My business has increased A LOT in the last 7 years, mostly because we use a lot of technology, despite the fact that commercial sewing is a somewhat old-fashioned type of process. We don’t have any high tech specialty cutting machines in the factory per se, we just utilize high tech marketing (blogs, SEO, email etc.)and software for running the business as much as possible. So the high tech element is on the front end.
Sometimes when my competitors go out of business, they call me to see if I want to buy equipment. It’s interesting to see, but they often have high tech stuff in their factory, but not in their office, which is the opposite of us.
You can see what we do at http://www.garymanufacturing.com, but we manufacture very basic items, despite stiff competition from China.
The other high tech element we use is reading the blogs, like Piggington and CR. I would say those two single-handedly helped me ramp up prior to the recession so that I was prepared for it.
Ultimately I was surprised by how fast and how far the economy dropped, but still, I felt like I had access to really great data thanks to Rich and all the Piggs.
Hope all is well with you guys – have had a busy summer, but still lurk once in a while. Like, today.
