PPB April 2021

Unitex Direct in Walled Lake, Michigan, signed up to exhibit at 12 client-focused trade shows set for the first quarter of 2020. In his 28 years in business, he had found exhibiting at shows to be an effective way to talk with potential customers and create awareness for his company that specializes in supplying and inventorying security uniforms. He had gotten through seven of the shows by March 2020 before the pandemic caused the remainder to be cancelled. Soon after the governor of Michigan closed the state, Mendelson realized his business was going to take a hit and he needed to reduce his team of eight. The three positions eliminated were in customer service and warehouse operations, but by June business had picked up again and he brought one person back part-time and reinstated that person to full-time in July. He’s still two employees short of where he was early last year and although business is picking up, he says it’s not yet enough to bring back additional staff. Mendelson explains that some of the markets for security apparel were actually booming in 2020, such as hospital security, but others were not buying at all, such as retail store security. “Those parts of the economy that became difficult caused our customers to slow down their business. They stopped hiring and needing uniforms, but I had some pockets of customers where business was bigger in 2020 than in 2019,” he says. In late summer, as business was picking back up, he started giving a percentage of profits to employees as a thank-you for the extra work they were doing. “I didn’t want to just raise their salaries,” he says. “I figured if I was having a good month, I wanted to share it.” While many small distributors stayed afloat through the pandemic by being nimble and resourceful, the industry’s largest companies navigated their way by employing careful strategies and digging deep into their resources, specifically people. Distributor HALO Branded Solutions employs more than 1,000 people across the U.S., with nearly 500 working out of company headquarters in Sterling, Illinois. During the early months of the pandemic, in March and April 2020, the company implemented a combination of layoffs and reduced hours. As the business climate improved in late summer, the company was able to return all of the staff to full hours and gradually bring back almost all of the furloughed employees. “We’ve always tried to right-size the business and it’s that way whether it’s growth or constraint,” says Dawn Olds, MAS, senior vice president of operations. “I have a set of metrics on efficiency and transaction volume that makes it easier to be precise, whether we’re growing the team or reducing it. Back in March and April [2020], we reduced hours so we could keep as many people as possible.” Depending on who their customers were and what industry they were in, some sales teams were very busy while others were stagnant. “We had some sales teams in telecom “Those parts of the economy that became difficult caused our customers to slow down their business. They stopped hiring and needing uniforms, but I had some pockets of customers where business was bigger in 2020 than in 2019.” Dan Mendelson President Unitex Direct Walled Lake, Michigan FEATURE | Resilient And Resourceful 32 | APRIL 2021 |