8 Advantages of a Company Store Better User Support, Brand Protection, Cost Management and More by John Reiner, Pakcom Incorporated

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8 Advantages of a Company Store Better user support, brand protection, cost management and more By John Reiner, PakCom Incorporated

Jenny is the Director Recently, one of chosen by your company can be made to order, printed of Sales for the Jenny’s clients invit- on demand or carried as warehouse inventory. Though ed her to sponsor a typically promotional in nature, more and more companies regional office of a tee at his company’s are building stores to enable easy access to training kits, national financial charity golf outing. tradeshow displays, business cards and even employee services firm. Jenny jumped at the uniforms. A Company Store can satisfy real-time demands chance because three while ensuring a consistent, cohesive presentation of your of her top prospects are playing in the event. Plus, it’s a brand across platforms, places and people. great opportunity to reinforce her company’s positioning Typical users of a Company Store include employees, exter- within the retirement planning sector. nal sales organizations, contractors, agents, distributors, Logging on to her firm’s online Company Store, Jenny value-added resellers, integrators, brand licensees and any- chose a promotional banner for the event. She selected one else that requires access to your materials. Because one with messaging about retirement plans, customizing all products may not be it with her local office information and a tagline that read: appropriate for all users, “Strategy without “Proud Sponsor of the Charity Golf Outing.” She approved you can set permissions tactics is the to control what can be or- the proof in real time and requested delivery of the banner slowest route to to the tournament pro shop the week before the event. dered by whom. victory. Tactics Start to finish, the entire process took about 10 minutes— A well-planned Company without strategy including allocating the expense to the appropriate cost Store not only supports cor- is the noise before porate strategy and brand center. How does a Company Store that enables Jenny to defeat.” order a banner for a local fundraiser impact her company’s management objectives, corporate brand? Let’s take a closer look. it provides a cost-effective —The Art of War way for you to disseminate by Sun Tzu What is a Company Store? and direct the use of your branded materials. Let’s take a look at the eight leading ben- A Company Store provides an easy, efficient way to put efits of a full-service Company Store in more detail. your brand in the hands of the people that promote it. Dig- ital output, hard goods, wearables—literally any materials (continued) Page 2 8 Advantages of a Company Store

Benefit #1: these items in your Company Store makes it easier for Centralized Order Management people to access the tools they need to do their jobs without burdening other parts of the company. One of the leading benefits of a Company Store is centralized ordering and inventory management. Users have a When Jenny ordered the banner for the charity golf tour- single portal from which to obtain the products and/or nament, she didn’t have to spend several hours research- materials they need to do their jobs—which means less ing banners and banner providers, selecting what looked time researching and reaching out to specialty vendors like the right colors, uploading her logo and message, and and less haphazard, wasteful purchasing. then hoping the finished product looked good when it arrived. She simply selected the banner that corporate had The centralized model of a Company Store also enables already chosen and spent a few minutes customizing it for increased visibility to who is ordering what products and her event. If she had wanted to order branded polo shirts with what frequency. This allows you to assess certain and golf balls, she could have easily added those to her products—tracking usage and spending trends while mak- basket since those items had already been selected and ing preemptive adjustments to the items offered. It’s the approved by her home office. ideal way for supply to get a leg up on demand. Benefit #3: For example, if Jenny and her counterparts around the country start ordering tournament-related products with Promotional Support & Flexibility great frequency, the corporate office can make a deci- Driving users to the Company Store for branded items is sion to keep a larger supply in stock—lowering costs and fundamental to recognizing the benefits that a store can shortening lead time for future orders. provide. Having flexibility to offer spending accounts, ad- just pricing and provide coupons or special discounts goes Benefit #2: a long way to increasing usage. Expanded Product Access One company might give its field technicians a quarterly There are two major categories of products featured in a stipend to replace their old uniform shirts and jackets Company Store: promotional and operational. while another might offer franchisees a discount on point-

Most corporate marketers favor products that are well of-sale displays in trade for their dated materials. In both made and have a high perceived value. Products that feel cases, the Company Store promotion reinforces the need cheap or are poorly made can erode your brand, even if for any and all customer-facing materials to be maintained they are used as pure novelties. A reputable promotional- at a high level. products supplier should make suggestions and provide In going back to Jenny, her Company Store didn’t offer a options to ensure that your Company Store is appropri- special price, but it did offer the flexibility of allocating the ately stocked. It’s a good idea to get pre-production sam- expense to a cost center or paying with a corporate credit ples, stitch outs and/or electronic proofs from the supplier card. The system was set up to enable streamlined order- before finalizing your order, so you know exactly what to ing and billing, which allowed her to select, order and pay expect when the materials arrive. for her banner quickly and go right back to what she does

Operational products are much more straightforward, as best—selling. they are typically used to support the daily operation of your company. These can include safety equipment, training materials, point-of-sale items and job aids. Including (continued) Page 3 8 Advantages of a Company Store

Benefit #4: user, user group, product, product category, cost center, Controls for the Brand payment method, and so forth.

