Premium Belt Stripes vs. Electrical Tape!
Posted by Belt Stripes on
Acknowledging your students’ progress in their martial arts training is an important way to encourage them to achieve their goals. For many martial arts instructors, implementing a successful belt stripe program has been an ideal way to recognize their students and reinforce their accomplishments.
Many martial arts schools have used strips of electrical tape as their belt stripes for years. Our team at Beltstripes.com challenges you to keep reading this article if you are looking for an alternative to tape or just assumed that this was the best way to put stripes on your students’ belts.
So what’s the big deal with using electrical tape? If this was the first thought that popped in your mind, I want you to stop and think about your belt stripes from a marketing perspective. Attracting new people and inspiring existing students to continue with their training is one of the biggest challenges that every academy faces. If you take a minute to consider what parents and other students (that are paying to train at your school) might think about being rewarded for their hard work and effort with strips of electrical tape, you will start to see why this may not be the best way to inspire your students. Most martial arts academies have plenty of competition to contend with. There are typically several schools in a single area or neighborhood, all marketing to the same pool of potential new students. We all know that one of the key components in any successful business model is providing a valued professional service. Ask yourself what message you are sending to students and parents the next time you cut and wrap a strip of tape around the end of your students’ belt that looks like it just came out of a toolbox in the garage. Students want to be part of a professional martial arts program and believe it or not, something as simple as a piece of tape could sway a person to choose one program over another.
If this doesn’t convince you that you should consider an alternative to tape, then let’s take a look at it from a cost and time perspective.
On average, a roll of electrical tape costs about $1.50 to $5.00 per roll depending on whether you are using black tape or colored tape for your stripes. Standard rolls of electrical tape will yield about 100 to 125 stripes at a cost between $0.01 and $0.05 cents per stripe.
Sounds like a great deal! Right?!
Not exactly when you stop to ask a few questions…How long does it take you or your instructors to cut the tape into stripes? (Remember that time = money) Does the tape keep falling off your students’ belts? Do you or your instructors have to cut and apply new pieces of tape all the time? Did you buy the 10 pack of off-brand electrical tape at your local hardware store that didn’t stick at all?
If an instructor that earns $10/hour, takes one minute to cut and/or apply a single new piece of tape, the stripe that cost you a penny the first time, now just jumped to about $0.17. Even at 17x the cost, this still seems like a small price to pay to reward your students. My point is not to convince you that you might be spending $0.17 cents on a piece of tape! My point is that for the few pennies you actually spend on belt stripes, it all boils down to what a belt stripe represents. Stop thinking about the few cents that belt stripes cost and focus on how you can use them to add tremendous value to your martial arts program. Belt stripes remain one of the most effective ways you can encourage your students and reward them for achieving their goals. Don’t let a few pennies take the value out of this important reward system and reinforce your message by using premium belt stripes. Believe it or not, they cost about the same and are easier to order than driving to your local home improvement store.
BeltStripes.com offers premium stripes in a large selection of colors. They are waterproof and tear resistant with a durable, strong adhesive for long lasting grip to your students’ belts. Our stripes are fade resistant and come on easy to manage sheets of 34 stripes per page. With no minimum orders, you can purchase a single sheet of stripes or a hundred sheets at a time. Try different colors or choose from our large selection of achievement stripes to add even more ways to reward your students. Starting at a cost of about 10 cents per stripe, we can help you reinforce your professional belt stripe system and add amazing value to your martial arts program.