There’s one thing that really gets under my skin. That is a competitor of mine who gives his services away at such a low rate that he’s not only going to make what I would consider to be a fair profit, but he’s actually ruining it for everyone else in the industry. It sets a very bad standard. I can’t tell you how many times that someone would call me up and ask for a quote and I would give them what I would consider to be a very fair estimate. They would then reply that the old Columbus screen printing company I used to deal with was selling it for this price or that. I would then reply something to the effect of this. Then why aren’t you still using them? Then they would proceed to tell me out of business. I would then start laughing and say no wonder they’re not in business anymore. If I was selling it for what they were, I would be out of business as well.
Why is it that companies so often take the approach of trying to be the lowest custom embroidery company in the city? In fact, I would be extremely embarrassed to say that we were the cheapest in town. In my opinion, what that is conveying is that your work isn’t worth very much.
There is so much to be said for great customer service especially when a digital t-shirt printing order happens to be time sensitive. By this I mean, what good is it if you saved a few bucks on your order if you didn’t get them in time or the quality of the finished product wasn’t very good?
In my opinion, we are not the only Columbus digital t-shirt printing outfit that are very good at what they do. There are some others who I could strongly recommend. However, what we excel in far above all of our competitors is the ability to communicate. This quality is vital when trying to come to an agreement with our potential customer that is going to be equally good for everyone involved. This even goes as far as simply answering the telephone when somebody calls by a real human. It sounds like that’s no big deal, but it’s actually very rare these days. Most everything regarding business is done with an email or a text comparably to audible communication. Don’t get me wrong. An email is an excellent way to keep track of whatever was agreed on, as well as presented, but there is no substitute for two people to actually just talking to one another.
There are so many things that cannot be conveyed by an email. I’m not sure why folks these days have an intrepidation of actually picking up a telephone and then someone on the other end actually answering it. I do think emails are a wonderful way to keep track of whatever was presented but it’s often very hard to address certain challenges that might complicate the situation such as limited budgets and very short time sensitive turnarounds. These are things that are far better to be expressed just by talking to each other whether that’s in person or by phone. Why would somebody want to take out the human part of that equation? Frankly, I don’t get it. I can’t tell you how many jobs that we have received because of this approach. We don’t have to be the least expensive custom embroidery company who’s quoting the job either. More than not, most of the people that I deal with really appreciate the fact that we’re communicating this way and because of this, they don’t necessarily mind paying a little bit more for that. It instills a strong confidence, that we’re going to be able to not only process their job with excellence but they are going to receive their product on time. This very often gives us a huge advantage over our competitors who don’t take this same approach.
Personally speaking, I’m glad there aren’t very many companies out there that do it this way. That in itself, gives us a huge advantage. I hope my competitors aren’t reading this, as I wouldn’t want them to change a thing.