The consumer is coming back

Sales for the first quarter are significantly above last year and our customer count continues to expand as more and more people turn to the off price industry to profit in this down economy. We have seen an increase in traffic at both the ASD show and the Off Price show as well as our walk in traffic. Many of our customers are reporting higher sales figures and while no one is telling us that business is great, we are hearing that business is improving and the consumer is returning to purchase new apparel items for the spring season. The warmer weather during the day has driven tee shirt sales and the cooler weather in the early morning and late evening continues to drive sales in fleece products. The demand remains strong for value items and in particular any liquidation item or reduced price item. Many of our customers are using our closeout items to increase margins by mixing in some of the lower cost products and thereby reducing the average cost in the overall mix. This trend has been growing all month and we are constantly looking to find additional items that we can mark down to improve our customers returns. The closeouts we have are constantly updated as items sell out and new items are added to the mix. Look for the white tank tops Style 2200G and the white shooter shirts Style 2700G to be sold out in the not to distant future. You can view these styles by clicking on the style number links. On the Internet front we have improved our servers and the speed on the site seems to improved dramatically. We will be upgrading our software in the month of April and I am sure we will have some issues but overall we think the new software will help our staff to able to operate with greater ease and functionality. We hope the new software will bring a much needed improvement to customers and sales staff while they try to sort through our ever growing product mix. Look to see a greater availability in children's products in April and hopefully a larger availability in adult white tee shirts. New inventory in white tee shirts will be available by April 1st.

Can anyone say twitter

The hottest buzz words on the web are "social networking" and although this has been on the web for years with web sites like My Space and Face Book a new start up company has created a environment that seems to be what everyone is looking for. The new start up is twitter.com founded in 2006 and it is the third largest social network behind Face book and My Space. With social networking being the next craze RG Riley has added twitter to our web site. We hope that our community of subscribers, customers, distributors and vendors will be able to use the social networking structure to make the off price community more transparent by answering questions and providing updates on product trends and availability. We think it would be really cool if someone in Arizona could benefit from a hot tip from a customer in Florida. Currently our twitter environment is open to anyone although we may think about restricting the visibility in the not to distant future. We look forward to your tweets and we will answer them as quickly as possible....

RG Riley

Irregular apparel Irregular t-shirts

Whats hot is closeout and Irregular T-shirts. With price increases being seen at all the major manufacturers wholesale irregular t-shirts are one hot commodity. We are seeing very strong demand for white tee shirts and color tee shirts in either graded irregulars or first quality closeouts. The demand for white tee shirts seems to out stripping the supply and is forcing prices higher on both the irregular category as well as the first quality category. We are seeing strong demand for white tee shirts in girls (see style K7520) , in ladies in both Cotton Spandex (see style 92700) and in 100% cotton jersey (see style bs190) and in men's (see style A3081). The weather remains cool across most of the US and with tee shirts being this hot this early we believe we will have one of the better years in Off price T-shirts and Irregular t-shirts. Make sure you view our selection of T-shirts by size and our assorted size short sleeve T-shirts.

February 23rd

The off price show was extremely busy with customer traffic being at the highest level we have seen in years. We continue to see an increase in new customers as people move from regular price goods to off price special buys. The main comment we heard through out the show was that off price was the only price selling. Traffic remained heavy the entire show and probably ended to early as we missed a lot of opportunities on last minute customers arriving from Magic.

The trend at the show was to purchase either really cheap closeouts or high value styles. On the low end side we sold items were the goods could be retailed at extremely low prices and provide great margins like our intimate products. These styles are being liquidated between .65 cents and $1.00 for the zip hood. We continue to reduce prices on many of our styles to keep the inventory moving.

The same customer was also buying better goods were the quality and the price provided true value to the consumer. The men's beefy tee styles in the pocketed and non pocketed silhouette's were probably the strongest items we had in the booth. Click on the Style number links to view these items: 85260 and 85270 in the pocketed version and style number 85210 and 85220.

Lastly the trend at our booth was for immediate goods. Our customers needed goods fast and wanted to make sure we could get them shipped as soon as possible. Many of our orders started shipping on Monday only the second day of the show.

We would like to thank every one who attended the Off Price Show and for making it such a huge success this year. We will be at the ASD/AMD show in Las Vegas this March. For show dates and booth numbers click here. If you do not attend the shows the Internet is a great way to stay up with our pricing and inventory. You can see RG Riley at www.rgriley.com.

February 10th

Warmer weather across the Midwest, a return of the snow birds to Florida, the Super Bowl in Arizona, combined with advanced buying in front of the Off Price show in Las Vegas produced a solid increase in purchases from most of our customer base this last week.

