Making a Mark

Making a Mark
An insider’s glance at Logomark

BY DEBRAH BONN

Forget what you think you know about Logomark. Put any preconceived notions behind you. If you haven’t worked with this promotional giant before, or you haven’t seen its facilities, you might be surprised. From an immaculate factory to art-inspired offices, these guys know how to do things right. Join us for an inside look at what’s really going on in Tustin, Calif.

There’s nothing ordinary about Logomark, and President Trevor Gnesin works hard to keep it that way. There’s also nothing scary about the warm, inviting nature the company exudes, either. But somehow, Gnesin says, the company got a reputation of being unapproachable.

“A lot of people are intimidated by Logomark. I don’t know why,” he says. “I wish distributors knew and understood Logomark as well as our competitors know Logomark.” Though other suppliers may find the company a force to be reckoned with, distributors should fear not.

Gnesin — who describes himself as impulsive, impatient and creative — runs a very hands-on business. His experience in the promotional products industry goes back to South Africa. There, his current Chief Operating Officer Neal Harper worked with him as a sales rep. Gnesin moved to the United States, and when he began Logomark in Tustin, Calif., 14 years ago, he asked Harper to join him in running the new venture. They rely on each other to make all business decisions, along with the rest of the “Logomark Team.” Although Harper, Gnesin says, is the only person who can convince him when he’s right or wrong.

Work at Logomark is never just about the numbers. Even though blue and black are the industry’s main sellers, take a look through the company’s dynamic catalog and you’ll see a variety of color options for most any product – a testament to Gnesin’s love of color.

His taste for art and flair steer him away from trying to do things "the fastest" or "the cheapest." Without a board of directors to answer to, things get done the way Gnesin wants. As a perfectionist, that means everything gets done well. “We’re not aiming to be the biggest. We’re aiming to be the best,” explains Damian Want, senior vice president. “We want to work with difference-makers.”

The company’s out-of-the-ordinary approach shows in its office space, which it moved into three years ago. Gnesin and Harper decorated it themselves to include large open areas, beautiful art — and not just in the executive offices — a large entryway, specialty fans in the employee kitchen and an air-conditioned factory … definitely a luxury among factories. The walls in the lobby are a fashionable steel gray, accented by long, bright yellow couches and human-size metallic vases. Abstract artwork also livens the place and makes it look anything but office-like. The pride they’ve taken in the space pervades the building, even into the factory. As Gnesin points out, “you could eat off the floor in our production facility.” He maintains, “From the person who cleans the floor, to the person who prints, to me — we take a lot of pride in this company.”

It’s that pride that has kept the company ahead of the game, even through substantial expansion. In the first year, Logomark’s catalog showcased about 30 products. That number has ballooned to almost 4,000 today. This year alone, Logomark added 18 salespeople to manage the growth while maintaining a high level of customer service. Along the way, Logomark has pushed the envelope in the industry. “I do believe Logomark has changed the industry. We changed the way catalogs were done,” Gnesin says, referring to being one of the first to publish a massive catalog, which he compares to shopping in a department store. Those who work with it, love it, he says.

They also introduced the concept of Design Center showrooms, where distributors can bring clients to see and touch all of Logomark’s products. Want points out that showrooms are a central part of retail businesses, as buyers for stores browse merchandise long before choosing which lines they’ll carry. If you haven’t seen one of these spaces — in Tustin, Calif.; Chicago; Dallas; Atlanta; or New York City — you’re missing out. The centers feature a beautifully designed space with flat screen TVs and kitchen areas. Distributors can bring clients to these centers, as if it were their own office, creating a more professional appearance. Distributors who use them can’t get enough. In fact, Want reports 80 percent of Fortune 500 company representatives have been to a Logomark Design Center with a distributor.

He also says Logomark follows the “Nordstrom model” by offering exceptional customer service and the best quality products available. In fact, the company’s exponential increase in product lines and offerings has been accomplished without acquiring any other companies. Instead, staff members spend years in the development process to become product “experts.”

“Our philosophy is we’d rather make it right from the word ‘go,’” adds Gnesin, who refuses to work with an overseas factory until it’s been scrutinized for quality and standards. “I don’t buy from any factory in China unless I’ve visited that factory — either me or my manager overseas. I want to inspect it myself. I want to walk through it,” he continues. He’ll even go so far as looking inside products being manufactured to ensure they’re not using cheap parts or shoddy construction. “It’s like the old saying,” he says, “You get what you pay for.”

