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Profile Company: JMH Graphics |
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Can you give me a brief description of your business three years ago before you added DTG and embroidery?
Before we added Direct to Garment screenprinting and embroidery our business was pretty average, we took in 1 to 2 orders a day and our operation was in a 1100 square foot facility.
Who is your average customer?
Our market varies, but we cater mostly to the school and professional side of the industry. We are in a university town, so a large portion of our sales go to the university.
What ways do you market your direct to garment printing?
When we purchased our DTG we honestly had no idea what we were going to do with it. It was mainly to be for sample prints, and small reorders for our pre-exisiting screenprinting customers. We kind of “fell into” the internet side of the market by opening an online store that offered customization of single shirts. By taking advantage of online advertising, we were able to make the digital side of our operation a huge success. I would say we brought in over $60,000 in the first six months of owning our DTG machine. Since then we have branched out our digital printing to our local market as well. We utilize the digital side of our business for smaller orders on white and light garments that would be more time consuming to screenprint. We do dark garments as well for one off’s and special occasions and have built quite a name for our digital printing process in our local area. Mostly word of mouth has been our greatest advertising avenue in promoting the product.
Do you feel like the addition of direct to garment printing has also helped increased sales in your core market of screen printing?
The addition of Direct to Garment printing has greatly increased our market share of screenprinting. It has opened us up to a whole new world of customers, that need single shirts as well as larger orders later in the year. Being able to effectively market on the internet to one off customers allows us a new audience as well. I would say 70% of our online customers are digital, and 30% are screenprinting. It’s a great compliment to an existing business plan.
Let’s see if I have this correct – you added direct to garment printing to your business in 2007 and began to market it via the internet, subsequently you also generated a lot of orders for screen print work as well.Would you consider this a turning point in your business?
There’s no question that adding direct to garment printing was a turning point for our business. Not only did it open a new market to us, it put us leaps ahead of our competition in the local market, as well “pushing” us to develop new marketing plans to make the equipment a success. The addition of new processes and equipment to an existing business is always what you make of it. To coin an old catch phrase, “if you sell it, they will come.”
After direct to garment printing – what was the next logical step for your business? After we let our dive into the digital market mature, the next logical set was embroidery.
I see; what factors led you to add embroidery to your business? Embroidery was just the next step to offering full line apparel decoration. By being fully vertically integrated with our decoration processes, we are able to cut costs, and in turn out perform and out sell our competition. We have been building a viable customer base for embroidery for the last few years by using a contract embroidery service to fulfill the orders. Once the money we were sending out equaled or was greater than the money we would spend on a monthly note, we decided it was best to move it in-house.
Wow, you went from a single head to a six head in 4 months! How were you able to grow this aspect of your business so quickly?
We run a lot of sales and promotions to increase our customer base. While we don’t make a high margin, we use the opportunity to bring in new customers and show them that our customer service, turn time, and end product are top quality. Essentially, we are “investing” in our customer base by providing them with the initial incentive to shop with us, and making our margin on the residual sales. We used the same approach with our screenprinting business and are now (after 3 to 4 years of “investment) starting to see a great return in profits.
You seem to be pretty brand-loyal – how important has your relationship with SWF East been in the growth of your business?
SWF has been a great asset to our company. We did a lot of research on direct to garment printers before and after going to SGIA in Orlando and seeing the machines, as well as talking with the staff from SWF, we felt confident that was the best choice for us. We haven’t been let down either. The customer service is top notch, you can always count on tech support to get back with you in a timely manner, and the sales team has been most helpful when it came time to decide which machine would best fit what we are trying to do with our company. When we decided to move to in-house embroidery, SWF was a natural choice based on our previous history with their line of DTG machines.
It seems like you have done a great job of growing your business these past three years. What key points would you give to the readers that you feel are important in growing a business from one-dimensional to multi-dimension like you have?
Customer relations are the key factor in building a multi-dimensional business. If you stay in “constant contact,” so to speak, with your customers, you can let them know about new services and products you offer, or will be offering, as well as specials and promotions. We send out periodic email campaigns as well as mailers and thank you cards to keep people informed, and keep ourselves in the public eye.
What services does JMH Graphics offer that our readers might be interested in?
We offer contract screenprinting and embroidery services, as well as business start up consulting to people new to the industry.
Want to see more of our Customer's In Action? Check out Milo Pinckney's, Greg Kitson's, Mike Gibson's and Bill Lanier's stories.