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Landing The Big One
By: Tama Swan, Associate Editor
Issue: 2010mar
Opportunities for big business don’t happen every day, and when they do you may feel like the luckiest person around. But luck is only half the story.
By Tama Swan
PPB spoke to three distributors with big-time clients who agree that hard work, dedication and experience are necessary parts of any good fortune.
Clayman Promotional Group, Inc.
Strong relationships are everything when it comes to sales.
For most, hobnobbing with three generations of arguably the most decorated family in auto racing would make for a great memory, one to recount to friends for years to come. For Gary Tribolet, it’s a regular workday.
Tribolet first met the Andretties, a family whose name is synonymous with speed, while attending an Indianapolis 500 sponsorship party hosted by Vonage, a client of Kansas City, Kansas-based distributor Clayman Promotional Group (UPIC: 7462). Here Tribolet got the chance to visit the track, ride laps in the pace car and attend a big sponsorship event for Andretti Autosports.
“I got to meet Michael, and then I got to meet Mario,” recalls Tribolet, a national account rep for Clayman Promotional Group. “Being around those people I ran into Marco. We kind of hit it off. He’s a very fun, young guy—energetic and focused—and we got to talking and doing things.”
The grandson of famed racer Mario Andretti, Marco was just getting a foothold in the racing circuit when he and Tribolet first became friends. “Along the way, Marco always had a great website, MarcoAndretti.com, but one of the things he didn’t have was an online store,” Tribolet explains.
Since Clayman Promotional Group specializes in company stores, product fulfillment and e-commerce, Tribolet knew he could help take Marco’s fan site to the next level. “I said, ‘You should really get this going, it’s going to be your fourth year at IndyCar and you don’t have any merchandise available to fans,’” Tribolet says.
Marco agreed, but didn’t commit to anything at first. “He knew what I did, but it took a little prodding. I had brought it up maybe four or five times, but we were still getting to know each other, going to events and kind of building the friendship,” says Tribolet. “Then I realized that during the race season they are very focused. They have a lot of appearances and sponsorship activities they have to do.”
Once things quieted down at the track, Marco gave Tribolet the go ahead to put together a proposal. A couple of months later the site was up and running. “One of the key things he really liked was the ability to sell his own race-worn merchandise because there are a lot of collectors and people out there who would like to own an actual race-worn helmet, fire suit, gloves or visor,” explains Tribolet. “There are very few drivers’ websites where you can go and look through race-worn items and buy a hat and a t-shirt, too.”
After a race or qualifier, drivers such as Marco Andretti send their helmets and suits to the distributor for safekeeping until they are posted for sale on their websites. “It’s kind of a neat way for them to take care of their personally worn merchandise and get it out to their fan base, which is worldwide,” Ben Clayman, president of Clayman Promotional Group, explains. “We just shipped a Marco suit and helmet to a gentleman in Japan.”
Behind The Scenes
Because racing fans are both far-flung and diverse (many are women), Clayman says they must take a different approach when selecting new products to put up for sale on drivers’ sites. “It’s more of a retail look; it’s not corporate America,” he says. “You have to get something that these kids are going to want to put on and wear versus a logo on a left chest, the stand-by that most of our promotional businesses use.”
Clayman compares the apparel they select for drivers’ websites to clothing sold at shopping-mall staple Abercrombie and Fitch. “It’s cumbersome sometimes, and sometimes your minimum is a little bit higher,” Clayman says, “but that’s the only thing that’s going to sell.”
And sell it does. After creating an e-store for Marco, Tribolet says it took only three days for the racer to recover his initial investment. “It’s like a savings account, money just comes to him and he doesn’t have to do anything.”
On the other side, it took only one month for other drivers to hear about the success of Marco’s store and request information about doing something similar for themselves. “Graham [Rahal]’s team had seen me around the track,” recalls Tribolet. “They said, ‘We like what you did with Marco’s site. What would it cost for you to do that with us?’”
It wasn’t long before Rahal, son of racing legend Bobby Rahal, had a new e-store offering race-worn and new merchandise, too.