Our customers are buying across the board with Capri pants in Missy, Plus and Girls leading the pack in the bottoms category. T-shirts in all age ranges have been strong as we have seen a general restocking of inventories. In general our customers are reporting better sales over the last week as consumers started to open their wallets. Our customers are reporting better sales not great sales; just that little increase in demand produced enough hope for improvement which led to higher purchases.

We anticipate strong sales at the off price show at the Venetian especially in the new styles we have added and the closeouts that have been updated over the last month. Expect inventories in pocket tees and basic tees to get hit hard. If you are attending the Off Price Show we hope to see you at our booths (2200, 2202 and 2204). If you are not attending the show please make sure you complete your orders on the web or call your sales representative to place your order before the show opens on Sunday February 15 th. Our sales staff will be leaving for the show on Friday and therefore we will be short staffed for about a week.

February 2nd update

Rg Riley is a leader in the wholesale offprice apparel business.
Sales continued to pick up over the last two weeks with heavy emphasis on Licensed sportswear and continue strong demand for extreme values. Check out the closeouts and while we know this takes time you can find some real deals on the closeout list.


New products continue to arrive on a daily basis and we are packing these items as fast as we can in our Virginia facility. We will be receiving over 1,000,000 units of closeout and irregular apparel over the next 30 days. Some of the strongest items will be in the men's area with pocket tee shirts in regular and big sizes dominating the first loads. Make sure to view the first quality Hanes Beefy over runs and pay particular notice to the men's Hanes beefy pocket tee shirts (85260) and the big men's version (85270). These are just two of the 12 new styles we are working on this month. You can view our progress by logging in and clicking on the "Recent Packings" button which will display all the items we have packed over the last 14 days. This is a great way for you to keep up with our new arrivals with out having to go to the web site daily.


The blank solid tee shirt business is picking up and we will be working on packing 7 trailer loads of tee shirts over the next few weeks in our Illinois facility. These are Fruit of the Loom and Russell Jerzees goods. We will have 50.50 and 100% cotton tee shirts in solid white and assorted colors within the next 10 days.


Lastly, we are restocking our California facility and LA. will be receiving a trailer load each week for the next three weeks. This will help our west coast customers save on freight and increase our west coast inventory levels in preparation for the upcoming Offprice show in Las Vegas. Please make sure to stop by our booths if you are attending the Offprice show in February. You can view the show dates and booth numbers by clicking on Trade Show Schedule.

RG Riley is a leader in the Offprice wholesale apparel business.

Whats selling at www.rgriley.com

January started off slow and sales have been soft. In order to drive sales we have added 500 styles to our updated closeout list. Whats hot is off price and when I say off price I mean way off price. The closeouts have been generating a lot of traffic and have provided our customers with a great way to create promotions and generate sales. Cheap has been the number one word from our customer base. Our customers and subscribers are looking for great items at drastically reduced prices. Some of our customers are promoting fleece with the cold weather and others are stocking up on spring goods waiting for the weather to break or running early promotions.
In the closeouts area we have seen strong demand on the following 5 items:

The style numbers are links to the items on our online catalog. If the page is not found the style has been sold out. You will need to login to see registered customer pricing.

2300G Gildan irregular white pocket tees

653i0 Hanes boys irregular assorted color and white tee shirts

3900F Fruit of the Loom men's first quality fashion color tee shirts

HV005 Hidden Valley men's two pocket sweat pants

047xo Hanes men's first quality contrast stripe polo shirts.

While these may be the top items, some of our larger customers are purchasing 10 to 20 items at a time and running two for or three for sales at multiple price points.

In the area of transitional goods we have seen huge volume on our casual pants and our cardigans and jackets. These items are ideal for the early spring business and they have produced great results. The top styles in the transitional field are:

471x0 Missy Hanes French Terry 2 pocket pants

489i0 Missy Hanes French Terry zipper hooded jackets

005x0 Plus Hanes French Terry zipper hooded jackets

349I0 Girls Hanes French Terry Capri Pants

We have had several questions about the multiple assortments we have implemented for our newer styles. You will begin to see the assortments marked pack 1 assorted, pack 2 assorted, pack 5 white, etc. These assortments allow our subscribers to view the size scale of the cases and the colors included in the assortments for each individual packing. The customer is then free to purchase the size scale that is the best for there customers. While this is relatively new and will take about 6 months to move through the system we have already had a great response to this increased transparency. We hope to begin producing border scales and large size scales as we go forward.

Please make sure to add a comment or post a question and we will try to respond in a timely manner. If you would like to submit a private question or comment please drop us a note at sales@rgriley.com

RG Riley offprice apparel