When calling different A&E readers and asking them if they would be interested in being profiled for the magazine, I am often asked how we decide which shops to feature. The truth is, our readers often help with those decisions, writing emails that tell a little bit about their shop. This month’s subject, All Star Awards & Ad Specialties, is a great example of that. And I thought it would be interesting to share with you the email their GM, Doug Ford, sent to our editor.

Hi Steve,

I wanted to compliment you on the fine product that A&E is. My company, All Star Awards & Ad Specialties, has been a long-time subscriber, and the magazine provides us with many great ideas, products and stories regarding our industry that we use regularly. Thank you for a job well done! 

I would love to be considered to have our company profiled in your magazine. We are a family-owned company that has been serving the Kansas City area and beyond for over 33 years. With four locations and an active website, we have grown from a small trophy shop to a one-stop location for most business needs. Our product line ranges from custom designed and stock awards to screen-printed and embroidered apparel, as well as signs, banners, promotional products, badges and corporate gifts. We have over 10 decorating processes that we produce in house with a team of 31 teammates. 

We specialize in emergency rush service, with orders often produced same day. In addition, we specialize in custom awards and client walls that are unlike any others in the area. Our website can provide you with more information, www.allstaryeswecan.com 

Please let me know if I can be of any help to you. We would love to be featured, and I am available to provide an interview at any time. Thank you again for the great magazine. I hope to speak to you sometime in the future. Have a terrific week! 

Thanks, 

Doug Ford 

A ROUGH START 

All Star Awards & Ad Specialties is approaching its 34th year of business. The company’s CEO, Chuck Vogt, bought the company back in the early 1970s. At the time, it was a very small screen-printing shop that dabbled in trophies. While it had a little walk-in traffic, they really only had one client, King Louie Bowling Centers. Like All Star, King Louie was based out of Kansas City, but they were also well established across the country. The shop provided their trophies and bowling shirts.

When Chuck bought the company, he knew he really needed to grow it beyond one client. Just months into his ownership, Chuck talked to King Louie, and set up a meeting with them. In the meeting, he let them know that he needed to diversify All Star and add more options to his business.

First, he assured them that he would continue to take good care of them, and then he asked his client to hang with him through the adjustment period. Initially, King Louie said it would be no problem. Then, just two weeks later, King Louie called back and said they had decided that they would screen print their own shirts and engrave their own trophies.

Ouch.

Just two months into his new business venture, Chuck Vogt lost 80 percent of his business. That is more than a bad blow. That is a knockout punch. At least, to many entrepreneurs it would have been.

Yet, despite this harsh and abrupt lesson from the School of Hard Knocks, Chuck forged ahead and quickly put his plan into action. The plan? To be a one-stop shop for the personalization needs of businesses in Kansas City. It was a successful plan, and the company grew steadily but quickly, adding processes and new industries of customers as opportunity allowed and market demand dictated. Today, they offer 10 different processes of personalization (and those are just the ones done in-house) to clients in a variety of industries.

Ford recounts that, “One by one, the goal was to find a new process, something that would allow us to offer our clients something in addition to what they were already getting, and sometimes something they’d never seen before. All these years later, we really haven’t changed much from that concept of being that one-stop shop that you could come to and get just about anything that you need to take care of your business needs, and also, from a personal standpoint, be able to handle any sort of specialized gifts for special occasions as well.”

Evidently, Chuck’s idea about diversification was a good one.

DIVERSIFIED PRODUCTS & PROCESSES 

All Star basically has four broad product lines: awards, promotional products, apparel and identification products.

“With awards, we do 95 percent of them in-house, working with local and national suppliers to bring in the product, and we decorate it in-house. When it comes to identification products, about 70 percent is done in-house, that being signs, banners, name badges, flags, etc. The only things we don’t do are metal casting and etching. Of course, promotional products is the one area we produce the least in-house, though we have been known to do small runs for customers who need something right away,” says Ford.

In fact, taking care of personalization-emergencies is something All Star has become so well known for that it should qualify as another component of the business.

“What we really pride ourselves in, outside of offering a very broad product line and decorating services, is providing the fastest rush services, Emergency Services we call it, that you can find. I’ve been with the company almost 15 years, and we’re still, every other day, knocking something out that someone brought in at 9:00am and needed by 5:00pm. At some point, I think I’m going to no longer be surprised at what we can do, but so far, I’ve been constantly surprised as to the lengths our sales and production folks will go in order to take care of a client,” says Ford.

All Star likes to say yes to their clients.

“When others say no, we say yes, so, ‘Yes We Can,’ has been our slogan for 32 years. We keep hoping that President Obama will kick us a royalty for it. That was Chuck’s motto when he bought the company, and we try to live up to that whenever possible,” says Ford.

THESE DAYS

These days, Chuck is pretty much out of the day-to-day operation of All Star. He is enjoying the warm weather and deep green fairways down in Florida now, but All Star is still a family-owned and family-run business.

“Chuck’s three sons are the owners of the company, with Bill being the president. I’m the general manager, and the other two sons manage two of our stores. We have four locations in Kansas City,” says Ford.

What’s it like running a business with four locations?

According to Ford, “It’s kind of unique the way we’ve put it together, and it really works well. All of our production facilities, our HR, our purchasing, all of the back-end of business is done at our world headquarters in midtown Kansas City. That is our largest store. The other three locations are essentially showrooms, where we have everything that our largest store has except for production.”

