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EmbroideMe Announces Rebranding Efforts

In a move designed to expand its offerings and services, Top 40 distributor EmbroidMe (asi/384000) is rebranding as Fully Promoted, the company told its franchisees this week. The brand, one of eight under the United Franchise Group (UFG) umbrella, plans an extensive overhaul of its stores to incorporate a greater emphasis on promotional products.

“Our stores were maybe 5% promo products when we started out, but now we have stores that do 50% or even 60% promo,” Ray Titus, CEO of United Franchise Group, told Counselor. “We’ve decided now to really open up our stores and feature an embroidery wall and a promotional products wall – plus, we’ll have conference rooms so customers can come in and feel more comfortable talking business.”

EmbroidMe’s efforts also include a substantial uptick in what its stores will provide to customers. Moving forward, EmbroidMe will offer awards and incentives, print services, promo products and digital marketing. “If a customer doesn’t have a website, we’ll create one. If they do, EmbroidMe can help them with SEO, pay-per-click and their social media strategy,” said JT Tatem, president of UFG brand Signarama. “We’ll also be offering lead generation, so customers can purchase lists or we can do all the database work for them and even provide full reporting.”

Joe Loch, EmbroidMe’s recently named president, believes the goal of the rebrand is “to make EmbroidMe the place where business people go to get customers.”

According to Loch, the rebrand rollout is already underway and will be 80% completed in 2017, with all stores fully converted by mid-2018. Buoyed by the new initiatives, UFG execs expect the number of EmbroidMe franchisees and the brand’s overall sales to rise sharply this year. “We’re targeting 100 new EmbroidMe owners this year,” Loch said. “Listen, we know this is bold. We’ve taken a great brand and evolved it, but we’ve gotten a very positive reception.”

Counselor ranks EmbroidMe as the 18th largest distributor in the industry after the firm reported 2015 North American promotional product sales of $90.3 million. Over the past five years, the firm’s revenues are up 9.2%.