Sometimes tough situations call for perspective. When this rough recession began, many likened it to an “economic tsunami.” They wanted people to visualize a catastrophe that equated with the nearly instant washing away of trillions of dollars of wealth.
 

Sometimes tough situations call for perspective. When this rough recession began, many likened it to an “economic tsunami.” They wanted people to visualize a catastrophe that equated with the nearly instant washing away of trillions of dollars of wealth.

For Larry Cravez, such imagery was not necessary. Cravez and his business, Awards Trophy World, are located in Miami, Florida. Miami was their home in 1992 as well, when Hurricane Andrew came through town, bringing havoc and devastation with him. At the time, Awards Trophy World had two locations. In the aftermath of Andrew, Cravez went to visit one of them. It was located in a strip mall, and the entire strip had been flattened. This is the story of what happened to Awards Trophy World before and since.

Larry Cravez is the owner of Awards Trophy World, located in Miami, Florida. Today, Awards Trophy World, which now has four locations, is the largest awards company in the Miami-Dade County area.

THE GRADUATE
Eight years previous to Hurricane Andrew, Cravez was finishing up grad school, preparing to receive an MBA. At that time a more personal tragedy was affecting his life: his girlfriend’s father was terminally ill.
His company had originated 25-years earlier, in 1959. It was just a small shop, but with his illness, the father of Cravez’s girlfriend was in no condition to run it.

“He was looking to sell the business, and he approached me. I had always wanted to run my own business, so I bought the company from him and grew it from there.”

At the time, it was one small location. Today, Cravez owns four shops in the Miami area. “The last store that we opened up was actually a competitor’s business that we purchased. It was called Trophy World.”

Commenting on running four locations, Cravez says, “Each store sort of has its own market niche, so each store satisfies different needs in the marketplace. A couple of our stores are more corporate oriented, so they largely handle crystal, acrylics and products of that nature. One store is definitely sports oriented, and so with them, we do a lot of little league trophies and awards of that nature. Our other shop is really tied into the school system. So, each store offers different and unique challenges.”

DIVERSIFICATION
From those comments, it’s clear that Awards Trophy World grew by becoming a diverse business. That fact is driven home on the company website, awardstrophyworld.com, where customers can choose from five different categories: Corporate Awards, Sports Awards, Decorated Apparel, Promotional Products and Self-Inking Stamps.

Explaining his views on diversification, Cravez says, “The more you can offer the end user, the better off you are. The fact of the matter is that you only have so many customers that walk into your store. If you can offer a variety of products to them, you can satisfy a lot of their needs by providing them with the ease of shopping for all they require at one location. They don’t have to drive all around town.”

Cravez says customers regularly come in to the showroom to order awards, and they end up getting ad specialties as well, because they see that Awards Trophy World offers them. “It saves them time. If we can offer the same products as our competition at a competitive price along with the outstanding customer service we insist on, and we can do all of that from one location, there’s no need for them to consider our competition. It’s in their interest to stay with us and give us the business.”

A diversified business essentially multiplies one customer into two, three, four or more customers, depending on the services and products they require and the services and products the business offers.

“Diversification allows a business to cultivate customers, and importantly, the ability to cultivate their best customers. Their needs may not all be in the awards industry, but they are likely to have many in related fields,” says Cravez.

Awards Trophy World runs Epilog and Universal lasers, and personalizes a lot of awards with those machines.

MARKET SEGMENT PERFORMANCE
With a diversified business, one area often does better than others at a certain time of year, while other areas do well at other times. So what has Cravez noticed this last year in his diversified business?

“Across the board, business is down, whether it’s corporate, government agencies or schools; everyone has seen budget cuts. Fortunately for us, we haven’t seen our volume decrease, but the expenditure per award has decreased. Where a corporation may have come in and ordered a $150 crystal award in the past, now they’re spending $100,” says Cravez.

That’s a compliment to the service and sales ability of Cravez and his employees. While many companies have had to watch customers leave and suffer the consequences of losing all of the revenue they generated, Awards Trophy World has been able to hold on to what they had. The revenue is less than it was, but it is still revenue.

“We feel we’re the market leader down here. We’re the largest awards company in Miami-Dade County. People know us, and we have a good reputation. All of that has helped us, while some of the smaller companies, from what I’ve heard, are struggling more,” says Cravez.

That’s another reason to diversify and grow your business, not only in terms of equipment, products and services, but customers as well. While all of his customers are struggling at least a little right now, Cravez says his government business has stayed the most consistent.

“Even with the budget cuts, we’re still seeing government business come in. Also, we export to some clients overseas, and we remain pretty strong in that area as well,” relates Cravez.

Related to market performance is equipment performance, and Cravez says the piece of equipment that has been most valuable to his company has been the laser.

“We run Epilog and Universal lasers, and we are able to personalize a lot of awards with those machines. They are so diverse themselves that they are well suited for a diverse business such as Awards Trophy World,” says Crav

MARKETING
With every business, it’s crucial to get the word out on the services and products offered. Any method is better than none, and if you can, try a few different methods to find the one that works best for your business.

