We were lucky to catch up with Bradley Kirschbaum recently and have shared our conversation below.
Bradley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share a customer success story with us?
Joe Wirtheim is a great client of ours who has been able to leverage our superior printing capabilities into a brand that has exploded from it’s humble beginnings. It’s critical to understand that in printing and manufacturing, there are a lot of ways to create a product. At StevensIS we continuously focus on staying up to date with the latest materials and substrates, and we invest in the most capable printers on the market. This is why Joe found great solutions for his ideas at our shop.
About a decade ago, Joe was playing with concepts and was struggling to grow out of the side hustle stage. Between posters and signs, Joe had artistic concepts for products that would become his ‘Victory Garden of Tomorrow’ brand. While Joe gets all the credit for accelerating his brand from a fledgling idea into what it is today, we’re proud to say that our focus on craftsmanship and providing high quality outputs for the end user is what brought Joe to us as other producers failed to live up to his brand’s needs. Our superior weather resistant materials, as well as our eco friendly options and production methods, helped Joe catapult his brand. Multiple facets of Joe’s product line are a result of our capabilities at StevensIS, and we’re proud to be his dedicated manufacturer. Joe has gone from a small voice in the Portland area, to being found in gardening stores throughout the United States, as well as on major consumer sites like Amazon.com
Printing is a technique that is used to express pride and craftsmanship in the products that are still best in their physical form, instead of being made digitally. We recognize that brands, artists, and businesses alike need to make a statement with their printed materials. We consider ourselves an extension of all of our customer’s marketing and promotion and we work on each project as if it’s our own.
For more on Joe, visit https://www.victorygardenoftomorrow.com/about
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I always had an interest in running a business. There’s a gratification to solving the problems that come up on a daily basis, and there can be a lot. When things are running well, it’s a great feeling, and my goal is to keep the team in that sweet spot of working hard and feeling satisfied with our work. I guess manufacturing was deep in the back of my mind, even as a kid while I played with Legos. I didn’t get right into it though, I graduated from Marquette and spent ten years in the Navy as a helicopter pilot. That was a great experience. But, I was always craving ownership of my own, and that feeling of building something. Manufacturing became the next draw for me. Printing, being a form of custom manufacturing, was the right niche for me. Printing puts you at a fun intersection where production meets creativity. I really do enjoy seeing the final product we create for our community members. It scratches the artistic side of my brain, without needing to be an artist myself, which I am definitely not!
Printing provides a few challenges that I’m laser focused on tackling. One pain point in the industry is project time, from start to finish. Same and next day delivery is already an under appreciated of our lives. When those same consumers need something manufactured, they want to have it as soon as possible. Many shops throughout the country aren’t positioned to get a job done in the same day it’s ordered, and have it to the client the next day or two. We’re modifying our systems, as I write this, so that we can be a company that lives up to the customer’s expectations by remaining focused on always beating their deadline.
In addition to reducing the time it takes to fulfill a customer’s order, customers are looking for print online, and they typically don’t know what they’re about to get. Not everything arrives looking as they thought it would. We’re actively tackling this issue, and I believe that solving it when customers approach us online will open us up to competing for a much larger audience.
Aside from producing quickly and in high quality, social media is a place where printing can become a unique extension of the digital work. It’s easier than ever to start a brand or product line, and many of those products have to come off of the screen and into production. More influencers are printing their own packaging, and we’re positioned well to be a reputable source for their product. All the major commercial printers would balk at doing a run of 100 packages for an influencer, but we’re accessible and know how to walk a novice through the process. We want one-off projects, trials, and limited editions to consider working with us to launch their project. Printing goes way beyond 8.5 x 11 inches of paper, and custom packaging is a niche where smaller brands will find a lot of value from our team’s input.
We’re not only focusing on being a reliable place for independent brands to produce short runs of their merchandise and products, but we want to actively contribute to their digital promotions. If you’re a brand that’s producing in the physical world, we want your digital following to be able to see where and how your product was made. Collaborations are something we’re just getting started with, but you’ll see much more of that from us next year. Speaking of which, if you want to see who we are and how we create for our clients, follow us on Instagram!
Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?
I have bought a business! StevensIS became mine shortly after I was introduced to the company about a year ago. I was already printing in San Diego, and I was successful in boosting the the company’s performance there quite quickly. With a few new observations about the printing sector, I knew a company with a strong reputation, like Stevens, would perform well if I was able to get the company to focus on and fix some of the factors I’ve already discussed. It’s the second time I’ve purchased a manufacturing business, and there will be more!
There are definitely hurdles to buying a business, some of those hurdles are mental. I would say that if you see an opportunity but the acquisition seems daunting, a lot of people have been in your shoes before, so go find them! Not only will local business owners be open to helping you, but entire communities exist online now, and they are available every day for you to either passively take in information, or actively ask for help on a specific problem. Don’t let a lack of understanding keep you from doing something that could turn out to be a great thing.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
I really didn’t appreciate how my time in the military was actually doing a great job at preparing me for acquiring businesses and managing teams. Regardless of your industry, communication is paramount. Sometimes it can take some tough lessons to appreciate this. But, if you can get a team communicating effectively, your business will have the opportunity to succeed. Communication enables great performance, and it allows for an outlet of the things that are knocking the team off their balance. I’ve become a bit of an over communicator, but it’s necessary because I work in multiple cities now. People need to hear from me, and even more importantly, I need to hear from them. In an environment where folks aren’t used to sharing information as much as you need them to, your openness and encouragement of two-way dialog will be necessary to get their habits to change.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.stevensis.com
- Instagram: KeepPortlandPrinted
- Yelp: Stevens Integrated Solutions
- Other: Google Business: StevensIS
