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Please email Erik for a quote erik@go2shirt.com
Erik Mickelson 800-851-3671 ext 112
We are PPAI and ASI friendly. If you are in the ad specialty business we are the embroidery company you want to work with. We are family owned and operated. You will get personal attention on every order you place. The Mickelson family cares about each order you place. We want to establish a friendship/business relationship with all our clients. This philosphy of taking care of our customers has helped us grow to #1 in the Pacific Northwest.
We have employees that have been here for 25-30 years. We just sent our production manger, Mongkon, to Thailand for a 30 day vacation. Mongkon put in 25 years with us. We also sent Carolin, our purchasing manager, to the Caribbean for a 7 day cruise. Carolin also had 25 years service with us. We believe in taking care of our employees.
Our general manager, David Hippensteel was with us for 15 years. He would work 12 hours per day, 6 days per week. David was a real work horse. David was Jim's right hand man at building the business. David has now moved on to get his third degree. David is a Human Resource Manager down in Houston.
Company Information and Facts:
Northwest Embroidery was founded back in 1977 by James A Mickelson in Tacoma, Washington. Northwest Embroidery was also co-owned by Ray Rogers and his wife Merrilyn Rogers. Merrilyn was Jim's sister-in-law and sister to Jim's wife Leeanna Mickelson. Northwest Embroidery started out doing embroidery for Nike when they were a start up company. Besides Nike, Northwest Embroidery did work for Eddie Bauer, LL Bean, Addidas and even President Jimmy Carter.
Northwest Embroidery's first employees were David Saunders and Carolin Bray. David Saunders graduated from Lincoln High School and started work at 19 years old. David was the first digitizer at Northwest Embroidery. Carolin Bray came from Day's Apparel and worked in the factory, sewing emblems to caps. Carolin's husband joined Northwest Embroidery back in 1980 after a major layoff at the Kenworth Trucking plant in Seattle.
We would like to say thank you to our industry consultant Mark Venit for all the years of consulting he has brought us. If it wasn't for Mark Venit we wouldn't be here today. If you need Mark for any consulting gigs give Jim Mickelson a call.
GREAT Article by the legend Mark Venit!
July 01, 2007
The 3 Biggest Marketing
Mistakes You Can Make
The 3 Biggest Marketing Mistakes You
Can Make
Follow these marketing tips from a top industry
consultant.
By Mark Venit, Contributing Writer
JULY 01, 2007 -- Having spent the past 25 years as a
full-time marketing and management consultant in the apparel graphics field and
having worked inside nearly 600 industry companies, I've had the opportunity to
observe the gamut of our participant firms — of all kinds, in all sizes and
shapes, and at all levels of success and dollar volume. What I'll share here are
the three most fatal pathologies that plague our industry (and to a large
extent, small business in general).
No. 1: FAILURE TO PROPERLY POSITION YOUR COMPANY
Given the myriad products, technologies, audiences,
market sectors and all the segments, subsegments and niches within each
category, it's impossible to be all things to all people. But so many companies
in our industry do just that, setting sail and hoping for favorable winds to
steer them to a successful future. Indeed they do try to be all things to all
people and in so doing, virtually guarantee their own failure.
Properly positioning your company in the marketplace
is the bar that separates successful companies from also-rans. "Positioning" is
the term conceptualized and coined by marketing gurus Al Ries and Jack Trout in
1980. Their landmark thinking gave marketers of all stripes a new handle on
creating an association in the buyer's mind, tying a company's products and
services with reasons why the buyer should consider doing business with that
enterprise. "Association" is the process; in the mind is where it happens. Grasp
these elements and you'll quickly understand that how you shape your company's
identity — how you define who you are with what you are — will determine how
people view your company. If, however, you don't define yourself, your prospects
will do it for you, drawing their own conclusions and evincing perceptions that
often differ from what you'd like them to think.
What could be even more painful is that they might very well think of
all of us and our products as "commodities," where, in their minds, what we sell
and do are pretty much what everybody else sells and does.
