PPB April 2021

with them. Early on, Campbell, who has been with the company for three years, committed that he would do his best to keep them informed as he and the owners made some tough decisions, including laying everybody off for a couple of months in early 2020, but he helped by filing partial unemployment claims for them. “When the pandemic hit, everything just stopped,” he says. “It was scary.” He did a lot of research into the Georgia Department of Labor and learned how to file partial unemployment claims for those employees. Under the unemployment claims, employees cannot turn down work if the employer offers it, he explains. He told the team he would give them 24 hours of notice if they needed to come in, but he worked to accommodate their schedules as much as possible while abiding within the law. “They felt we were looking out for them and I think that carried over into their passion [for the company],” he says. “When I’d call to ask if they could come in, they were only too happy to get back to work. The communication we had with employees ahead of time, letting them know what was going on, made themmore willing to work with us through this pandemic. Whatever it took, everybody pitched in.” As a result, he did not lose any employees during that period. “They were grateful to know there was a job to come back to. I look at our employees as our company’s biggest asset. We tried to do what we could for them.” Campbell also filed for a Paycheck Protection Program loan that allowed him to bring back five full-time employees as business began to pick up, and he took advantage of the Employee Retention Credit. However, the team is still down a couple of people because it’s tough to find good hires in his area right now, he says. There was no option for working from home in this hands-on distributorship, so everyone works in the facility but wears face masks and has their temperature checked every morning. “Being so small, if we get someone out sick, we’re in trouble,” he says. Teammembers are cross-trained and wear a lot of different hats at the 10-year- old company that provides embroidery on apparel, backpacks, blankets and similar pieces, as well as screen printing on t-shirts and sales of hardgoods. The company got into selling face masks in a small way and they chose to sell masks they had personally tested and liked. Campbell says their embroidery work has remained steady because most of it is corporate wear, but their screen-printing business dropped off because no one was doing big events last year. “We’re slowly starting to get more of those now but not the big events like races yet,” he says, adding that January and February are always slow months for the company but he’s optimistic about the year. “We’ve tried to watch what we’re doing,” Campbell says. “We told our people that we were making very careful and calculated decisions so they would have a job to come back to.” Coming off a good year in 2019, Dan Mendelson, president of distributor “The communication we had with employees ahead of time, letting them know what was going on, made them more willing to work with us through this pandemic. Whatever it took, everybody pitched in.” Adam Campbell, MAS Operations Manager North Georgia Promotions Alpharetta, Georgia Resilient And Resourceful | FEATURE | APRIL 2021 | 31