New website is under construction! In honor of that, we thought we would share a bit of online history. Here is a look back at the evolution of 17 years of Rose City Label on the web. Today we get over 1500 visitors each month, lots of quote requests, and generally 2-5 new customers per month that start out as web inquiries. We continue to be diligent with out blogging and providing good, relevant content. Our purpose here is two-fold -1. To help our customers make their label buying experience as easy as possible and 2. To show our future customers that we really know what we are doing after 87 years in this business!
Current website (for now) – June 2013 to present. Wordpress based – active blog – lots of good product photos:
Prior to this site, we had our first major upgrade with a focus on blogging back in June 2011. This site featured a YouTube video on the home page:
Before this, the web wasn’t our focus, but we knew we needed a basic brochure style site on the web. No blogging or dynamic content and not too many photos:
Going back further, it gets really embarrassing! These were the early days, but we were at least making an effort. We had an online quote form and a Map Quest Map link – remember them?
Truly back to version 1.0 – I actually taught myself HTML and posted the text of our brochure onto a web server – securing the name ‘rclabel.com’ – very basic, but we were online in 1998. Were you?
Even though some of this history is a bit tough to look at, but there is a lesson here for all of us. Don’t wait until you are ready before you launch! Often times in business, we need to work on the ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ sequence. People say that if you don’t blush when you look at the first version of your product, you probably waited too long to launch. Be bold – launch your product and see what the market says. Don’t overthink it – go for it!
When you are ready to launch (or not quite ready, but doing it anyway) we can help. Call us – we will help get your product to market and make your dream a reality!
** Web historical clips are from the very interesting Internet Way Back Machine – check it out here – http://archive.org/web/ – you can see old versions of your site too.
We believe that we have to track and measure everything to give you the best possible performance. It is hard to manage a business, family, or project just based on ‘gut feeling’ – you need data to keep yourself and your team accountable. Here are a few of the things we measure.
Financial – sales, profits, material cost, labor and others
Delivery times – number of orders shipped, average time, commitments met
Errors – problems, rejects, items caught before getting to the customer
Green – trash, electricity, natural gas, water usage
All of these measures give us a solid understanding of how our business is performing. The numbers don’t lie.
This is how we did for you in April 2015. This was a big month for us as we continue to grow thanks to your support – largest April in 87 years! We continue to work on lead times to keep customers happy, The other interesting thing is that within these averages – 61 orders were shipped in 5 days or less – that’s 20% of all orders in 5 days or less!
Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need – chances are, we can make it happen. THANK YOU for all your support.
Rose City Label is proud to be a local, family owned business. We try to support businesses like us as often as possible. Recently, we needed a few specially sized metric bolts in our shop and we chose to use our local hardware store – Wichita Feed and Hardware. These guys are right down the street and the service is excellent. Here are just a few of the reasons to support your local merchant rather than a big box retailer:
Closer to our shop than the national chain store
Easy parking
Small store with very helpful service
Experts took me directly to the proper drawer to get what I needed
In and out in 6 minutes
I only had to buy what I needed – 6 screws
No packaging to throw away
Supports local family owned business keeping money in the neighborhood
Better product – better price – better service. Other than that, I don’t see any reason to support your local hardware store!
If you want to support a local family business and get great service like this, please call us today.
Rose City label is proud to be a participating sponsor of an official Craft Brewers Conference Event, Crosby Hop Farm Open House on April 15 at 6 pm in Woodburn, Oregon.
Crosby Hop Farm is a 5th-Generation Hop Grower, Broker, Processor and Distributor of more than 75 Varieties, Service Craft-Brewers around the globe. Visit them online CrosbyHops.com. Be sure to check out the cool company video right on the home page!
This invite-only event will be held 35 miles south of Portland. Participants may drive, though bus transportation will be provided for a limited number of attendees who RSVP quickly. We expect this to be a fun, energetic night with limited edition beer and networking with hundreds of top brewers from around the country.
For brewers that want to attend, please email the Crosby crew!
Thank You to the 65 brewers that trust Rose City Label with your label printing needs – Your business is very important and we look forward to seeing you at CBC and at this party.
Rose City Label is very proud to support Oregon Craft Beer by providing these Commemorative Beer Label specially for the upcoming Craft Brewers Conference on April 14-17, 2015.
As part of CBC, our local Oregon brewers are doing collaboration brews to show off the best that our beer scene has to offer. This is a great way to show off the best of Oregon to the entire brewing world – and we are proud to be a part of it! Rose City Label was selected to provide the labels for these limited-edition 22 oz. bottles.
Obviously the Oregon Brewers Guild could have used anyone on these labels, and we are thrilled that our quality and reputation in the industry was strong enough to send the business our way. We are happy to support the industry that has been so good to us the past 7 years!
Look for these bottles while you are visiting CBC and enjoy some amazing Oregon beer – Cheers!
This video was created for a recent presentation to business leaders in Portland, but we wanted to share it with our blog readers as well.
Look for the HP Indigo Section in the second half of the video (00:59); the new HP Indigo digital press is a NEW ADDITION that is really adding capacity and opening new Opportunities for YOU and for us this year. If you have any custom label projects coming up, we would love to help.
Rose City Label is very proud to support Oregon Craft Beer by providing these Commemorative Beer Label specially for the upcoming Craft Brewers Conference on April 14-17, 2015.
