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No. 24
Revenue growth FY 2021 to 2023: 73.5%
2023 revenue: $9.8 million
As its name suggests, ScreenBroidery does screen printing and embroidery promotional merchandise. You know, a fleece jacket with a corporate name and logo. But leadership really thinks of the company as a creative marketing agency, in which promotional merchandise can help solve a branding problem. Yeah, ScreenBroidery does swag. But also custom planters, a Chia pet, a briefcase with speakers inside. “We have a whole creative team that’s geared towards campaigns, campaign development and creative design around those campaigns, whereas most companies are just like, ‘You need pens? I’ll give you pens,’” Chief Operating Officer Gabe Peters says. This is the third consecutive year ScreenBroidery has made the Fast 25.
Investing in tech: Although ScreenBroidery is in the promotional merchandise business, it strives to create online ecommerce platforms for its clients that offer a better buying experience. Many products in these online stores are done on-demand, and increased automations have cut production times to about a third of what they once were. “Because we’ve invested in technology and we’ve invested in a production automation process, that has sped up production that we’re doing in-house for all of our online stores, which then has led to more online stores and new customers,” CEO Thomas Rector says.
Rethinking packaging: Partly because of the company’s own interest in sustainability, but also because of what’s important to its clients and their customers, Peters and Rector are trying to find ways to turn the packaging a product comes in into a product itself. For instance, the box a tumbler comes in also could be used as a bird feeder. “Those things are becoming super important to our customers and are different than the way that the industry thinks,” Rector says.
Swimming with the sharks: A couple of years ago, ScreenBroidery started doing its own version of “Shark Tank.” The company flew in clients from around the country as the panel of experts and invited merchandise suppliers in to showcase their products. The process removed ScreenBroidery as the middle man. “It becomes this really cool dynamic that is a completely different spin on how our industry works,” Rector says.•
Check out more of IBJ’s ranking of Indy’s fastest-growing companies.
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