Our clients come to us when they need a unique corporate gift, a one-size-fits-most wearable item for a trade show giveaway, an onboarding kit for their new employees, or an easy-to-stock and ship item for their store.

We celebrated our 10-year anniversary this year, and are looking forward to 10 more. We are on track to see a 40-50% increase in revenue YOY in 2022.

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Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?

The last time I updated Starter Story, the question that we were asking ourselves as a company was, “can we get back to growth?”

2021 showed incredible growth over 2020, and Q4 2021 showed promise of getting almost back to our revenue from Q4 2019, which was our best sales year at that point.

We’ve gotten back to growth at this point. Now, the question has become, “how do we focus on the right growth?”

For us, that has meant defining what the right growth is. As a maturing company, we don’t want to lose the nimble startup mentality that has gotten us this far, but we also don’t want to constantly employ the “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” method.

We know, at this point, what clients are going to bring the most value, what the true value propositions of our products are, and what people like about working with us.

We are focusing on growing the accounts that we feel can bear the most fruit, and acquiring new accounts that fit our target personas, like founders of tech startups that are looking for impressive leave-behinds for clients or booth giveaways. You can see some of the work that we have done for our clients in our Sock Drawer.

We want to sell and make 4 million pairs of socks in the next year.

Our products stand out in the promotional products industry because they are incredibly high quality, designed very well, made in the USA, and can be made very quickly. We are trying to train computers to duplicate the design thought process and provide our clients with the best design for their industry and use case in the shortest possible time. We have created a DIY Sock Design Builder for our clients that would prefer a more hands-on experience. We are expanding our US production, and working to lower our lead time to just 3 days.

Our clients like working with us because we truly put service at the forefront of our culture, and we try to make the experience as personal as possible. However, person-to-person touchpoints are incredibly difficult to scale. So, we have invested in creating a seamless online ordering experience that makes it possible to reorder in just a few clicks (used to take a matter of days!), that greets you when you sign in, and that stores your logo and artwork so that you don’t have to keep sending the same email over and over again.

All of those things seem like the right growth for our current business, but I’d be lying if I said that we didn’t have some other things cooking. We are an ambitious and creative team that wants to push ourselves to grow.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

How important it is to have the right people in the right seats on the right bus.

In the past, we have tried to react to growth by hiring people as quickly as possible. We have also hired mainly on potential, with learned skills and experience placed lower on the priority list.

It is still incredibly important to us to seek out talented, passionate, hardworking individuals who have the potential to grow quickly in the right environment but haven’t had the opportunity quite yet.

However, we have learned a bit more ourselves, and want to hire people we can learn from as well as learn with. That means hiring a better mix of more experienced individuals to come in as our current generation of leaders, and less experienced individuals to learn from those people as our next generation of leaders.

The company and the team are going to grow and change, so it is imperative that no matter who we hire, we are creating a culture of lifelong learning. While we still firmly believe that no one is an expert, we do believe that some existing knowledge helps new hires make an impact more quickly.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

We want to sell and make 4 million pairs of socks in the next year. We have been using that as our benchmark for what it would mean to “double the business.”

That benchmark also provides us with a framework to ask the right questions for each department. For instance, on the production side, can we make 4 million pairs with our current supply chain? When does it break? How much does it cost us to make 4 million pairs? How can we decrease COGS?

In the next five years, our goal is to be a software company. The promotional products space is an incredible industry filled with passionate and creative people, however, the existing technology does not support the type of creativity, growth, and collaboration that happens through email and offline in the industry.

Our goal is to keep building out our software that allows people to design, order, and source products online, and empower our clients to sell and buy incredible products from their smartphone or watch. It should be that easy.

Have you read any good books in the last year?

Our leadership team had an offsite meeting this year, and we read three books that I would recommend to anyone who managers people: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham, and Ownership Thinking: How to End Entitlement and Create a Culture of Accountability, Purpose, and Profit by Brad Hams.

I think the one that the team got the most out of was The Road Less Stupid because it broke down management, focus, and decision-making in a clear way. It also provides very practical exercises to implement the lessons learned from the book, which gave the team direct applications for things they wanted to try.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

Take the first step. Find out who your customers are, and then find where there are more of them. Pick up the phone. Send a LinkedIn message. Don’t get stuck trying one thing you think should work - try three different things, see which one works best, and iterate on that.

Also, don’t take your clients so literally. Henry Ford said, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.” Distill what they mean. They want to go faster. What are all the possibilities to go faster?

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We’re always looking for great people. If you’re an ambitious person who wants to learn about eCommerce and making and delivering real products send me your resume [email protected].

I know specifically right now we are looking for digital marketers, Account Managers, and developers. You can find all our open positions here.

Where can we go to learn more?

If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below.

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