Products are delivered daily, and if same-day service is required, then the item is simply taken by courier from the store it was ordered to the production location and back to the store again. Explaining the reasoning behind the extra branches, Ford says it was part of the company’s original business plan. Chuck recognized that Kansas City is a very large city in terms of how many miles it is spread across. People who live in the suburbs don’t want to drive all the way downtown, which could be a long drive, longer in traffic. In order to get those customers, All Star put locations in the suburbs to make it convenient for customers to come in, no matter what part of town they lived in. Ford says that their website is All Star’s fifth store, and it is actually just an extension of this theory.

WEBSITE

All Star has a great website, www.allstaryeswecan.com, but Ford says it took a while to get it into its current shape.

“The website has been up in that capacity for nearly two years. We’ve had a website for nearly 10 years, but it took us a long time to get it just the way we wanted it to be,” says Ford.

He says they wanted to create something that was all-encompassing to give clients plenty of options. They were also curious to see how many orders All Star would get directly from the site versus how many customers would use it as a resource but still call or come in, looking for personal service.

“We were surprised. We thought we’d get more orders directly from the inbox than we have. We’ve actually gotten a lot more people who have placed the order, but want to go through customer service. We hope it is a good sign for the industry that people are still dependent on the work that we do. We’ve been really pleased with that response,” says Ford. He adds that the site has helped All Star in a couple of ways. It’s not only a resource for clients, but it is also a resource for All Star as well.

“If they have a computer and they want to look around a little bit because they just can’t make it into the showroom, we can use that website to guide them to what they need. If someone calls and says, ‘I want a trophy,’ we can use the website to help narrow it down from 5,000 trophies that we offer,” says Ford.

CLIENT WALLS & CUSTOM AWARDS

Of all of the interesting products All Star has on its website, and there are many, there is one that serves as a great example of how All Star has set itself apart: client walls.

Explaining how they came to be, Ford says, “We just kind of stumbled into it. A lot of the products or services we offer came about as a result of a customer’s request. They’ll ask, ‘Do you do this?’ And we’ll say, ‘We don’t, but gosh, why couldn’t we? On second thought, yes, we can do that.’ Client walls started like that. We’ve seen more and more corporations or even non-profit organizations looking for these.”

The concept behind a client wall is to put together a custom-built frame for items (engraved plates, for example) that really highlight all of the different clients that make a particular company stand out. We have one on our wall here at All Star. As companies take people on tours of their buildings, they were looking for a way to show those guests who the company works with, and All Star recognized it as a niche, similar to the idea of memorial walls seen in hospitals.

“It’s really the same concept that we’ve just taken and tweaked to include the business side of things with corporations. We’ve done a lot of different versions of client walls, including laser-engraved plates cut into different designs to form a collage. We have also done walls with acrylic and Corydon, where we can engrave directly on the surface. Through our use of sublimation, we have even created walls out of ceramic tile. Each tile has a different, full-color photo, and that creates a beautiful look,” says Ford.

Ford says the only problem with donor walls is that they are difficult to market. However, once the sale is made, it is a perpetual foot in the door for any of the company’s personalization needs. The clients contact All Star whenever they need to add to their wall, which not only brings in additional business, it also provides All Star with the opportunity to offer their other services, from corporate awards to ad specialties.

“It’s certainly good business for us, because Client Walls need to grow. They are ever-growing projects. It also creates a relationship with a client that opens them up to all of the other products and services we provide. It feeds into our philosophy of being a one-stop shop,” says Ford.

It also feeds into their business for custom awards. “One of the first things I do with clients is talk about custom awards. Each company is proud of their success. They’ve worked hard to get there, and they want to celebrate that success with their team of employees. They don’t want the same thing everyone else is giving out. They want to be different. What we ask them is, ‘Aren’t you to the point where you’d like your own Oscar? We can make that come to life.’ It’s a great opportunity for the client to get an award exclusively designed for them, and it’s good business for us, repeat business,” says Ford.

THE TEAM 

“The one thing that also speaks well of All Star that I’m very proud of is our team. They’re a tremendous group of people. We currently have 31 teammates, and they are all good people. We take a lot of clients through on tours. I love to see how our production folks take the time to stop what they’re doing, talk to our clients and explain and show them what it is they’re doing and why. It shows me that they enjoy what they’re doing, and I think the clients can see that as well,” says Ford.

Those tours provide additional opportunities to impress clients. For example, if Ford knows a client will be touring their laser-engraving department, the client’s logo will already be set up on a laser, ready to engrave the logo in front of the client.

“Our laser guys will literally show them, step by step, the process,” says Ford. “The client has no idea what is about to be lasered. Our guys set them up, and then tell them that now they’re going to have to do some work. They press a button, and it turns out they’re able to laser their own name and logo into a pen or clock or whatever, and they take it home with them. It’s that, ‘Aha,’ moment they weren’t expecting. That’s one thing our team does to show clients what makes All Star unique. I can’t tell you the amount of times we have been faced with really challenging projects, projects other shops have turned down, and come through. That gives me the confidence as a salesman to tell clients, ‘Yes, we can do that. I may not be able to tell you how, yet. But, I know that we will because I have such faith in our team.’”

YES WE CAN!

All Star has a few different philosophies that complement one another, but Ford sums it up, saying, “For us, it’s all about choice. I’m so proud of our company for really trying to be as diversified as we can. We really try to give our clients options. In a world of no, ‘No, we don’t have that process,’ or ‘No, we don’t have that product,’ we like to say, ‘Yes.’ We have found that you get a lot more yeses from clients when you as a company are willing to say yes to their needs. It’s not without cost. Certainly there is cost in bringing in new processes, but we like to think that long-term, those processes enable us to offer things other companies cannot. At the end of the day, that’s a good place to be.”

Indeed.