PPB June 2021

giveaways at the games for the Florida Tropics [soccer team], but their whole season was cut short. I also didn’t have any school sales because it was done virtually. Companies stopped ordering because they were not doing trade shows or events. What changes have been necessary in your company over the past 12 months? We had to work to develop a new client base and new niche markets that wouldn’t be affected by the pandemic. I started cold calling on small and medium-sized businesses. I went to about 60 different businesses throughout the city and dropped off catalogs and products to show them what I could do. I got some business, but they were small orders—not enough to offset the normal orders. I also took our chamber of commerce member lists and called on every company—especially service companies like heating, air, roofing, lawn service and plumbing. What actions have you taken to restart sales for your business in the past fewmonths? I’ve been following up on newmarkets from the cold calls and coming up with ways to help themmarket themselves. Part of it has been trying to figure out markets that will not be affected by COVID. Sports and school activities are starting to come back, but I’m not sure how the camps will go this summer, and sports are not yet back to the capacity they were. How do your sales in Q1 2021 compare with sales in Q1 2020? Sales are up a little bit. What are the biggest issues or trends that are influencing your sales right now? Looks like events in the summer will come back. Travel, baseball and softball will happen, along with youth camps and church camps, so I’ll do shirts for them. They also order pop-up tents, giveaways and table skirts for outside events. We offer embroidery, screen printing in house, engraving, sandblasting, signs and banners, and printing of brochures and booklets. I’m also in the process of remodeling our 11,000-square-foot building to create a 3,000-square-foot showroom that will have about 1,500 pieces of apparel on racks and displays of products from 45 or 50 suppliers for customers to look through. I’m also planning to do lunch-and-learns for Realtors, financial planners, insurance agents and others so they can get ideas for specific types of clients. I’ll also have a full production facility with rooms for embroidery, screen printing, signs and banners, trophies and awards and flat printing. In general terms, what are your revenue expectations for the company by year-end? I’m expecting maybe 75 percent of 2019 sales. It’s a whole new customer base so I don’t know how to project. I’m still working on finding new customers. MEDIUM TO LARGE DISTRIBUTORS Bart Simpson President Flywheel Brands Hixson, Tennessee In broad terms, what has the past year been like for your company financially? Blessed. We pivoted quickly and had our best year ever amidst the hardest and most trying times we have ever experienced. Like a lot of our peers in the industry, Flywheel pivoted to selling PPE. We also created a school desk partition that was our saving grace during this pandemic. What changes have been necessary for your company over the past 12 months? We had to get really good, really quickly at learning new products, supply chains and technology. The details surrounding PPE items changed rapidly, and we had to remain flexible in order to appropriately adapt to best serve our clients. We also implemented a new lead generation program and made improvements to our CRM and order-processing system. What actions have you taken to restart sales for your business in the past fewmonths? We’ve been investing heavily into our tech infrastructure and have retooled our entire sales process. “ WE HAD TO WORK TO DEVELOP A NEW CLIENT BASE AND NEW NICHE MARKETS THAT WOULDN’T BE AFFECTED BY THE PANDEMIC. ” —Chris Stumpf, MAS FEATURE | What Distributor Principals Are Saying About Sales 46 | JUNE 2021 |