Inexpensive Ideas to Create a Great Corporate Culture
It goes without saying that happy employees help create successful companies. Here are three ways to create a motivational, inspirational and winning workplace – all cost-effective strategies that can be implemented today.

1. Get charitable. Each fall, Dave Regan, vice president of sales for The Vernon Company (asi/351700), says the company raises about $20,000 for charity. Doing so, he insists, does much to solidify the company’s culture by pulling together staff for a common cause. In the course of raising funds they often end up engaging in group activities (albeit unorthodox ones), such as shopping-cart races.

Last year the company built a home for Habitat for Humanity. “When you work with these people year in and year out and then you get together with them on a Saturday building a home for the underprivileged – you spend eight-hour days hammering and putting together a roof – you find out a lot about your coworkers and things they didn’t know about you,” Regan says. “We had 30 people last year, and 40 people signed up this year out of 150 employees.”

2. Put on jeans. Pulling off a culture-builder on the cheap is easy. Doing it for nothing is a little harder. But Regan has found a way. In fact, one of his most successful tools “doesn’t cost us a penny,” he says.

The company allows every employee to wear jeans all week long if they hit their weekly sales goals. It sounds trivial, but Regan says that since the company implemented the reward, productivity has shot up 25% on Fridays alone.

“On Fridays about every hour we’ll announce, ‘This is what we’ve got to do’ to meet company goals for the week,” Regan says. “It is absolutely amazing what some of these people will do to wear jeans. They do what they have to do, including volunteering to stay late on Friday or come in on Saturday mornings to get it done,” since orders have to be processed to count toward the incentive.

3. Mandate time off. At Counselor Top 40 distributor iPROMOTEu (asi/232119), workers get a day off on their birthday. Not to worry if your birthday falls on a weekend – you’ll get the Friday before off.

“The idea is for an employee to sleep late, to do whatever it is you want to do, and while everyone else around you is working, you can feel special that you’re not working,” says Ross Silverstein, the company’s president. “The reason you’re not working is because it’s your birthday and the company gave you the day off.”

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Wacky Promotions That Really Worked

There are plenty of savvy sales reps bucking trends and trying off-the-wall solutions – and getting results. Their powerful returns on taking risks are showing the industry how unconventional approaches can reap big rewards, and may encourage customers to get a little more courageous.

Sometimes off-the-wall means getting outside the comfort zone of tapping just one or two suppliers for a project. When Marsha Senack, owner of Ad-Centive Marketing (asi/104935), was asked by a large law firm to develop a gift to give out at its upcoming 50th anniversary celebration, she worked to come up with something fun, but also poignant.

Eventually Senack, working with her contacts at the law firm, came upon the idea of a Chinese fortune cookie. They created a golden, metal “cookie” with a hinge in the back that could open, revealing a “fortune” with a message of gratitude and good wishes from the law firm.

To make it even more memorable, they placed the cookie in a plastic Chinese takeout container. A ribbon was tied around the container, and a note was written on it in special lettering. Getting all these disparate elements together to create a final product the firm would be pleased with was a challenge, and Senack had to reach out to six different suppliers to get all the pieces in place.

“I was looking at all these possibilities for takeout containers – you’d never believe there were that many,” says Senack. “Everything was a separate operation, from the ribbon to the lettering, so we had to sort of manufacture the desired end result.” A total of 250 were given out at the party to existing or potential clients and other friends of the firm, and proved a huge hit with the recipients and client. “People just loved it,” she says.

Emily Schroeder Orvik, president of Pro Re Nata Communications, also discovered the creative value of collaborating. Working with a pair of clients – one, a do-it-yourself sewing studio called Sewtropolis, the other a “style concierge” called Fabuliss – Orvik helped develop “The Summer of Skirts,” a campaign targeted to women in the Twin Cities, MN, area who were having trouble finding the right things to wear to work in the hot summer months.