With a well-managed Company Store, products are se- Benefit #6: lected based on specific criteria—preapproved for quality, Making Obsolescence Obsolete performance and safety before they are made available to the organization. Controlling the use of branded materials We’ve all worked in offices that have supply closets full reinforces the importance of brand integrity and encour- of branded pens, brochures, mugs and the like. Unfortu- ages and supports compliance internally, minimizing the nately, there are never any pens when you need them, the potential for missteps and surprises. brochures are missing half of the office locations and the mugs feature a logo that has long since been retired. When Jenny ordered the banner for the charity golf tournament, the messaging and design was developed in ad- Obsolete happens—but you can take steps to minimize vance by a skilled creative team that’s well versed in the the associated costs, along with the errant five-year-old firm’s brand. That means that both Jenny and the team brochure ending up at your trade show. Managing supply at corporate could rest assured that the banner would be levels and monitoring usage through a Company Store al- high quality and that the company logo would be the lat- lows you to balance the tradeoff between bulk-purchase est version, printed crisply on the exact right shade of the savings and inventory holding costs. Also, because prod- company’s colors. In other words, it would support and re- ucts are available to be ordered easily and delivered flect well on the company’s brand. And because ordering quickly, individual offices or departments are less likely to was so easy, Jenny will be more likely to use the Company “stockpile” promotional items and use them long after Store again versus wasting time looking elsewhere. they’ve become out of date.

For Sales Director Jenny, her banner was not an invento- Benefit #5: ried item; it was made to order and arrived within a week. Controls for the Users Because it was so easy to order and relatively fast to ar-

The ability to control who has access to what products rive, this cuts down on the likelihood that Jenny will save in your Company Store is a critical feature. You should be the banner for “next time,” when it may be out-of-date, able to manage product access at the user and/or user- off-message and less-than presentable because it’s been group level, giving you the ability to control who can order sitting in a closet for 12 months. what products. Benefit #7: For example, business cards should be assigned to a cat- From Branding to Co-Branding egory that is accessible to employees only, while branded polo shirts might be in a category that’s available to any- The ability for users to customize certain products with one—including non-employees. their own branding significantly increases the value (and usage) of a Company Store. This is particularly important Of course, access does not equal approval. In the case for large corporations that seek ways to localize their na- of business cards, you may allow employees to submit tional materials. their own orders but require approval from human resources before those orders are fulfilled. This would Co-branding is another way to customize products. Let’s prevent a Junior Analyst from promoting himself to Senior say you work with dealers or value-added resellers (VARs). Director with a few unauthorized key stokes. Approval requirements can be based on almost any attribute: (continued) Page 4 8 Advantages of a Company Store

Most VARs want the materials they use to carry their own Choosing the Right Partner brand along with yours. A Company Store affords access to promotional assets and sales aids that are consistent Company Stores are changing the way corporations, large with the look and feel of your national materials, while and small, manage business and brand. Unfortunately, not enabling the right level of customization to support co- all Company Store providers are created equal. The pro- branding. cess for implementing one should begin with a detailed re- view of your corporate objectives and users. While defin- If Jenny had wanted to co-brand her banner along with ing the parameters of a Company Store may be relatively another sponsor, she could have uploaded artwork and straightforward, the logistical and technical requirements proofed the materials online. Depending on the settings cho- to operationalize it can be a challenge—particularly defin- sen by the corporate office, her order would then be issued ing protocols for inventory management, back-office inte- straightaway or routed through corporate for final approval. gration, vendor access, and refreshing the product mix.

Benefit #8: You will want to engage a reputable provider that under- Rolling Out Changes stands both the technical and operational requirements of a Company Store as well as the importance of supporting New product? New tag line? Just ranked #1 in customer and protecting your brand with high-quality products and satisfaction? Cascading and ensuring the adoption of new controls. Be sure to ask questions about your provider’s messaging across all points of contact can be a Sisyphean expertise relating to sourcing the full gamut of promo- task. With the bulk of your material assets centrally man- tional items, as well as the provider’s ability to manage the aged through a Company Store, rolling out messaging complex process of setting up the permissions and con- changes is a whole lot easier and more efficient. Made- trols that are needed to protect and promote your brand. to-order items are adjusted automatically and inventoried So, whatever happened with Jenny and the golf outing? items are phased out on plan, with excess materials de- Well, she played one of her best rounds ever. More impor- stroyed so they are no longer available post change. tantly, a top prospect thanked her for the sponsorship. That means Jenny doesn’t need to worry if the company He wasn’t aware that Jenny’s company even had a local logo was just freshened up or the tagline tweaked. When office. They have a meeting scheduled for next week to she orders through the Company Store, she can be sure discuss his company’s retirement program. she won’t make a branding faux pas at her big event.

John Reiner is Principal of PakCom Incorporated, an IHAF member company that provides Company Store solutions to corporate advertising, marketing and sales organizations nationwide. For more information, contact John directly at 781.890.3888 or [email protected].