fall and swim in the spring means many programs effectively run two seasons with an overlapping family group. Early-morning practices and outdoor pools make cold-weather items sell in both.

Timing is the part clubs get wrong most often, and it costs more than the range does. The full argument is in when to launch a spirit wear store.

What sells for a swim or water polo program

Not a general list of spirit wear. These are the items that move for this program specifically, and the reason each one does.

  • Deck parkas. The single most wanted item in either sport and effectively required equipment. Higher price point than anything else in school fundraising and it still converts.
  • Team towels. Used daily, lost regularly, and replaced without anyone needing persuading.
  • Hooded sweatshirts and joggers. For families in the stands at a cold outdoor pool at seven in the morning, rather than for the athletes.
  • Mesh equipment bags. Wet gear has to go somewhere. A practical item specific to these sports that families would otherwise buy generically.

What the money usually goes toward

Worth naming explicitly when you launch. Families give more readily to a specific cost than to program funds in the abstract.

  • Pool time, which for programs without a home facility is the dominant recurring cost
  • Caps, balls, goals and lane equipment
  • Officials and timing systems for meets
  • Travel to invitationals and championship meets

What we handle, and what you do

  1. 1. You send colors, marks and rosters

    Along with written confirmation from the district that the club may use the school name and logo. That is the entire job on your side.

  2. 2. We build and you approve

    We design the range and the storefront around what sells for a swim or water polo program, and the range you approve is the range that sells for the rest of the season.

  3. 3. We print, ship and support

    Each order is produced after it is bought and shipped direct to that buyer. No sorting, no distribution day, no leftover sizes.

  4. 4. We promote it

    Text and email campaigns to your opted-in families, timed to the points in this program’s season when people actually buy.

  5. 5. You get paid

    20% of total order value, remitted on a set schedule. A share of what the store sells, not a share of margin after costs.

Questions from swim and water polo clubs

Parkas are expensive. Will families really buy them through a store?
They buy them anyway, which is the point. The choice is not whether the family spends the money but whether the program gets a share of it. Running parkas through the store means the purchase families were already making returns something to the club.
Should swim and water polo share a store?
Usually yes. The families overlap heavily, the seasons sit at opposite ends of the year, and one store open across both is far better than two short windows.
What if our program has no home pool?
It makes the fundraising more important and the case easier to make. Pool rental is a real, specific, recurring number, and families respond to being told what it is.

Other programs at the same school

Most clubs we work with run more than one. Each of these has its own season and its own range.

Worth reading next