“Printavo allows you to focus on day-to-day operations rather than on each job. Whether you’re in charge of art, production, or customer service, you can see where each job is in the production process,” Randy Wee, Wee’s Tees.
Randy Wee has a long history with team sports that goes beyond printing shirts and merchandise for schools. After spending three decades coaching and then working for a national nonprofit, Randy found himself looking for new avenues of opportunity around 2009.
“I’d always been in charge of ordering all the clothing from my high school and college teams, so I decided to see if I could make some extra money selling school uniforms and apparel,” he says.
Starting with a large fundraiser for the University of Iowa, Randy was able to help raise money for outgoing coaches in the school’s baseball program that was concluding.
From there, Randy’s interest in forming a fully-fledged business started to take off.
Opening Up Shop
Moving into 2010, Randy’s home-based business started to outgrow its surroundings. Randy also said he wanted more control over the print quality of the jobs he was hired to fill for his customers.
“I was doing all the art and delivering product to the printer,” he says.
However, taking control of the printing aspect would give him more latitude to fix any QA issues quickly and give him another thing to build his business’s reputation.
By 2011, order volume had reached a point where the business needed a standalone location. Randy partnered with a former classmate, hired his first few employees, and opened the doors of Wee’s Tees in Ankeny, Iowa.
Thanks to his connection to the team apparel world, word of mouth took off quickly, and the business continued growing.
In just a year and a half, sales skyrocketed from $160,000 to $800,000. That rapid jump in order volume was exciting but also overwhelming.
Randy and his team started exploring software solutions that could grow with them in order to maintain their high-quality prints and meet customer deadlines.
Find the Right Solution
During that initial phase of rapid growth, Randy says the company tried a handful of software solutions but couldn’t quite find the right fit.
“We tried using QuickBooks for a while, but it didn’t give us much,” Randy says. The business needed a system that handled orders, invoices, communication, and production details.
Randy says he found what he was looking for when he discovered Printavo: an easy-to-use system that organized orders, tracked production, and improved customer communication.
He says features like the production manager were particularly helpful.
“Printavo’s production management allowed us to have different statuses on orders and be able to see that logging into the computer visually,” he says. “We can put it on a calendar and then move things around based on the size of the orders so they fit into our production schedule.”
“Printavo simplified everything,” Randy says. “It kept us on track, and I don’t know how some shops operate without it.”
A Reputation for Quality
Being situated in a town of 80,000 people with little competition combined with Randy’s school connections certainly gave the business a leg up. Still, he was determined to establish trust and credibility on more than just his connections.
He says Wee’s Tees has focused on customer service since day one, and that’s helped secure its name as a leading local business.
“We try to communicate with people, meet deadlines, and when mistakes happen, we fix them,” Randy says.
In addition to sweating the details with customer communications, Wee’s Tees also makes strides to work with vendors who share the same attention to detail and quality. Early on, he faced challenges in finding reliable vendors who matched those standards.
“There are some vendors who don’t handle things well when the wrong sizes or colors are sent,” he recalls. However, over time he found vendors and suppliers who shared those values to offer his customers top-quality printing and high-quality, consistent blank garments.
Today, Wee’s Tees has grown from a team of three to 11 employees. The business offers a whole gamut of decoration and personalization services, including screen printing, embroidery, heat pressing, and promotional products. And, the majority of the business’s services are offered on-site.
Navigating Growth and Profits
As the business expanded, Randy managed Wee’s Tees’s growth with the power of Printavo.
Randy says the user-friendly interface simplified his and his team’s order management even as the volume increased.
The business was able to streamline its internal processes for production and order creation, and he says it maintained strong relationships with new and repeat customers.
“It allowed us to communicate clearly with our customers since we could give them a status update every step of the way,” Randy explains.
He also says the evolution of Printavo’s updates and new features has kept pace with his business’s growth, which has been helpful as Wee’s Tees continues ramping up volume and customer count.
“I’ve never worked with a company that takes feedback like that and, within two to six months, an update comes out,” he notes.
Tapping Into Capital Financing
As Randy looks ahead, he knows that having access to capital is essential for growth.
In the past, he’s used a credit card processor to secure loans during slower months, providing much-needed cash flow without tapping into his line of credit.
More recently, he’s taken advantage of Printavo Capital, powered by Parafin, to secure capital for the company’s coming years and near-term growth.
“Applying for Printavo Capital was a simple process, similar to what I’ve done before, including the fees and the payback process,” Randy says. “I did that, and then business took off again.”
He says he saw the program as an excellent opportunity to refresh the business’s savings account and use it as necessary to operate during slower times. It just so happened that business spiked around the time he applied for the financing, and Wee’s Tees experienced the best of both worlds.
“Peace of mind is much better now that I know I have money available to use if something were to go wrong,” adds Randy.
Now, the company is also looking at physical growth and customer volume.
Looking to the Future
Even as Wee’s Tees looks ahead, lessons from early on have helped inform their growth strategy. After hitting that initial $800,000 in sales, Randy realized that competing solely on price was not sustainable.
“You can’t try to be the least expensive person in the industry,” Randy says. Over time, the business has raised prices accordingly, which has resulted in fewer customers but greater profitability.
Randy also learned the importance of focusing on what his shop did best: meeting deadlines, delivering high-quality products, and providing exceptional customer service.
Combining Wee’s Tees with the power of Printavo’s organizational and management tools, the business has seen growth for several years in a row, including 15% growth during the pandemic.
“In 2023, we grew by 30%, and this year, we’re on pace to grow another 10%,” he says.
Plus, Wee’s Tees is moving into a new facility in a location that Randy says will give the business more visibility and ideally attract new customers. The company is gaining about another 1,000 square feet of space, paving the way for more equipment, staging setups, and an improved production layout overall.
“Between selling our current building and moving into this one, I’m really excited,” he adds. “I see us experiencing more growth.”
Randy also reflects on the scores of customers who’ve put their trust in Wee’s Tees to print for schools, conventions, corporate branding, and other markets as a big part of their growth. The fact that these customers have their choice of roughly 15-20 different area printers but continue to come to him speaks volumes, he says.
He also credits his growing team with helping Wee’s Tees continue to succeed and be an exciting workplace.
“Everybody’s in this business to make a living and hopefully retire someday,” he says. “I get to work with people who care about what they do and care about our customers.”
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