The clients decided to combine their offerings, with Fabuliss providing a style consultant for women who came in to Sewtropolis on July 10, the day of the promotion. The hope was that attendees would find or be able to make something they really loved and felt confident wearing.

A $10 reservation fee got participants a 15-minute personal style consultation, $25 toward future style services, a $10 discount on a sewing class and 10% off class supplies. Orvik promoted the event through Facebook, YouTube videos and e-mail newsletters, but also through outreach to the media. Press kits included layer cakes from a local bakery decorated with a frosting "skirt" and the release headline, "Finding the Perfect Summer Skirt is a Piece of Cake."

The press releases were sent to outlets that would reach the St. Paul and Minneapolis female audience, and the cake, name and promotion succeeded in getting the attention of the media players Orvik was targeting.

Need some quick tips on where to place embroidered logos on golf shirts? In this episode of "Stitches Cheat Sheet" Nicole Rollender, Stitches editor and director of ASI Education, gives you some insider tips on logo placement.Subscribe now to our YouTube videos.

Sales Tips to Boost Your Polo Profits
Few products in the ad specialties market are as universal as the polo shirt. What other product is as likely to be worn by both a Fortune 500 executive team and the employees at the local pet shop? However, the fact that polos are ubiquitous doesn’t make them simple; there are numerous hands, fabrics, cuts, blends and decoration options, and keeping up with these requires research and vigilance on the part of the distributor. Here are four tips to pump up your polo sales.

1. Start with the right supplier. A distributor’s search should always begin with the supplier. Philip Davis, president of Yes Inc. (asi/365373), has struggled with the wrong suppliers before finding the right suppliers, and has some tips for other distributors. “The quality of the product, whether high or low depending on the job, is very important,” says Davis, who is based in North Little Rock, AR. “But, more important is finding out if a supplier has in-stock availability of the merchandise they are advertising. Nothing is worse than when a supplier guarantees they have all you will need, and then you end up with backorders on products that should be available. Stock is critical.” Because polos are used as uniforms and for time-sensitive events, it’s important that they do not end up backordered and that you do not have any sort of delays in getting them to the end-user.

2. Explore color nuances. The broad range of colors in polos has always been one of the shirt’s many plusses, so be sure to take advantage of the numerous choices, recommends image consultant Clare Spiegel of Your New Image. “For polo shirts and other garments, color needs to be unique to the point that it is not a harsh, standard color,” she says. Rather than choosing pure yellow or pure green, colors need to be unique and soft in order to be flattering and professional-looking. Variety is also important when it comes to colors. If a client uses the polos for a uniform, employees aren’t likely to enjoy wearing the company colors every single day. “I do not feel that the company needs to stay with its logo or company color,’ Spiegel says, “but, they do need to be shown a variety of color choices that are blends of color-wheel colors.” It’s up to the distributor to select suppliers that offer these nuanced shades and to present them to their client.

3. Don’t overwhelm. Even after whittling down your choices by identifying a supplier and appropriate colors, there are still dozens of polos left to sift through. “There are too many choices,” says Mary Ellen Nichols, director of marketing communications for Bodek and Rhodes (asi/40788). “You can overwhelm a client with selection.” It’s important to take what you’ve learned about the client’s needs, the end-users who will wear the garments and the level of sophistication the client is looking for, and turn it all into a winning sales presentation that gives the client enough choice, but not too much. “Remember, you are the expert; you know the garments, and the client is relying on you to be the garment expert and to wear what you sell,” Nichols says.

4. Educate the client. Throughout the process, distributors should make the extra effort to explain to clients the key differences and benefits of each polo style. “I think end-buyers understand price points once a distributor can provide context on polo brands, style details and performance features,” says Lee Strom senior marketing manager with SanMar (asi/84863). “There can always be a perception that a polo is just a polo, and the customer may not always understand the price differences.” Letting the clients feel the product, explaining performance features and demonstrating as many features as possible during the appointment can make your client an educated buyer. And, educated buyers will often prefer quality and usefulness to price – and will often remain loyal to their garment expert.

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