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Revenue growth FY 2020 to 2022: 141%
2022 revenue: $8.32 million
Return engagement: Screenbroidery, which does screen printing and embroidery and makes promotional merchandise, is a Fast 25 company for the second consecutive year, and CEO Thomas Rector attributes that to being customer focused. “Everything we do and all of the decisions we make—the people we hire and the processes we create—are all centered around the customer’s experience,” he said. “It comes down to being responsive to the customer, understanding their needs and what they’re trying to accomplish.”
What they ask: Rector said by understanding what their customers want to feel—Excited? Curious? Engaged?—Screenbroidery’s creative team can come up with a solution. “When we can accomplish that, it creates a story. They tell their friends, they post on social media and the next thing you know, we have 2-3 new customers.”
One example: Last year, a video game company came to Screenbroidery wanting to do some influencer kits—finding cool products they could send to influencers to promote a video game launch. Rector and his team talked to the client to figure out what it needed. Screenbroidery’s creative team came up with the idea of creating a pizza delivery company—which incorporated some aspects of the video game—and devised a pizza box that contained different items associated with the video game.
What happened next: “The customer loved the idea so much that they changed their entire marketing campaign to be centered around this pizza delivery company we created,” Rector said. “It really showed us that we’re more than just a promotional product company and a manufacturer. We’re actually a marketing agency that happens to be communicating through promotional products and branded apparel.”
What’s next: Rector said Screenbroidery is investing heavily in technology to speed up production processes. The company has developed some automation within its production process that cuts some manual entry out of the ordering side so it can produce goods faster. The company also is creating a new website centered on sustainable products and eco-friendly solutions to the promotional product world.•
Check out more of IBJ’s ranking of Indy’s fastest-growing companies.
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