To overcome these perceptions, we're obliged in the positioning
process to make our company stand for something distinct, differentiated in the
minds of our customers and prospects from our competitors by our name, our
message, our performance and other characteristics.
How do you go about doing that? It's a tall assignment.
The task begins with your company name. Does it tell
who you are and what you do? Does it tell the whole story or at least most of
it? Is it memorable and catchy? Is it dated? Does it limit you today?
Maybe it's time to re-think the company's name — and
if this question has crossed your mind, it's time!
While we're on the subject, maybe it's also time to re-think and
revitalize the firm's entire marketing agenda, and go in for a facelift in its
advertising, which might be showing its age.
How
is your logo doing these days? Is it memorable, attractive and distinctive? Time
for a makeover? Positioning and re-positioning a company entails considerably
more than just names and logos, though these elements represent a good start.
Perhaps a tag line — The good stuff! ...
Guaranteed three-day turnaround! ... We make good companies look great! ... Home
of the Best-Dressed Teams in Town! — is in order to help achieve a more specific
focus or market advantage. Your catalog, price lists and other representations
of your business build an identity and tell a bigger story. Are yours doing you
justice?
The most difficult work in positioning is
what will give you your biggest payback — determining which type of accounts
(businesses, schools, organizations, events, retailers, trade accounts, etc.)
your company is most likely to best serve and in which segments of which sectors
you trade.
Businesses come in all sizes. Is the
same company that can produce a thousand dozen T-shirts in less than a week the
same company that can do 14 caps by tomorrow with four locations of embroidery
for $8 each? Will the outfit that produces magnificently decorated and numbered
soccer uniforms also be the best choice for an insurance giant seeking a vendor
who can provide complete fulfillment services, including an online store? You
get the idea.
Whatever positioning advances you
make, be sure that you can live up to what you say you are and can do. Not doing
so will cause considerable damage to your position, which may be seen as untrue,
deceptive or unrealistic. Building a solid identity and living up to it are key
ingredients in engendering a positive, long-term reputation for the business.
Ultimately, that good name will be the single, most valuable asset when it's
time to sell your business. Any effort and investment you make today in
revitalizing your identity and proving it every day will provide handsome
long-term equity in addition to the dividends it should pay you all the years
along the way.
For a thorough understanding and
detailed counsel on positioning, names and growing a good reputation, I heartily
recommend "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind," by Al Ries and Jack Trout.
(In paperback, it's less than $10). I can assure you the read could put great
ideas in your head and bigger bucks in your bank account.
NO. 2: FAILURE TO ENGINEER PROACTIVE AD STRATEGY
For most industry firms, advertising is considered somewhere between
a necessary evil and an unproductive expense. For some, though, it's the engine
that drives their growth in attaining ever-increasing market share and
maintaining a healthy bottom line. Advertising is indeed an expense — but only
if it doesn't work. When it works, it's considered a smart investment.
Yes, there are media that work and media that don't.
There is, however, no one-size-fits-all answer for industry firms. The most
effective medium for most companies in our industry — when properly executed and
at the right intervals — is direct mail. Radio, where it's affordable and well
planned, is undoubtedly the most cost-effective in terms of generating qualified
leads for custom apparel sales. Unfortunately, if you're in a market with more
than 500,000 souls, it's likely a non-starter due to cost.
Web advertising has its benefits, most of which are evident in
serving existing accounts and current prospects. With rare but notable
exceptions, as a lead generator in this industry, though, Web advertising will
prove elusive and costly. When properly targeted and with the right graphics,
print media will command its place in your budget and is best employed mainly in
weekly or monthly publications. For a few firms, cable TV works wonders.
For the vast majority of companies, though, their only
regularized advertising is in telephone directories. The trend for industry
firms is decidedly toward smaller Yellow Pages ads and lower monthly outlays.
