by admin | Mar 18, 2015 | Business Tips
Typically I try to focus these blog posts on labels, label design, and customer highlights. But occasionally, I like to pass along general business tips. This is one of those tips – something that I use personally to make me more productive and effective as a small business owner. I know many of our customers face the same challenges that I do, so hopefully you appreciate these tips.
Generally, I recommend listening to business podcasts while you drive such as Jeff Sanders “The 5AM Miracle Podcast“. Because I spend lots of time in the car getting to and from customer appointments, having a way to leverage that “Car-Time” time with audio books and podcasts has been very helpful to me the past few years. Specifically, I recommend Jeff Sanders – host of “The 5AM Miracle Podcast”. The show is very upbeat, energetic, and full of actionable tips you can use in your own personal and business life. Jeff talks about Healthy Habits, Nutrition, and Productivity. I especially like his honest, practical advice. He publishes a new show every Monday and I look forward to them every week.
Want to be more productive and use your drive/run/walk time more effectively? Check out JeffSanders.com to read his blog articles and to download podcast episodes, or subscribe in iTunes if you prefer that method. Either way, I think you will agree that he has great information to share.
Next week we return to our normal Label Industry news – thank you!
by admin | Jan 8, 2015 | Business Tips
As we begin the new year, review our plans and goals for the upcoming business season, it is worthwhile to take a step back and ask basic questions we often don’t take the time to ask. When we are deep in the details of day to day operations, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the big picture.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail – anonymous
We get bogged down in this mind set from time to time, and we don’t step back to look at the problems of our customers with fresh eyes.
If we had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, Henry Ford
Are we spending too much time trying to give our customers ‘faster horses’? When a truly revolutionary solution is on the horizon? It is easy to get caught up in the day to day hustle, but hopefully as the calendar turns over and we start over again, it is wise for all of us to take step back and ask the basic questions again – what do my customers really want?
Are we providing true value and innovative solutions? Or just faster horses?
Thanks for helping Rose City Label have a record year in 2014 – we look forward to asking the right questions and solving more of your problems in the New Year – Cheers!
by admin | Oct 7, 2014 | Business Tips, Company News
We take our customer lead time requests very seriously. Getting labels into your hands quicker is the single biggest stress we have when it comes to taking care of our customers.
How long does a typical order take?
People want the labels for less money, and we occasionally get a quality complaint, but for every one of those, we have 10 people that want the labels faster! So what is the real answer? Here it is:
For September 2014:
- Average Lead Time for a NEW digital order was 7.12 working days
- Average Lead Time for a NEW conventional press order was 10.16 working days
- Average Lead Time for a REPEAT digital order was 6 working days
- Average Lead Time for a REPEAT conventional press order was 7.33 working days
We are proud to share this data – we measure everything and like to focus on the actual data to run our business. Here is more insight behind the averages:
- 18% of our orders were DIGITAL and 82% were CONVENTIONAL.
- 67% of our orders were REPEATS and 33% were NEW or REVISED
- Averages above are accurate overall, but 95 orders in September were done in 5 days or less!
Part of this solution is adding people and lengthening the work day on our equipment — we have gradually done that over this year and it is working very well. We now have about 20 more available press hours each week than we had a year ago. This helps, but we still need more so we are considering a major equipment upgrade — more on that in a future post. For now, we are happy with the progress we have made. Stay tuned for more exciting news soon on the equipment front – and THANK YOU for keeping us so busy. Without our loyal customers, we wouldn’t be worried about lead times at all!
Want more information about our lead times or what you can do to help us expedite your orders? Call us today.
by admin | Jul 3, 2014 | Business Tips
It amazes me how many people lose business and disappoint customers just by failing to do the simple things. There are many, many challenging, technical aspects to all of our work, but there are also simple things. Often, it is the simple things that trip us up -why?
I recently heard of a very talented landscape contractor that lost a good client because he couldn’t remember to close the client’s gate to keep the dogs from running away! The pruning was excellent, the price was fair, and the contractor showed up on time – but he couldn’t remember to close the gate! This was a new client, with a lifetime value in the tens of thousands of dollars – all lost by failing to close the gate – simple stuff!
In another case, we earned a client at Rose City Label because the previous vendor couldn’t get the billing correct! Label printing is difficult, and there are many different charges for the preparation, tooling, on-press changes, plus the actual printing of the labels. This other vendor could never seem to make his invoice match his estimate – always questions and confusion. Again, labels were beautiful, delivered on time, and at a fair price, but the simple stuff tripped him up.
In what areas of your life or business are you failing to do the simple things that make a big difference?
Technology and cutting edge products are vital to business today, but don’t lose sight of the simple things. Doing all these things right isn’t very sexy, but they make a huge difference.
by admin | May 17, 2014 | Business Tips
Every business has a finite amount of resources – money, time, people are all limited. This means you can’t help everyone with everything. In order to help the most people, in the most effective way, you need to clearly define your product offerings and also be very, very clear about who you are trying to help. We will talk about product line definition in another post, but for now, let’s get very clear about the target customer.
All of these elements should be considered:
– Business location, size, industry
– Business credit worthiness and willingness to pay
– Potential need for your product
– Likeliness to reorder
– Ease of connecting – at all points of the order cycle
– ‘Red Flags’ – unreasonable expectations, timelines, respect for you
Not all of these will apply to all business situations, but at Rose City Label we have worked hard to clearly define the type of customer that we work best with. We want to be successful – that means our customers need to value our product and be willing to pay for it, and they have to require a product that we can print well.
Any time we spend chasing or working with companies that aren’t in our target market is time we don’t have available to work with people we could really help. This is a lost opportunity for the customer, and for us. Remember, all of us have limited time so we must use it wisely.
Spend time up front defining your target customer with laser focus – only after this will you be able to maximize your success by dealing the ideal customers that really need and value what you produce.
by admin | May 15, 2013 | Business Tips
I was fortunate to attend a vendor summary in Ohio this week that included a presentation by Rob Wallace of Wallace Church – a world class branding agency in New York and San Francisco.
Rob spoke for about an hour about Design Thinking. His points were very good, and worth sharing here. Rob said that Design should be a mentality in your business. We need to connect the dots in new ways, and not just rely on linear thinking and the accumulation of facts. We can’t get by on just regurgitated facts – we have to think in new ways. Design is a process, an action, a verb. Here are the critical steps:
- A> DEFINE – redesign the problem, don’t look for the easy, obvious, conventional solution – look at it in a new way
- B> CREATE – make many options, try a new approach, don’t stop at a barely acceptable solution
- C> REFINE – make rapid prototype and test heavily – let the market tell you – improve and change often
- D> EXECUTE – implement solutions that work – monitor success – follow through – make it happen
Learn more about Rob and his firm by clicking here.
While this isn’t directly related to labels or printing, it is a message that all businesses need to keep in their mind. We want to be a solution provider, not just a print vendor. Our goal is to help your business succeed – labels are just the main vehicle we use to accomplish this goal. Call us today if we can help.