Tribolet is, of course, a huge racing fan and now makes his home in Indianapolis, but he says his business success in the racing circuit isn’t what drives his interest in the sport. “We always watched the Indy 500 no matter where we were,” says the Phoenix native who attended the University of Kansas. “It might have been because my mom is from Indianapolis and she watched it growing up.”
Match-Up Promotions, LLC
When you deliver great customer service, you can go up against even the fiercest competitors.
It’s not every day that a boutique distributor wins a contract with the third largest insurance company in the nation. Add to that re-signing the company after four-and-a-half years and the accomplishment seems that much bigger. To perform this feat, which Longwood, Florida-based distributor Match-Up Promotions, LLC (UPIC: MATCHUP) likens to the battle between David and Goliath, the company marched in armed not with stones but with a boundless work ethic and a dedication to customer service.
“It’s not enough to just go in and work 8 to 5, or to do the least amount required to get the job done. Time and again Match-Up has been lauded for the service that it provides, and this above all else is what keeps the clients happy,” says Jessica Hutwelker, the Match-Up account manager who oversees the company’s work with the insurance giant. Talking about the success of her work with the company, Hutwelker tosses out terms such as “extra 10 miles,” “absolute commitment” and “customer satisfaction above profitability.”
It turns out Hutwelker’s over-achieving attitude is a prerequisite for all Match-Up employees. “We try and hire individuals with a passion for customer service and creativity not found at other brand merchandise firms. Whether we find this talent within or outside of the industry is not a major issue,” says Adam Thornton, Match-Up’s manager of operations.
But one could say Match-Up is just trying to keep pace with the exuberance of its clients. “If you thought the Red Sox were proud, you haven’t met one of their employees or been to one of their events where red umbrellas are everywhere,” says Hutwelker. “Everyone loves the red umbrella, and brand awareness is huge.”
How It All Started
In 2004, after working with one of the company’s regional office for two years, Match-Up earned the opportunity to be included in an RFP for the national account. “We learned so much from the process that even if we were not awarded the contract, we knew that the knowledge gained from our interaction with their procurement and marketing departments had already made us a better company,” says Thornton.
Like most RFP processes, the work was tedious, but the fact that it had to be compatible with Ariba, a type of spending and contracting management software, made it all the more time consuming and stressful. “First, you know there is substantial competition. Second, you know that some questions or observations you ask or make will be published for all to see,” says Thornton. “Finally, Ariba is designed to control spend. This thrusts pricing, an already important element regarding many brand merchandise decisions, even further to the forefront.” But Match-Up chose to look at the task positively and sought to, if nothing else, gain a greater understanding of how sophisticated procurement and marketing teams work.
During the bid process, Match-Up was highly aware that it lacked the case studies and success metrics that its competitors offered. But again, it went in armed with customer service and a won’t-quit attitude. “What we knew we could do was convince their team through our enthusiasm, creativity and dedication that their success would be ours,” Thornton says. Even, he adds, to the detriment of single order profitability.
Once the proposal was done, Match-Up’s team put all it had into the on-site pitch. “We knew the written part of the RFP would not give us a competitive edge, as the companies we were competing against were outstanding,” explains Thornton. “We customized everything for the on-site meeting, from the pens and padfolios to the coffee mugs. … Our goal was to allow the creativity and enthusiasm that was present in our internal meetings to carry over.
“We believe we presented a selling solution that they had not seen from more experienced companies,” continues Thornton. “We stressed service—that no request was outside the realm of possibility—rather than analytical data streams showing turn rates and JIT (just-in-time) figures.”
Once Match-Up secured the account, which included a logoed merchandise program with both inventory and special-order items in addition to a separate site where employees and agents can purchase products, more challenges presented themselves. The day the company launched the new program it also moved to a new computer operating system. “The first few months of the program were challenging at best and outright chaotic at worst,” recalls Thornton, “but we were bound and determined to not allow internal issues to cloud the performance of the program.”
After a rocky start, however, Match-Up’s working relationship with the insurance firm leveled off. “You hear horror stories of large clients,” says Thornton, “but they are a great client to work with. They demand performance but are extremely fair in all aspects. It is a good feeling to know that if we and our suppliers do our job—the rest takes care of itself.”