The fact of the matter is that the Yellow Pages might be cost-effective for
generating leads, but another story in generating sales.
Whatever mix is right for you isn't the topic here, but rather the
need for a credible effort at creating and implementing an advertising strategy
that works. You need one that is affordable to implement, monitored regularly
for results, modified when necessary and planned for a full year's campaign.
It's also a plan that accommodates seasonal nuances and realities, addresses key
audiences in conjunction with the company's positioning objectives, and is
funded at a level that enables the firm to maintain its account base. It also
generates sufficient replacements for accounts lost in the normal course of
business, and increases the base by a realistic and attainable percentage each
year.
The right budget for custom businesses in
our field to accomplish this — for firms that have established themselves and
have achieved some stability — is 2/% to 3/% of gross (custom) revenues. For
startups, the budget may consume 10% to 20% of first-year sales, or more. For
industry retailers in destination locations (not malls or resorts), the figure
is 9% to 12%. But the average annual expenditure for custom-based firms and
destination retailers in our industry rarely tops 1%, and most of that is done
singularly in the Yellow Pages.
By the way, large
contract decorators should be budgeting /% to 1% of contract sales to accomplish
account maintenance, replacement and growth, yet the average spend for these
firms is 0.25% or less.
Truth be told, for most
apparel graphics companies advertising is an expense, because it doesn't work,
it's done haphazardly, and without regularity, frequency or with continuity.
That's why most industry firms follow a faith-based advertising strategy: owners
wait by the phone, praying it will ring.
By not
spending sufficiently on advertising, not developing better ads, and not making
an annual advertising budget a company priority and norm, the poor performance
in generating new leads and new customers transforms a failed advertising effort
into a perennial self-fulfilling prophecy.
NO. 3: INABILITY TO DIFFERENTIATE YOUR COMPANY
You might think you run your business better than the
other guys run theirs. And while your existing customers might agree with you,
the huge number of customers buying from other providers either don't know about
your company (Mistake No. 2) or see it as being much the same as the others.
Civilians [people in the real world] see all screen printing and embroidery
companies as doing the same things, selling the same things, and providing
similar levels of quality and service.
This
general view from the marketplace is the root cause of civilians asking for
discounts, shopping prices and forcing apparel graphics companies to undercut
each other to stay alive. In the buyers' minds, what we do and sell is, to them,
a commodity, much like potatoes, milk and all-purpose flour. Why pay more if
it's all the same?
Unless you can convince buyers
your business does, in fact, produce better-quality work, handles orders more
easily and more professionally, creates better-looking and more dynamic
graphics, is a friendlier place to visit, and has better and friendlier
employees, then your business will continue to be "just like all the rest" in
their view.
How do you go about differentiating
your company from the pack? You do it first by showing and telling about why
you're different (and better!); by following through more promptly and more
professionally (from your order forms and art approval forms to how you pack and
box your finished orders); and by demonstrating every time you do business that
you are better, you really are more conscientious and more professional, and
that your work does, in fact, look better.
And
unless your staff is actively striving for excellence in every presentation,
every quotation opportunity, every customer contact, and, of course, as part of
every order produced, your business will continue to be thought of as "typical."
Unless endeavoring to excel in every facet of your business becomes the norm
(and not the occasional occurrence), you'll continue to respond to pressure for
lower prices with lower prices — and declining profitability.
Differentiation also means you have a real price list, not a
secretive mentality that precludes customers from finding out prices except by
speaking with someone. It means that from the moment a buyer engages you — over
the phone, in person, on the Web, at a business event — each experience is
compelling proof that you know what you're doing, that you're worth what you're
charging, and that your company is the best choice as to where he or she wants
to do wearables business.
As for the best time to
start correcting any or all of these three biggest mistakes, it's today!
Mark L. Venit, president of Apparel Graphics
Institute, Ltd., provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary
research to apparel graphics companies. Author of several books and many
articles on management and marketing, he also serves as chairman of the board of
ShopWorks Software.
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