by admin | Oct 22, 2015 | Company News, Customers/Examples, Label News
Being successful in business and life is all about being intentional – planning and executing. You can’t run full speed all day long without burning out and failing. The seasons of the year provide an excellent reminder about taking the time to plan for future success.
Now is the time to set the intention and the plans for a prosperous 2016.
Three Reasons to Plan for Success Today –
- Fall is very nice transition. Summer is over, kids are in school, and the craziness of the Holiday season isn’t quite upon us yet. Regardless of your life or family situation, everyone can benefit from taking a breath, relaxing, and preparing to surge in the new year.
- You have a pretty good idea of how 2015 will end. This far through the year, you should have a very accurate prediction of how the year will finish. Did you meet your goals? Did new challenges come in? Are you trying to hang on? Or are you looking to invest profits to take advantage of tax benefits? All of these should be pretty clear by this point in the year.
- There is still time to make something happen. Planning for the new year in the last week of December doesn’t allow you enough time to investigate all the possible options for the coming year. You may want to target new markets, partner with new vendors, or hire new people. All of these things take time – and you may not get them right the first time. By starting now, you can do a thorough review and make a solid plan for success, even if your first idea doesn’t pan out.
If part of your 2016 plan includes a marketing face lift, we can help your labels start the new year with style! Bold new designs and graphics can make a dramatic impact in the new year.
We are blessed at Rose City Label to be on track for another record year. Thanks to the great customers that trust us every day – we are able to make plans for even greater success in 2016. If we can help you with labels, or if you just want to talk about your business goals for the new year, please call us today.
We are all here to help you succeed – call us today – we can help.
by admin | Oct 14, 2015 | Customers/Examples, Food Beverage
Two Great Customers – together in our favorite grocery store!
We are proud to support two excellent Portland salami companies with their labels. These companies are different in many ways, but they both need top quality labels, delivered on time, at a fair price. We have been happy to help both of these customers for many years.
Olympia Provisions has grown to a national power house with a spot on Oprah’s favorite things. They continue to grow and prosper as more and more people learn about these great products. It has been great to see them evolve since we printed their first labels in 2009.
Chop Butchery is more of a neighborhood butcher. They are all about the local community feel and they sell extensively at local farmer’s markets. ** UPDATE 2018 – sadly, Chop as stopped operating as a charcuterie but still maintains a deli inside another market in NW Portland. Call us if you want more information.
These two companies are at very different stages, but both rely on Rose City Label for their labels. Maybe we could help you too?
New Seasons Market – another customer we love to help – is the place to find these great meat products, along with all the other gourmet foods you may need.
Please support these good customers and let them know how much you like their labels! If we can help you build your brand and tell your story with outstanding labels, please call us today.
by admin | Oct 12, 2015 | Customers/Examples
We love supporting the great customers that support our business. We got to enjoy two of these when we stayed downtown at the Benson Hotel. This amazing hotel has been home to US Presidents and other VIPs for many years and it is a regular part of tours for kids around Portland, OR.
When I checked in, I was greeted by a hand written note from the General Manager. The note was sealed with a 100 year anniversary label we printed for the hotel. We also had a complimentary box of Van Duyn Chocolates – again sealed with a foil stamped label from Rose City Label.
Both of these legendary Portland companies combined to make this weekend stay truly amazing. Small touches like chocolate and a hand written note really made an impression on me. I hope we are always doing things like this to support and recognize our customers. They are important to us, and we need to always remind them of that.
We also invite you to personally support these great customers – you will not be disappointed!
Follow the Benson on Facebook by Follow the Benson Hotel on Facebook
by admin | Sep 9, 2015 | Company News, Customers/Examples, Technical
Now that we are back from the Chicago Technical conference, we are starting to apply all the good lessons we learned. I also wanted to share more detail about my presentation. It was fun to share out story with the room full of excited learners. The presentation was 15 minutes.
Slides for the lecture are available here in PPT format. Here are the main take a ways:
1. Hiring – this is the hardest part.
Because of our reputation, and the fact that our average employee has been with us 12 years, we have a much better pool of qualified applicants than most. Even with this advantage, our best new hires come from our existing team. Our people know what it takes to do the job at Rose City Label – they don’t want poor performers to make their own job harder. And, they don’t want anyone upset with them if they recommend a bad apple.
2. Training – learn from within.
Our very best option – and the one that people in Chicago agree is best – is to train from within. We let our senior press operators mentor the newer people. Printing is a craft – you can’t learn it from a book, or a classroom training session. Hands on learning, in our shop, with our best operators by their side, is the best option for us.
3. Retaining – the fun part.
“People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses” – this was a great quote from another one of the presenters last week. I couldn’t agree more. We work very hard to make Rose City Label a place people WANT to work and are proud to work for. We have fun and celebrate success, we are green and we are moving forward with new technology. These two things, along with a good crew to work with and a flexible personnel policy, are the keys to long term retention.
Of course NONE of this would be possible without you – the people that read our blog and share our passion for great labels! Thank you for trusting us with your labels – we are honored to serve our customers every day.
If you are still a ‘future customer’, please call us today. We look forward to serving you.
by admin | Sep 3, 2015 | Customers/Examples, Technical
I was thrilled to again be invited to speak to the best label printers in America.
The TLMI Tech Conference brings together the leaders of all the best people in our industry – more than 300 people in all.
This year I spoke about how we:
The very best people – the ones that keep promises to our customers every day. It was fun to share our success and help others in the industry.
Basically, we hire by referral, we train in house, and we retain by being green, keeping current with technology and taking time to have FUN with our team.
I’ll post more lessons learned, and links to my slides, in a later post. For now, I am just thrilled that our session was recognized as the BEST of the entire conference.
Cheers!
by admin | Aug 27, 2015 | Customers/Examples, Technical
This image shows a label that we tried to fix for a customer – but it was too big of a mess to save. Sadly, we had declined to bid on this project because we saw the red flags flying a mile away. Instead of redesigning as we suggested, the customer went to an out of state vendor that agreed to try the job. It is a mess.
The concept of this label is great – they want an adhesive label that ‘appears’ to only have adhesive on the tips of the label. This way, they can wrap the label around a product without getting the ‘sticky’ on the actual product and then just adhere the tips of the label to each other. That sounds great, but it doesn’t work for roll labels. Unfortunately, these guys were set on this concept because they wanted to imprint a date/lot code onto the label with a roll printer – big mistake.
The end result is what you see here – a mess.
The customer and the vendor will have to fight about who pays for the very expensive cutting dies (two separate dies are needed to make a label like this), plus the cost of the print run, all to get a product that is almost useless to them. Ultimately, they will have to hand apply (a very large order) and separately hand apply a second label with the lot code.
The critical flaw in the engineering of this label is that the other vendor thought they could slit this press roll (above) into individual rolls by slicing that very narrow space (1/8″) on a consistent and precise basis – no way! We tried to save the day, but the job was doomed from the start.
We love new, challenging projects, but we also no when to run the other way – this is one we are happy that we passed on.
If you want labels from experts, people that aren’t afraid to walk away from a job that is doomed, please call us today. We will work hard to keep you, and ourselves, out of messes like this.