“We have done a variety of things to market the business, and they have changed over the years along with everything else. We send out regular bulk mailings with various specials, whether it be on vinyl banners, rubber stamps or promotional products. We have mailing lists that we compile, and we send out the bulk mailings to those,” says Cravez.

Over the years, Awards Trophy World has tried advertising on TV and radio, and they have sponsored activities around the city. However, some of their best marketing tools, says Cravez, are the locations of their shops.

“They are all in highly visible areas. Our main store is right on one of the main highways down here, so everyone knows us; they pass us every day on the main highway down here. But all four locations are on good, visible roadways,” says Cravez.

He adds that word-of-mouth is also very important. “If you provide good service, at a fair price, word is going to get around. If you provide poor service, that word gets around even faster, and that will hurt a business more than good word-of-mouth helps. If you provide poor service, you’re just giving incentive to the client to go elsewhere. We are in a service industry, and people need to cater to the consumer.”

Another important aspect to the marketing of Awards Trophy World is their catalogs. “We have three different types of catalogs. We have a corporate catalog, a trophy catalog and a promotional products catalog. We belong to a national buying group called the Award Associates of America, and that has been instrumental in our growth over the years as well. Through them, we get very good deals on products, but in regards to marketing, we all put out those three catalogs as a purchasing group. That gives us great economies of scale, and it’s much less expensive for us to put out a personalized catalog than it would be if we were just doing it ourselves,” says Cravez.

BACK TO ANDREW
In addition to one of his business locations being flattened by Hurricane Andrew, Cravez’s home was also destroyed. There was no electricity to run the equipment that was still around and still worked. Every single local customer had other purchases to make that were more urgent than awards. It was a rough patch, to say the least. Telling us how he was able to get some business going after Andrew, Cravez says they worked out of the building that was still standing and used generators at first. However, generators could not be found in the Miami area.

“I distinctly remember driving up to the Orlando area with my fiancé, who’s my wife now, and buying a generator, tying it into the trunk of my car and bringing it down here. Then we hooked up our various machinery to the generator and ran it, whether it was computer engravers, photo-lathes or other equipment,” Cravez recalls.

“I brought back a skeleton staff, and we were up and running. We still had a few accounts overseas and some accounts that weren’t local, and those accounts kept us going through those rough couple of months until we got electricity back and until customers started to come trickling back into the showroom and placing orders with us,” remembers Cravez.

“It was pretty devastating, but your mind kicks into survival mode. The first thing on my mind was my family, and I was grateful that they were all okay. My daughter was fine; my parents were fine. In fact, we stayed with my parents for a couple of months while we waited for my house to be rebuilt enough for us to move back in. So we were grateful to be where we were at and have our health. All of the things we lost were just material possessions.”

“As far as business, you just have to have the confidence in your abilities to rebuild things and get it back to where it needs to be. You know that the market is going to come back; it just may come back different than it was before the incident, but eventually, it does come back,” says Cravez.

After losing two buildings in one storm—one a home, the other a business—one would think that the current economic crisis is mild by comparison.

According to Cravez, “It is and it isn’t. The thing that’s been odd about this recession is the longevity of it. I think what has hurt a lot of the smaller businesses around the country is that it’s been severe for so long. I think the longevity eventually wears on some businesses. But when you compare that to a natural disaster, the response is the same. You just pick up the pieces, put it back together and move on.”

Visitors to Awards Trophy World’s website and four showrooms can choose from a variety of awards.

ADVICE FOR NEW BUSINESSES
Cravez has an MBA. He has been in the recognition industry for 25 years. He has grown from one small location to become the largest awards business in his area with four locations. Having established that, what is his advice to those just getting started in this industry?

“You have to persevere. Don’t let the hard knocks, in particular in the beginning, get you down. You just have to keep going. You have to get the word out there. If it means you going out and visiting the customers, handing out catalogs and sales literature, then you need to do that. You have got to do whatever you can to let the customer know you exist and that you can take care of their needs. Find out what those needs are, and show them what you can offer and why you’re capable of taking care of satisfying those needs,” says Cravez.

If you do all of that, success will come, says Cravez. And if his case is an indication, you will find a great deal of satisfaction running the business. Among his favorite aspects of this industry is its creativity.

“There are always challenges, and there’s always somebody coming in who likes things a little bit different. I find it very satisfying also to see the appreciation people get from an award, particularly with little kids. You sell a $3 or $4 trophy to a little kid, and they just gobble it up. They genuinely appreciate it, and I find that very heartwarming. The ability to hear what your customers are saying and to meet those challenges is something I find very satisfying,” says Cravez.

That sounds like a reason to persevere through tough times. Soon we’ll all be through this, only to have another challenge present itself. When that happens, remember the advice of Cravez in the face of disasters big and small, because the response is the same: Pick up the pieces, put it back together and move on.