Like most businesses, saving money is important. In the past, we found substantial savings by using online businesses. But, local businesses are getting more aggressive, allowing them to compete more effectively with online shops.
Printing is already a very competitive business. From my experience, the prices for printing locally have been at least 20% more than going with an online shop. But that’s changing as technology and innovation allow for tighter profit margins. I learned about this first hand when I met Richard LaMoy and his team at Alphagraphics here in Grapevine, TX. It was like finding a Monet painting at a garage sale. They are neatly tucked into a shopping center just off Southlake Blvd. and 114. I was really happy to find them.
Empower Brokerage does a significant amount of printing. We do business reply cards, brochures, business cards, flyers, posters, signs, banners, and just about any other print marketing imaginable. We are very aggressive in the market and we help thousands of insurance agents nationally. Until recently we used an online shop almost exclusively. But the personal connection was missing and the order process was routine. Normally I would have liked that, but I wanted to find someone local. There’s something about the feeling of getting to know local business owners, learning about their families and meeting their staff. It’s something that was commonplace in decades past, but not as much these days. I love forging local business relationships. It makes work more rewarding and interesting to visit the business owners from time to time. You can’t do that with online businesses. At least, it’s not the same over the phone.
Alphagraphics matched our pricing and greatly surpassed the customer service experience we had with the other online shops. Richard LaMoy and Daphne Pereyra are on top of every detail for our orders, from quoting to fulfillment. And, as you can see in the attached picture, the posters look great. These pieces will go to one of our offices in west Texas, just in time for this Medicare and Health Insurance season.
Empower Brokerage hosts a vast number of seminars in cities across Texas and surrounding states. We use local venues or restaurants to cater these events, and we have found a great benefit to cultivating these relationships. It’s how the free market is designed to work. People helping people.
I encourage agents to become more familiar with the local businesses in their area and to use them as much as possible. Create relationships, as we do, and you’ll find it personally, as well as professionally, rewarding. A group of local businesses generally refer business to each other. It’s a very beneficial byproduct of doing business locally.
Just like our growing relationship with Alphagraphics, you can cultivate a network of business owners in your area, helping each other grow in our thriving economy.
