Category: For Customers

New Managers Ready to Serve You

As you might already be aware, September 23rd will be Paul Hill’s last day at Hillsports. Paul recently completed his Masters Degree from SUU and has accepted a position at the Utah State University Extension Office in St. George where he will serve Washington County as an Assistant Professor and 4-H Agent.

In addition, our Retail Manager in Cedar City, Alexis Worwood, will be going out on maternity. Her last day will be on September 30th. She’s excited to have her first boy!

At this time we are excited to to introduce Brad Garrett as the new General Manager in Hurricane and Tim Gardner as the Assistant General Manager in Cedar City. Here’s how you can get a hold of them:

Email: brad@hillsports.net
Office: 435-635-9296

Email: tim@hillsports.net
Office: 435-867-5336

Brad hails from Southern Utah and is a ‘10 Business/Spanish graduate from Oklahoma State University were he was a highly recruited NCAA Basketball player. Brad has coached high school basketball and is very active in rec league sports.

Tim is from Clearfield, Utah and a Communications graduate from BYU where he also played football. Tim has 4 kids and has coached a competition travel baseball team in The Rocky Mountain School of Baseball (RMSB) for the past 6 years. Tim was instrumental in bringing the RMSB to Southern Utah.

We will miss Paul and Alex and wish them well in their new endeavors!

Please stop by our offices and get to know Brad and Tim, they are eager to serve you and we are excited to have them on our team!

Mistaking Artists with Vendors

I’ve mentioned before that we’re big fans of Seth Godin. Here’s a repost of what he had to say about Talent and Vendors the other day:

You may be purchasing services from people with magical talents (artists) and it’s a mistake to confuse them with vendors.

Should you treat vendors with respect? No doubt about it. Human beings do their best work when they’re treated fairly and with enthusiasm. But when the provider is also digging deep to put something on the table that you can’t possibly write a spec for, you’re going to have to respond in kind.

Don’t Shop Us, It’s Stupid

Here’s a predicament and a story. First the predicament:

We get calls from satisfied customers who’ve done business with us for years. They know our quality, they know they will be treated with respect, and receive fair pricing. They know how we work. BUT, they shop us anyway. Hey that’s fine, go get pricing from our competitors. I’ll be the first to tell you that I may not always have the cheapest price. But don’t say I didn’t warn you…a cheaper price means a cheaper product! You’ve also got to deal with someone who likely doesn’t give a crap if your product looks good or if it’s done on time.

So in an effort to save a buck, they take an inadvertent risk and go with the “other guy.” A word of caution: If it appears to be a company larger than us, they have less of an incentive to care about you. If they print t-shirts in their garage, chances are their quality is going to be poor. If the price is cheaper, it’s too good to be true.

This kind of predicament happens way too frequently.

So now the story:

I get a call from a customer who orders from us consistently. He needs a favor. He needs us to RUSH an order for him, the item is something we priced out for him weeks ago. He comes clean, {I’ve included my commentary}:

“I know I priced this out with you guys a while back, but I went into this other place and they gave me a cheaper price {they also schmoozed you and gave you the ‘ol song and dance about how we suck}. I should have known it was too good to be true {so the lower price over powered your common sense}. But we were reselling these items so we needed the cheapest price {because you wanted to make the highest margin possible}. When I picked up the product it looked like $#!+ and there’s no way I can sell it now {hate to say it, but I knew this would happen}. Can you help me out?”

Are we going to help this guy out? Sure, but we only do this kind of thing once. Learn a lesson from this guy. Now he’s just looking to break-even! His margin just went to the idiot who screwed him over. Don’t cheap out, don’t trust a salesman. We don’t sell here at Hillsports, we’re merely facilitators.

Congrats CRUSH!

Just wanted to say CONGRATS to the Cedar Crush for taking the Kanab Heatstroker Tourney!

Not all of our teams win tournaments, but we guarantee that they all look this good!

No Big Deal

Just the other day I was giving a potential customer pricing over the phone. This customer was really nice and I was excited for the opportunity to do some work for her organization. Plus it was a really good order that any screen printing company would drool over.

I gave her pricing and here’s what she said:

“Oh great! This pricing is perfect. It’s a few cents more than than company X’s and they’re friends of mine so I really wanted to go with them, I just needed to make sure they were the cheapest. But you guys came highly recommended, several people told me you do great work and you’re fun to work with.”

My response was:

“Sounds great. We’re not the cheapest but we are the best. Good luck with your event Hope we can work together on a future project.”

So we didn’t get the order. NO BIG DEAL! It’s not the end of the world, there’s always next time. Maybe if I got fifty calls like that, then I would be really disappointed and need to eat some cookie dough to console my sadness – but then if I really got fifty calls like that, there would obviously be a reason why!

I was just happy to get some positive feedback. I’m really glad to hear people are recommending our organization, that means we’re doing right by people – that’s what matters most to me. We’re not in business to be the cheapest. Once you’re the cheapest, where do you go from there? Who wants to be known for being the cheapest? Last I checked, the only way to be the cheapest is to cut corners…or be SUPER efficient! In our industry, a business can’t afford the high costs of superior efficiency by having the cheapest prices. Therefore, if you take the cheapest price on t-shirts, expect to receive junky tees with a cheesy clip-art design, and don’t expect to ever see folks wearing them again.

I have to thank our competition, they do an excellent job at increasing our revenues. Because they are all so short-sighted and focused on only the transaction and not the relationship, they often burn some really great people. So we’re Ok not being the cheapest, we’d prefer to price high enough to cover our costs and make a little profit so we can afford to sponsor some little league teams. And besides, we prefer to do business with people who value service and quality.