Blue Star Graphics & Design
Never underestimate the power of good timing.
Sometimes ideas that seem too good to be true really can turn out to be something great.
In 1996, after being in the promotions business for fewer than two months, Scott Canfield, at the time an employee at South Hampton Enterprises but now an account executive for Irving, Texas-based distributor Blue Star Graphics & Design (UPIC: BLUSTAR), aimed high and called up the vice president of marketing for the Dallas Cowboys to ask if he needed any promotional products services. It turns out the Cowboys’ VP of marketing, who coincidentally was new to the job himself, was turning away one prospecting distributor after another. “If I need your services, I’ll let you know,” he told Canfield.
What seemed like an empty promise at the time turned into a desperate call for help just 15 minutes later. In the short interval between Canfield’s initial call and the VP’s use of *69 on his phone, the latter had learned of a botched order for t-shirts. “Nike messed up a deal for a charity called Let Us Play,” he told Canfield. “They don’t have the Cowboys’ logo anywhere on the shirt, but they have their logo all over it.” He promised to give Canfield all future business if he helped him out of this jam for free.
Canfield went to his bosses for the go ahead to print the Cowboys’ logo on the shirts, but Canfield couldn’t get approval. “Scott, you haven’t been in this business long enough. This guy is using you to get out of a pickle,” they said. From Canfield’s perspective, he didn’t have a choice but to do the job and see if the other guy held up his end of the bargain. But his bosses remained unconvinced.
Counting it as an opportunity lost, Canfield continued on with his day but says he was kind of bummed. “One of the printers in the back saw me and said, ‘Scott, you’re not your chipper self. What’s up?’ I told him and he said, ‘I rent the shop in the back at night. I’ll do the shirts for you.’ He had a punk band and sold shirts. ‘Bring a couple of packs of beer for my guys and I’ll pay for the ink.’ That’s where it all started.”
The Making Of Something Great
The Cowboys’ logo was added to the shirts and delivered without a hitch, but the best part is the Cowboys’ marketing VP kept his word. “It was probably the next week when I got an order,” recalls Canfield. “It just slowly started to grow. Within three or four years they were one of my largest clients.” In the meantime, Canfield left South Hampton Enterprises and started a distributorship called DCI Promotions with his wife.
Before long Canfield’s work for the Cowboys started branching out. “We started doing ticket promotions. This was back when the Cowboys weren’t very good—they were three and 13 instead of 13 and three—and needed to give away t-shirts or a hat with every ticket,” says Canfield. “That led us to the stadium people and soon we were doing security jackets and uniforms for all the stadium workers. That led to doing Christmas presents for the Joneses and all their sponsors. And before we knew it we were doing a lot more business with them—we were their go-to guys.”
The Cowboys is the only NFL team to own its own wearables license, which helps to make the team the most valuable sports franchise in the U.S. “If the NFL wants to run a national promotion with all 32 teams, it can make a decision for 31 teams, but it can’t make a decision for the Cowboys,” Canfield explains.
Because the Cowboys franchise oversees production of all of its logoed merchandise, Canfield says he benefited from hot-market printing, or increased product demand when America’s team was on a winning streak.
Eventually, seeing a business opportunity and worrying about unofficial merchandise making its way to consumers, the Cowboys asked Canfield to act as a consultant and help them set up their own silk-screening shop. In 2007 the Cowboys started printing their own merchandise, and Blue Star Graphics & Design was formed to help manage work at the shop.
Later the same year, Canfield and the rest of the staff from Blue Star Graphics & Design moved into a Cowboys-owned facility in order to work together more easily. However it remains separate from the Cowboys franchise. “Fifty-one percent of our business has to be non-Cowboys related. That’s our biggest challenge—making sure we don’t let the Dallas Cowboys consume us,” Canfield says.
While Blue Star’s relationship with the Cowboys may seem like a windfall most only dream of, Canfield says it’s just like any other startup in the promotions business. “Because we sit in this building people think we have millions of dollars. We don’t. We have a bottom line and we have a board that we have to answer to if our sales and our profitability don’t add up. It’s just like any other company. However,” he adds, “we are fortunate.”
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