Gnesin gets frustrated when he hears people say they saw the same product from another company at a cheaper price. Not true, he asserts. In the cases where the products look the same, Gnesin says there is always a reason for a higher price. Some companies make pens less expensive, for example, by substituting plastic parts where metal ones work better. Logomark also goes a step beyond by ordering ink for all its pens separately and putting them together only after an order is placed. It costs more than having the pens assembled overseas, but temperatures during shipping, along with the length of time pens can spend warehoused, can cause inks to dry.

“We aggressively expire our refills because pens expire. If a pen doesn’t write, what’s its value?” Want explains. “It’s very reflective of the value if you bring something in, and it doesn’t work.” What’s more, the company participates in an outside program that offers free ink refills for life, freeing distributors from refill orders. “The difference is, people will use that product for many more years,” Gnesin says.

This same attention to every detail is put into all Logomark’s products. For the Logomark team, high standards are a way of life. “I always think to myself, ‘Would I put my logo on that product? Is that the image I want to project?’” asks Gnesin, who personally picks out every product the company carries. Through the design and development process, he makes suggestions to the in-house design team about new products and redesigns. And everything is decorated at the Tustin factory, where the executives can keep a close eye on things.

In a warehouse that houses 12 million pieces of product, business is run like a tight ship. In fact, since Logomark launched a 24-hour service in July 2006, the company has fulfilled more than 12,600, 24-hour orders — and only one-tenth of 1 percent has had to be redone. About a quarter of the product in all shipments is randomly checked for quality before it ever gets to Logomark. Employees, who punch in and out with a fingerprint recognition system, recheck shipments for quality when they arrive, rejecting those that aren’t up to par.

When orders are placed, the product is pulled from the shelves and immediately labeled with a barcode so it can be tracked in computers throughout the factory. Product is recounted and quality checked at every stop along its path. It begins in the staging area, where the blanks are sorted and grouped for orders. Then the order moves along to the prep area, where it can be cleaned and prepared for the chosen decorating method. At this point, any other necessary setup activities are done, such as taking pens apart to insert the ink and reassembling them. Then they move on to decorating. Throughout the factory, digital clocks help make sure orders are on track.

“For every product, there’s an optimal way of decorating it,” Want reveals. Because Logomark does all decorating in-house, the company can get creative with imprint locations. Logomark offers more than eight decorating methods, each with multiple processes to get the best outcome on each product. Options include screen printing by hand or machine, laser engraving, radio frequency appliqué welding, vinyl decals and more.

In the spotless facility, each decorating method is set up to get the best possible outcome. Hovering close to each laser-engraving machine, for example, are large hoses to vacuum the burned-off particles – for the health of the factory workers, and to keep dust from settling on the product and affecting the quality of the design. At the entrance of another room, where a large machine prints four-color vinyl stickers, a sticky floor mat (think fly paper) keeps dust trapped.

When decorating is finished, smaller products are packaged by machines, while larger ones are done by hand. Then product is returned to the same box it arrived in and is shipped to the client. Back inside the offices, equal care is taken. Customer care teams are set up in pods by territory, and they work until 9 p.m., so they can take orders until midnight, Eastern time. In the design room, the lead designer says he finds inspiration all over – from tools to car magazines. He uses a computer program that’s used to design cars. When the design team has something good, a special machine creates a 3-D, working prototype. Recently, staff made several versions of a lid for a new travel mug. The lids looked similar, but had differentsized drinking and air holes and other subtleties. Employees then tested them all to determine which worked best. “That’s the beauty of design: when you make something that looks better, and actually works better,” Want says.

Though Gnesin, whose daughter is a distributor, created this company and fosters its culture, he’s remained a hard-working employee. He works trade shows just as his sales reps do, and he’s been known to jump on the customer care lines — without revealing who he is — to hear customers’ concerns. Employees call him by his first name, and he insists his executives be equally accessible to employees and clients. “There’s not an executive in this company that’s not approachable,” Gnesin says. His executives not only carry cell phones at all times, but also list their cell phone numbers on their work voice mail. Again, Gnesin’s not above the rules. He’s even dealt with customer concerns by taking calls on his cell phone in the middle of the night, while overseas, without ever asking the distributor to hang up and call the California office.

The Logomark team attributes its growth to small distributors, and they are as grateful for small orders as they are for large ones. “The more we can do to help our distributor partners grow, the more we grow,” Want says. “And that’s why we’ve succeeded.”