Lately I have been getting a lot of people that ask how we got the business to where we are at currently. We also get some people that like to bash us for what we do and how we are able to outwork them and how “we aren’t doing it right” by offering custom work at template prices.
First, I need to outline where we are as a business for you to really get the grasp of how much we have grown in the 2 years we have been open for business. Right now we are growing at a really good clip and exceeding a lot of expectations. I absolutely LOVE our team of people, our clients and we have been working 16 hour days for them. We have been very lucky in some aspects but have worked very very hard for our growth here at Mercury Studios. Between choosing our clients carefully, offering top notch customer service as well as the best design and printing around we have been able to invest more into our business and back into our clients.
I started this company because I was tired of every company I had worked for. There were a lot of great people along the way and some really great organizations as well, but they all had the same mindset… They would push people out of the way to get a dollar and most of the time it was at the expense of the employees and the clients. It led to a business that would pull in more than you could imagine in profit, which is what we all want, but a ton of turnover on employees and clients that came to expect mediocrity. I personally got tired of the politics of just “shutting my mouth and doing my job” and not being able to care more about the work I literally “churned out”. So I decided it was time to take my expertise as a designer, printer and business man and open up my own firm so I could do it better.
To be honest, it was difficult at first. Having quite literally just quit my job, I didn’t really have a base of clients that I could hit up for work and I didn’t think it was right to steal them away from my old company. I hit the networking market, but nothing really panned out from that. If you go to networking meetings, they can be really great for business, but in this economy you find it is a bunch of “entrepreneurs” that don’t want to work hard for themselves, much less to help your business any.
Through offering great work at great prices and working 24/7, I was able to get a strong base of clients that knew I was going to take care of them better than anyone else could. I found people that were polite, hard working, wanted to grow their businesses, and appreciated good work. Instead of working for the quick buck, I was able to grow with people and invest into my business so I could add services that people needed.
From there, we added a full screen printing shop offering the same as our design business…. Great prices with award winning quality. Since we were able to take a lot of our clients from an idea through having a fully stocked clothing line or company apparel, we got a ton of work and a ton of new clients from word of mouth. It was time to take it to the next level a few months later and we added the web design portion of the business. Now we could take our clients from just an idea into the global-online market as well as the local markets with our services and work again increased. We were able to work with clients like Budweiser, local entertainer Mickey Cucchiella and Bowie State University.
Just recently it was time to invest more into our business and into what our clients wanted…. MORE PRINTING. We now offer full paper printing (ie: business cards, flyers, brochures, etc) as well as signage (ie: banners, yard signs, vehicle lettering, etc). People have come to know us as a company that cares, and a company that can really get behind you to make you successful, so we felt it was necessary to have us be a 1 stop shop so you don’t have to go anywhere else.
We rely on word of mouth about our hard work ethic and our customer service to really grow us. Just a reminder to all businesses…. All of the marketing in the world can’t make a bad company successful. Once a customers realizes that a company is mediocre, they don’t tend to stick around for very long.
I hope that everyone that read this post can understand what has set us apart and made us as successful as we are today…. hard work. We are still growing and we have a lot left that I still want to do for this business (some big announcements are coming soon) and I hope that you all stick around with us and we all grow together.
